Permit us a sour belly laugh at the incredible cost facing taxpayers to restore just a small part of the water-ravaged Everglades.
When the Army Corps of Engineers initially spent $252 million to drain four-fifths of this vital Florida wetland in the name of development and agricultural progress, visionaries warned of an environmental calamity.
Well that has happened. The Everglades, in effect, are dying.
Its sheet of increasingly stagnant, instead of running, water has changed plant and animal life to the point where only 5 percent of some species remain. Forget those wondrous wading birds that used to populate the place. Except for mainly herons and egrets–which happen to do fine in Illinois as well–you just won’t find anything close to historic numbers of those birds in Florida.
So what’s the bill to fix only a part of this? Would you believe the Corps expects to spend $7.5 billion? This is 30 times the money it spent to mess things up. Yet that would regain only between 40,000 and 60,000 of the original 750,000 acres lost to drainage. And it will not rip out the network of levees and canals that prevent the Everglades from returning to its natural condition as a sheet of moving water.
Any water movement still will be at the pleasure of Corps management, which should make us worry. As we know from a nation full of ecological disasters in the forms of strangled rivers and demented flood control that merely promotes downstream flooding, the Corps can’t be trusted when it comes to managing water.
Medals and rings: Bankfishing continues to grow classier and classier. Not to be outdone by the beautiful ring presented to the winner of the recent U.S. Open Bankfishing Championship in LaSalle, winners of the U.S. Matchfishing Championships on suburban Lake Arlington received distinctive 3-D medals struck by Wisconsin sculptor Andy Schumann. Gathering top honors for the second straight year was the Thill Gold Medal team, led by Dave Roete, Steve Somen, Gary Fritz and Mick Thill. They gained an immense 16-point margin over runners-up The Fishing Guys, which nosed out third-place Gander Mountain by a point. Two others tied a point further back. Top individual honors went to Debbie Compton of The Fishing Guys, who led all anglers with 17.1 pounds while finishing first and second in her pair of heats. Roete, Somen and Dan Brozowski of The Four Amigos were close behind. Thill said most anglers were forced to fish for shiners, catching them on very light 1 1/2-pound line with No. 18 hooks tipped with maggots. Only one carp was caught, by Somen.
Off to a running start: Liam Scanlon has a trophy bass that nearly ate him. The 2 1/2-year-old from Johnsburg was fishing off his grandfather’s dock on a back channel of Fox Lake when he tied into a 5-pound 7 1/2-ouncer that measured 19 1/2 inches long. Since Liam at the time barely stretched 32 inches, this fish was approximately two-thirds his size. And get this: According to his grandmother, Mary Jeanne Monhardt of Ingleside, Liam was casting a 1940-circa antique Heddon topwater plug that someone found in his late great-grandfather’s archives. Next thing you know, the boy will demand a split bamboo rod.
Western notebook: Salt Lake City conservationists are desperately seeking national support to detour an ill-conceived highway project through 160 acres of salt marsh bird habitat on the eastern edge of the Great Salt Lake. This most destructive of three proposed routes is backed by Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and several politicos who favor near-shore development. Joining the conservation bandwagon have been organizations such as Ducks Unlimited, National Wildlife Federation, Audubon Society, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We want people to understand the critical importance of these wetlands and the international concern for them,” Jim Corven of the Western Hemispheric Shorebird Reserve Network told the Salt Lake Tribune. “If the Great Salt Lake goes down as a habitat, there is no other place for these birds to go. It’s an oasis in the Great Basin desert.”
The Great Salt Lake plays host to 3 million birds, many of them migrants between Mexico and Canada.
This ‘n’ that: Lakefront biologists were trying to track down a rumored 7-pound state-record brook trout caught recently near Waukegan. This follows a pair of 6-pounders this spring. . . . A free “bog biology” workshop takes place from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at Volo Bog state natural area near Ingleside. Recommended ages are 10 to adult. Call 815-344-1294. . . . DNR deputy director John Comerio has received the Joseph J. Bannon Award from the University of Illinois Department of Leisure Studies for community service.
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Send e-mail to John Husar at Husarwoods@aol.com
