Environmental Preservation and Politics

Early in 1970, the Nixon administration announced what John Volpe, then secretary of transportation, called extraordinary agreement between federal, state, and local officials halting construction of a massive international jet airport adjacent to Florida's Everglades National Park. President Nixon hailed the accord as an outstanding victory for conservation.' Less than two years later, after inconclusive search for a new jetport location and powerful prodding by Senator Henry Jackson, chairman of the Senate Interior Committee, and newly elected Florida Senator Lawton Chiles, President Nixon again made a major pronouncement for the entire Everglades ecosystem. On November 23, 1971, the president formally proposed legislation matching the Chiles-Jackson effort to acquire 547,ooo acres of drainage land surrounding the original jetport site, thus creating Big Cypress National Freshwater Preserve. These two governmental actions-first a presidential project veto, then a bipartisan legislative initiative-spared Everglades National Park yet another powerful human threat to its existence. In this case, massive developments attracted and generated by a major airport's economic accelerator would probably have struck the final blow to surviving rem

Administration (probate law) · Archaeology · Geography · Legislation · Legislature · National park · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · State (computer science) · Veto · Victory · American Environmental and Regional History · Coastal and Marine Management · Law · Public Administration

• Alligator Alcatraz and the Production of Environmental Carcerality in the Everglades

  Open Access•Caitlin Jones, Eliza Breder et al.•Area•2026

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