Last Stand

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Under the rescue plan, whose costs would be shared by Washington and Florida, the Army Corps has the Panama Canal-size task of undoing the damage. To restore some semblance of the Everglades' historic flow pattern, roads have to be raised, several canals eliminated and more than 100,000 privately owned acres adjoining Everglades National Park bought up to expand the water's main natural channel, known as Shark River Slough, southward.

South Florida once defined itself by the flashy, boomtown images of Miami Vice. But now the plight of endangered alligators, panthers and sparrows is spoiling the party. Even development-obsessed Floridians reluctantly admit that the environment is the economy, stupid--that commercial pillars like tourism depend on restoration of the Everglades. And its fate may foreshadow what happens to America's other wilderness areas. "This is a test case for the entire country," says Stuart Strahl, the National Audubon Society's Everglades director. "How well we resolve this will set a precedent for all our remaining environmental crises."

It may decide the Miccosukees' future too. As the Everglades came under assault in recent decades, the tribe feared extinction. Then, in 1988, Congress legalized gambling on Indian lands. That same year, Miami's then acting U.S. Attorney, Dexter Lehtinen, sued Florida to clean up Everglades water flowing into the Miccosukees' reservation, 40 miles west of Miami.

Suddenly the Miccosukees had money--the tribe's annual gaming revenues top $20 million--and a high-level political ally. Some Indian reservations are accused of squandering their gaming millions, but Cypress and the Miccosukees resolved to be players in the save-the-Everglades movement. "Their entry was key to the restoration," says Lehtinen, now the Miccosukees' top attorney. "They're more dogged and independent than anyone else." The once very private tribe has lately assumed a high public profile to advertise its gambling businesses and educate the public about ecology--even sharing electronic billboard space with major corporations at Miami's Pro Player Stadium.

But the Miccosukees' best weapon is litigation, and in the past month they've won some major showdowns. The tons of phosphorous that run off sugar farms into the Everglades are kryptonite for the ecosystem. The federal Environmental Protection Agency recently approved the Miccosukees' petition to set the legal limit of phosphorous in their reservation water at 10 times lower than concentrations found in many parts of the region. And because so much Everglades water passes over the 100,000-acre reservation, the Miccosukees have all but obligated everyone around them to meet their standard--including sugar companies, which argue that they don't have the technology to comply.