Florida’s Indigenous people are again fighting to protect their homeland from a threat involving the National Park Service; this time it’s the prospect of a wilderness designation at Big Cypress National Preserve.
A wilderness designation would prohibit human access to much of Big Cypress as a conservation method. It is recommended by the National Park Service as the most protective environmental measure available. But such a ban would also include Indigenous people, who have their livelihoods and spiritual practices at stake with the wilderness designation.
Tribal approaches to protection of the Preserve and Everglades are quite different, advocating for human connection rather than separation, members said.
“Fortress conservation, keeping everyone out by all means, is antithetical to conservation,” said attorney Curtis Osceola, chief of staff of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
About 200 Miccosukee, Seminole Tribe of Florida members and native people not associated with either tribe occupy and claim rights within Big Cypress National Preserve, according to NPS estimates.
The Preserve is an expansive 729,000 acres, including parts of Collier, Dade and Monroe counties. It borders the even larger 1.5 million-acre Everglades National Park to its south, most of which is already managed as wilderness, a designation that removed Indigenous people who had lived there for generations.
Area tribes and their supporters throughout Florida are a unified force against the wilderness designation in Big Cypress, much like the water that connects the forested hammocks, pinelands and prairies to the estuaries and swamps of the Preserve.
Betty Osceola of Ochopee is among hundreds of Indigenous people in the area who would be affected by the wilderness designation there. As she stood near the Loop Road, tears filled her eyes. She raised her arm, signaling toward the landscape behind her.
“This is where we hold our sacred ceremony,” she said. “It’s like it never ends.”
Among the sacred ceremonial sites at stake is that of the annual Green Corn Dance, a spiritual event held each spring.
Osceola’s ancestors include those from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, a tribe established by the people who were never conquered in Florida. She also has Scottish Gladesmen ancestors, who long accessed the lands of the Preserve, and is a member of the Panther Clan of the matrilineal Miccosukee Tribe, as was her mother.
The Miccosukee are distinguished from the neighboring Seminole Tribe in that environmental stewardship is written within the Miccosukee Tribe’s constitution and is distinct from economic interests, said William “Popeye” Osceola, a former schoolteacher and secretary of the Miccosukee Business Council.
Wilderness designation would prevent stewardship in Big Cypress, warn opponents. These include the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida Department of Environmental Protection and South Florida Water Management District officials, who have said that the designation could hinder progress of the Western Everglades Restoration Project intended to restore water flow, limit prescribed burns and prevent invasive species management, including pythons and plants. By limiting human access, maintenance needs would go unnoticed while vehicles and machinery would also be needed to accomplish the management.
Cultural practices are also at stake, tribal members said.
“Our Tribe’s right to use and occupy the lands in Big Cypress is within a federal statute,” Curtis said. “The designation of wilderness would jeopardize those statutory rights to use and occupy those lands. Access is vital to practice our religion, practice our medicine and our way of life, and provide access and guidance to people who otherwise wouldn’t know about those lands.”
Osceola, who owns and operates Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours on U.S. 41, expounds on the value of respect for nature, including humans as a part of nature, beyond the boundaries of the Everglades to the visitors who come to see her from around the world, leaving them with new personal perspectives on stewardship.
“You have to take people out there to understand it, to see it, to feel it, to smell it, to understand the values of protection,” said Curtis.
Love the Everglades Movement and other individuals and organizations within Miccosukee leadership also bring this stewardship perspective to their visitors.
In addition to Indigenous people, sportsmen, photographers and prominent families, or Gladesmen, who have lived in the Everglades for many generations, including the Shealy family of Trail Lakes Campground, oppose the designation.
The first National Preserve in the National Park System, Big Cypress has a mixture of pines, hardwoods, prairies, mangrove forests, cypress strands and domes. White-tailed deer, bear and Florida panther can be found here along with the more tropical linguus tree snail, royal palm and cigar orchid. This meeting place of temperate and tropical species is a hotbed of biological diversity. Hydrologically, the Preserve serves as a supply of fresh, clean water for the vital estuaries of the ten thousand islands area near Everglades City.
All-terrain vehicles were among the causes of conservationists’ concern for Big Cypress that had many nonprofit organizations’ members, such as the National Parks Conservation Association, contacting federal agencies advocating for wilderness designation.
NPCA had been a vocal proponent for the wilderness designation but has since declined to comment as opposition mounted. The nonprofit is a Washington-based lobbying group.
Citing staff unavailability for several weeks, Kyle Groetzinger, NPCA’s associate director of communications, said, “We will decline to comment for this one.”
The National Park Service has a policy not to comment on pending wilderness designation, though its 208-page Backcountry Access Plan published in 2022 includes details of its determination of Preserve areas recommended for wilderness designation.
The NPS “proposes that Congress designate approximately 147,910 acres of land as wilderness. The proposal generally covers the areas known as Mullet Slough, Deep Lake and the Loop Unit,” which is about 25% of the Preserve, according to the NPS document.
Supporters have included some members of the Everglades Coalition, including the Sierra Club. However, the Everglades Coalition as a whole is currently neutral, said Michael Leggett, Everglades Coalition’s administrative coordinator.
“The problem was some people were abusing the trails by trail braiding. ATV trails have two tracks that go through the earth. Trail braiding is when people go off to the sides and widen the tracks and passage, which is strictly not permitted within the Big Cypress,” said Curtis.
A couple of “weekend yahoos” were ruining it for everyone, and the Miccosukee Tribe has maintained this can be better addressed by increasing law enforcement, including tribal law enforcement, rather than excluding tribes and other people from much of Big Cypress, said Curtis.
“Wilderness designation is an antiquated area of conservation called fortress conservation,” he said. “It’s this romantic idea that the world is pristine without the influence of man. But humans, as well as other animals, have shaped the courses of rivers, structures of valleys and influenced biomes with things like planting seeds and fruit trees, harvesting, cultivating and protecting them from predator and parasite species. Humans have always had an influence on their environment.
“This idea Mother Earth is just fine without us can be cynical.”
Due to the size and location of the Preserve, restricting vehicle access alone makes it practically inaccessible to humans. Limitations on dwellings threaten the 15 existing traditional camps, Curtis said.
Preventing oil drilling is another reason proponents, including NPCA, lobbied for wilderness designation.
As an alternative protection, the Miccosukee Tribe and U.S. Department of Interior are negotiating the purchase of mineral rights from private holdings, including from Collier Resources Co., which is managed by Collier Enterprises and Barron Collier Companies. These mineral rights would be purchased using the royalties from offshore oil drilling that are collected and held by the federal government in the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Adding to opponents’ concerns is that “eligible wilderness is managed as designated wilderness until it is either officially designated, or removed from consideration, both of which require an act of Congress,” according to National Park Service Wilderness Management Policies.
To prevent a wilderness designation from ever being considered again in Big Cypress, Rep. Scott C. Franklin, R-Fla., sponsored House Bill 8206, and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sponsored Senate Bill 4267.
However, these are not likely to pass in an election year, said Mike Elfenbein, a leading proponent of such bans on wilderness and executive director of the Isaac Walton League of America Cypress Chapter, a conservation organization established nationally in 1976.
In the meantime, the House of Representatives approved an appropriations bill in late July with a two-line add-on that would effectively defund the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of Interior if they continue with the wilderness designation in Big Cypress in fiscal year 2025. If the Senate approves this appropriation bill’s add-on—as early as this week, wilderness designation will be prevented for one fiscal year.
This story was published in The Naples Press on Sept. 13.
