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Preserving Paradise Wraps Up With Everglades Trip
For the last Preserving Paradise course of 2025, participants joined SCCF and our partners at Captains for Clean Water, the Everglades Foundation, and the Sanibel Captiva Chamber of Commerce to venture into America’s Everglades.
Through an airboat tour and impactful presentations from Dr. Meenakshi Chabba of the Everglades Foundation and Curtis Osceola of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, participants explored how Everglades restoration is critical for the health of our coasts, communities, and economies.
Dr. Chabba discussed the historical geology, hydrology, and ecology of the Everglades and its different ecosystem types, and explained how draining and ditching of the Everglades has degraded its organic peat layer. Her talk illuminated the need to continue funding and completing projects within the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan to protect the Everglades from further degradation and to restore natural water flows that benefit plants, animals, and humans.
Osceola explained the historical and cultural connection between the Miccosukee Tribe and the Everglades, including how its ecosystems provided refuge during times of conflict.
“These are our ancestral home lands; this is what protected us from annihilation about 175 years ago,” he said, stressing the tribe’s commitment to partnerships, advocacy, and science to protect and restore the Everglades.
The group then stopped for lunch on a tree island, where they learned more about the Miccosukee’s connection to the Everglades, before heading back to Fort Myers for a happy hour to celebrate the end of the program’s coursework. The 2025 Preserving Paradise participants will be honored at a graduation celebration next month!
From the Participants
“Participating in Preserving Paradise, I wasn’t sure what to expect. As a local landscape architect, I already felt like I knew quite a bit about the local and coastal environment and water quality issues, but I was incredibly surprised at all the different players and components at play that contribute to impact our water quality. There’s no one lever that we need to pull — we need to be pulling multiple levers all at the same time, all in unison, all with a unified goal.” — Leigh Gevelinger, founder of Coastal Vista Design.
“The most important thing we’ve learned — I think that I speak for the entire class when I say that — is understanding how big the water system is, how many people that it affects, and what seems to be almost an insurmountable past to fix it. But yet when you break it down, you learn that it’s achievable, one goal a time.” — Jason Cohen of Cohen Sales, LLC
“I would say the most impactful experience [from this program] is finding my voice — understanding that I don’t have to be an expert to exercise my voice in a powerful way. I plan to find ways to educate our customers, our clients, so that they can also have the fire to protect our waters and exercise their voices, so we can build that momentum.” — Patience Jennings of Select Vacation Properties