Kiss Me Kissimmee

We wake early at Riverwoods on the first of three days of intensive, extensive Everglades experience. It’s still dark and we snatch a quick, pre-prepared breakfast.

As the sun rises I saunter outside sans badminton weapon, aware that I may be being watched by that crazy owl (see last blog post). In the rapidly brightening light Riverwoods looks like the set of a Halloween horror film; tall, dense oak trees with Spanish moss beards  - like arboreal ZZ-Tops - cast long shadows in the low sun. 

Bearded trees

We are waiting in anticipation for the helicopter that is going to take Jenn, Erica, Tiffany and yours truly hovering over the Kissimmee River - the northern artery that feeds the fluid heart of the Everglades. Apparently we are standing literally on the edge of the floodplain, which is a couple of miles wide at this point. It is marked by a barely perceptible rise in the ground, the best guide to the edge of the floodplain are the oak trees that line its edge for miles - like the ones we are standing beneath.

We hear the helicopter before we see it. It lands directly in front of us and out jump the pilot and Dave from the SFWMD. After introductions and travel sickness tablets we don headphones and microphones and hop aboard. Before you can say “Kiss me Kissimmee” we are in the air and on our way. Counter-intuitively, it is difficult to get a true sense of the intricacies and functionality of a landscape as flat and extensive as southern Florida with one’s feet on the ground. With some altitude, everything seems to make sense. 

Originally the Kissimmee snaked through central Florida for 103 miles. It was straightened and shortened in the mid-20^th century as extensive canalisation cut its meanders creating a 30 foot deep, 56 mile long water-filled trench, ideal for the rapid transport of water during flooding events, but not much else. Within five years the economically-important bass fish population had crashed and 90% of the wading birds had disappeared. The ecosystem was dying.

Channelised Kissimmee

The state’s Kissimmee River Restoration Project has been working to reverse this environmental damage. Much of the original river template remained in the cut-off meanders, which the project has been reconnecting to slow the flow and increase the amount of water in the system. To date, 22 miles of the canal have been filled to re-create 45 miles of meandering river. (The fill is the original spoil excavated to create them last century, which formed banks and acted as barriers to surface water flow.) Check the short video below, shot by a budding Ridley Scott.



We fly out of the Riverwoods area over some old meanders and along the river, chased by our chopper's shadow. Just a few days ago 16 inches of rain fell here and the results were impressively evident; where the river that has been restored, water has flowed out of the channel to the edge of the floodplain and is alive with wading birds. We fly over a lock and the confined water is flowing like a torrent over it on its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond this the un-restored canal runs straight as a liquid motorway – there are no floods either side and no birds either. A stark illustration of the waterflows involved and the effects of restoration.

Floodplain doing what it does best