Bear Grease - Ep. 437: Backwoods University - Florida Water Crisis

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

When you think of the state of Florida, a water crisis is likely not the first thing that comes to mind. However, There has been an ongoing fight for decades now centered around water, and more importantly how it is managed. In it's natural state, water would flow slowly south out of Lake Okeechobee, down through the everglades, and into the Atlantic ocean. Now, after some artifical damming and canal building- the water is released in large discharges to the St Lucie and Caloosahatchie Rivers, causing an aray of problems for those rivers, the residing wildlife, water quality, and neglects the everglades. Connect with Lake Pickle and MeatEater Lake Pickle on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.

Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places, and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the liquid that fuels life itself, water. But even more specifically, we're going to be talking about a water crisis, one that's been going on for over a century, really. And to do this story justice, we're going to have to head. south, and I mean way south, to the beautiful and perfectly wild state of Florida, specifically Lake Okeechobe, the Everglades, and the Colusa Hatchie and St. Lucy Rivers.

Let's dive in. The Army Corps of Engineers is about to open the gates at Lake Okeechobee. Lake Okeechobley often choked this summer with toxic blue-green algae, the result of fertilizer runoff from all the phosphorus and nitrogen from farms and ranches that surround the Big Lake. The Army Corps of Engineers has made it clear that if that lake level should rise to 16 and a half feet, then it would begin major releases to the east and west to protect against flooding for the communities around the lake. But what does that mean for coastal communities? Mark Perry does not mince words.

What will big releases mean if it happens? Well, it'll be devastating. Perry is a lifelong Treasure Coast resident and heads up the Florida Oceanographic Society. You'll get algae that can be toxic. you'll get water that messes up the salinity of the estuaries that kills off the marine life that you need. You have no balance. So you're on pins and needles until we get out of rainy season. Absolutely. And they, you know, they got into it with this lake being too high. We're standing at one of the places that if they have to open the gates full board, you're got algae up and down the C-51.

Right here just south of our Palm Beach airport. That's right. Palm Beach International. The Director of Research and Conservation at the Florida Oceanographic Society says Sea Graeme, says seagrass is a foundational part of the St. Lucie estuary as a food source, a habitat, and much more. The seagrass helps to stabilize our sediments in the water column, right? And if you don't have the seagrass there, this sand is constantly kicked up and it moves around much more.

But with freshwater discharges from Lake Okeechobee pouring in, the salinity levels in the St. Lucie River have already dropped dramatically, according to Society Executive Director Mark Perry. Environmentalist fear 20 to 25 days of discharges could not only. destroy the seagrass, but also oyster reefs. John Shamedon, WPTV, News Channel 5. Now, if you couldn't tell from those news clips that we just heard, this issue involves some controversy, some conflict, and some seeking out for a solution. So I feel the need to share with you the same sentiment that I did when we released the

Pogie Boat episode back in the fall. And that sentiment is this. My job is not to tell you how to think. Y'all don't need my help with that. My goal is to present you with the best facts possible in the best way that I know how. And we're going to do that today by diving into this issue with two individuals that know it very well. But before we do that, allow me a few minutes to set the stage so that we all have a little more context. Starting at the top, let's talk about Lake Okeechobee.

So Lake Okeechobee. So Lake Okeechobee covers 730 square miles and is the largest, lake in the state of Florida as well as the southeastern U.S. This is a big body of water. It's just slightly smaller than the state of Rhode Island. That paints a little bit clearer of a picture. Now, onto its relevance in this story, Lake Okeechobee, this truly giant body of water, for literal centuries would fill up, spill over the top of its southern banks, and then subsequently flowed naturally all the way down to the southern tip of Florida. And the fresh water would dump into the Atlantic Ocean. Now another important element to note here is what lies between

Okachovie and the southern tip of Florida. The Everglades, a vast area, roughly 1.5 million acres that is made up of marshes, mangroves, and wetlands, and it supports an extraordinarily diverse array of wildlife. Multiple bird species, panthers, alligators, manatees, just to name a few. It's one of the most unique ecosystems in the country and the world. Presently, the Everglades have been reduced to roughly half of its original size for farming and urban development. Going back to Okchobie, it's now surrounded by the Herbert Hoover Dyke, which is basically 143 mile-long dam. And now, rather than the water spilling over naturally and working its way through the Everglades to get down to the ocean, now the water reaches Florida Southwest and Southeast Coast through the Colusa Hatchie and St. Lucy Rivers,

through canals that were artificially created over 100 years ago to provide navigation routes and mainly to enable water management for flood control and agriculture. When lake levels are deemed too high and pose a flood risk, excess water is then sent to the coast. These two rivers, the Kalusahatchi and the St. Lucy, can now be thought of as almost safety valves, or at least that's how they're being treated these days. In this system during high water events, water from Lake Okeechobee is routinely discharged through these rivers and sent to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

Practice that has been going on for a while now. Okay, stage has officially been set. So let's get into the meat of this conversation and learn what's really going on here. And more importantly, why it matters. So I got my captain's license in 1986. So this is my 39th year guiding in the Stewart area. I fish inshore a lot. I fish offshore a lot.

I live chum. I fly fish a lot. Everything from, you know, sailfish to snook. We're very fortunate, you know, where we live, eight miles offshore, you run 120 feet of water. You can catch anything in the ocean in that depth. Yeah. So on a lot of days, we have the option of running offshore,

catching something, and then coming back inshore at the end of our day. You know, stop in and see if you can get a tarp in or snook or a permit or pompano, whatever we want to chase that time of year. The person you just heard talking is a man named Captain Mike Holliday. He's a veteran fishing guide, and he's also someone who has had a lot of firsthand experience with this water crisis that we're here to talk about. And y'all know that I always put heavy value on the perspective of a citizen scientist, so to speak. Captain Mike is going to help us understand what's going on in Florida on a much more relatable level. So did you grow up fishing and doing outdoor stuff then, or did you find it?

My whole life. Your whole life. Yeah, my whole life. You know, some people are just drawn to the outdoors. and for a lot of people it's there, you know, their calming place. You'll see it. You know, anybody that spends a lot of time, either in the woods or on the water, you know, the minute you get away, the minute you walk away from your car, the minute you step in the boat and pull away from the dock,

I mean, you can just see the posture change, how much weight it takes off your shoulders. It's amazing. And I feel bad for everybody who doesn't know about it. I always like to take the time to establish someone's appreciation for wildlife, wild places, and especially their connection to the specific area

that we're going to be talking about. We're going to hear a lot of good stuff from Captain Mike. But before that, there's somebody else we need to meet. In simplest terms, there is a massive fight over water in Florida. Water is the commodity in Florida, who controls it, where it goes,

how long it stays there, and where it ends up. And over the last 100 years, how water has flown in Florida, Florida has changed a lot. And now as we're starting to make progress for the better of the state and for the better of our natural resources about where that water is going, you see industries like the sugar industry trying to make pretty significant political plays to protect their industry within that redistribution of water. And what just happened recently and what's on everyone's

headlines right now was an attack within this same realm, this this, this, this, political arena that I'm describing, but it was about specifically free speech and our ability to foster and challenge and have really difficult conversations that, you know, free speech and our country is based on. So we just, you know, I'm a conservationist and a fisheries advocate and a clean water advocate. And for the first time of my life, I just became a free speech advocate. And I wasn't expecting that. The gentleman you just heard there is Captain Cody Rubner. Cody is a fly fishing and light tackle guide out of Stewart, Florida. He's an outdoorsman that is heavily involved with conservation efforts and concerns about the natural resources in his local area. It's also

worth noting that both he and Captain Mike are involved with captains for clean water. Between these two fine individuals, we're going to have this subject covered to the fullest extent. So let's get into it. I want to start out by asking Captain Mike about some of his personal experiences and what he's seen over the years with these water releases and the effects that it's made on the river systems. Changes in my lifetime have been pretty noticeable. I've moved here in 78, and even back then we were getting some, you know, very big discharges.

And when I say discharges, I mean, we'll get a billion gallons of water a day of untreated water. It'll come into the system through the St. Lucie River and push up into the Indian River. Now the Indian River starts where in my town, of Stewart and then runs about 195 miles north. And at one time, it's considered the most diverse saltwater estuary in North America. Now I don't know if that's the case or not because it's more like a moonscape at times. Very shallow river, two to three feet deep, big seagrass meadows all the way across it,

incredible fishing, probably the best sea trout fishing in the world, and close to the best snook fishing in the world, certainly for big fish and big numbers of big fish. in the 70s, late 70s and early 80s, we would see these discharges and I might be fishing a bridge eight miles from the river, or eight miles from the inlet, and the water would be fresh in that area

where we would have freshwater gars all the way up river there. And it's a completely saltwater at, you know, estuary. But the sheer volume of water and the sheer duration, which may be, you know, three or four or five months, of, you know, a billion gallons of water a day. Well, we'll get 200 days of a billion gallons of water a day.

And at some point, that turns those estuaries fresh. You know, in an area where you're normally catching snook and sea trout and redfish, now you're seeing freshwater car for months at a time. And you can't catch anything else. The first thing that it does when we get to release is it turns water dirty, like a coffee color. So you can't navigate in it. You can't see in it.

And it just goes from there. Fresh water is lighter than salt water, so it tends to sit on the top. So in some areas, you'll still have fish underneath it, salt water fish underneath it. But over time, that fresh water takes over and completely replaces the saltwater. And that's when you start seeing the seagrass meadows die and all, and the clams and oysters. And you have to understand, I mean, you're talking about a river that's, oh, two miles across and two to three feet deep all the way across it. So it's just giant meadows of seagrass, which is, you know, habitat.

Yeah. And just full of everything, shrimp, crabs, clams, fish, everything. And then when that water gets in there, it kills it off. And we would see over the years, we would see different levels of die-offs, you know, some more extreme than others. but it was about 2012, it all died off. I mean, we lost probably 12 to 15 miles up the river. It went from seagrass meadow to moonscape to complete sand in one year. And you cannot lose that volume of habitat without losing that volume of marine life.

Yeah. You know, so all of a sudden, you know, the only place the fish are is on the docks and on the seawalls and on the few mangrove areas that we have. And the numbers, I mean, in, let's say 2008, in the spring, in April and May, I would be fishing a lot of Texas guys coming because I want to catch a trout over 10 pounds. So I'm fishing the Texas guys, and on an average day, we would catch 30 snook and three or four trout. And most of those trout would be over six pounds. If we just went trout fishing, then we would catch probably 20 trout. But, you know, we found the bigger fish mixed in with the snook closer to the inlet areas for the most part.

And from 2013 to, oh, about 2024, I don't think there was a year I caught more than three trout in the entire year. Oh, wow. Just gone. That's gone. That's hugely significant. And, you know, you never think it's going to happen to you. This habitat went from being what I considered probably one of the best fisheries in the country to desolate, to struggle. You know, when I first started snook fishing, you know, 50 snook day was pretty common.

Yeah. And now eight snuck days, what I shoot for. Wow. Wow. And that's in my lifetime. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a very, on the grand scheme of things, like the rate at which you're describing this habit. not a very long time.

No, they dug that canal in the 1940s. So you're talking about in 85 years, we've killed off the St. Lisa River for the most part and much of the Indian River. Although, you know, nature is very resilient. We're starting to get some seagrass back. And with that seagrass, we're getting our crabs and our shrimp and our forage base.

And as we get the forage base, and we start seeing the fish. And the last two years, we've starting to see trout. mostly juveniles mostly you know nine to 15 inch fish but it I mean the change has been dramatic a good example also is like the winter time we would fish pompano and ladyfish and you would just drift across a flat two or three people throwing jigs and at some point in time everybody's on you know it's just kind of pompon it would be more jacks and ladyfish but it's jack jack jack jack jack ladyfish pompano jack jack jack jack jack jack ladyfish ladyfish lady's

Lady Fish, Ladyfish, Ladyfish, Jack, Jack, Pompano. So you had this real good mixture and lots of action. Yeah. And in a four-hour trip, you'd catch at least 100 fish. And now we have no Jacks or ladyfish. We have a handful of Pompano. You know, they're migratory fish. So they'll come through.

They will not stay. There's no food to keep them there. So they come through. They're there that day. They're moving somewhere else by the next day. Very inconsistent. Water should land in Florida. should rain, water flows south, flows south into the Everglades. For people that don't have

a layout of Florida, obviously, it's a giant, it's bigger than most people think by the time you go from Key West all the way up to the panhandle. But water should flow north to south. And this Lake O, Lake Okeechobee, as I referenced in the center of the state, is this massive holding pot. And essentially think of it as historically, water needed to go into Lake O and then flow south over a long, slow plain that they call the river oak grass. It's a slow trickle. And that's the fertile land. That's where the Everglades agricultural area is. That's where a lot of the farming is taking place in Florida. What has happened is we dammed the water south of Lake O. And so now, because it is not going south, water keeps coming. So there's only one direction or two directions that can be sent,

which is east and west. So I live in Stewart, Florida. I'm on the east coast, let's call it the outlet. of this situation. There's also the West Coast outlet, which is the Colusahatchee River. So the Colusa Hatchie goes west, and the St. Lucie River comes out to the east. So basically, this water gets built up. They manage how high they let lake levels, talking about Lake Okeechobee get, and it balloons out. But instead of going south, as it historically should go, and as the Everglades, you know, one of our national parks, one of God's most incredible creations, needs that water. While it's drying out, this water now gets sent east and west.

And these are massive pulses. We call them discharges. Massive, massive pulses where they open the floodgates very literally. And this water from Lake Okeechobee comes pouring into what used to be gin clear, pristine, you know, think of your magazine, tourism industry. Oh, I've seen Florida. Look at the Indian River. It's so beautiful. Clear water and green seagrass and redfish roaming around.

All of a sudden you have these massive discharges of fresh. water into these systems. And these systems, while the West Coast needs a baseline, a small amount of fresh water, the East Coast where I live needs basically none. So you have these massive pulses of water and overnight when the gates get opened, it looks like brown and black death. Like my river can go from the Bahamas where I can see the bottom of the channel in 18 feet, 20 feet of water to the entire water is black and brown. There was a so-called, they called it the Lost Summer, right before I actually moved to Stewart, where the water quality was so bad from these discharges

that people's dogs were dying if they went down to the river and were by the water too much. So basically the water fight is, there's a campaign to try to get people on the right track and reestablish the way water's natal path in Florida is, and there are certain industries that would benefit significantly if that was not restored. And so the fight is over,

keep the water north, I don't want more sending south, send it east and west, and this is not a fight. Like, this isn't just a let's make the world better for a saltwater fishing guide or a saltwater angler or hotels on the beach. That's not what this is because when you balloon the water in the center of the state, you're actually significantly hurting Lake Okeechobee's health too. You know, I'm not just a, I'm a saltwater fishing guide now. I actually came up through the college bass fishing series.

I used to travel around the country. I had my logos and Sparkle Boat and everything. And I have love for that community too, right? And Lake Okeechobee is an iconic bass fishing destination, one of the most historic. And so the lake is suffering, and you hear the bass fishermen talking about it as well. So the water management game, when I say it's a commodity, it needs to restore our aquifers. It's also our drinking water. You know, this is not just for recreation or for agriculture.

It's also for, you know, human and public health as well. And so this fight is over where water goes. And there's a campaign now and a charge to try to restore. natal flow for the betterment of basically just about everyone except one resource. Let's face it, the information that Captain Mike and Cody shared with us is not good. It's kind of depressing, to be honest. Rivers that used to be teeming with all sorts of marine life, depleted, natural waterways deviated in a way that's not beneficial, water quality suffering,

the Everglades in peril, just to name a few. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record.

If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. We've got a lot to unpack here. First, I'm curious what the locals in the area think about all of this.

Oh, no, they're pissed off. frustrated. You know, they're frustrated with the slow movement of the political process. You know, the problem is there's a solution. And the solution is a comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. They know the answer. And it's just, it was a 20-year plan that was instituted in 2000. And, you know, we're in 2026 and it's still not done. Funding's still not there yet for it. It's just dragging their feet. Once they build the EA reservoir and dramatically decrease

the amount of water coming to our coast, the sea life will come back, but that's going to take time as well. But until that reservoir is built, I mean, we're in a drought this year, so we probably won't see water, but at any time, if we get quite a bit of rain and a hurricane

comes through, they have to dump the water to our coast just in the name of safety. Yeah. And the people are just over it. They really are. And, you know, it's trickling, it's not just inshore, it's trickling offshore as well, because when you can't catch fish inshore, your next movement is to go offshore. And now all of a sudden, offshore is crowded as can be. Everybody's got a bayboat, you know, in a lot of calm days. Now it's packed offshore. So it's impacted those fisheries as well,

just on the volume of fishing pressure. But also on the, you know, when the discharge has come, there may be a plume of brown water that stretches out to 300 feet of water or more. Is it typical for it to, if you get a discharge? Is it typical for it to last that long? Are you always talking about months of time where it's just like that? Most of the discharges are long term. When they get to the point that they're going to have to release water from the lake, it's usually because the lake is, you know, they've waited too long and the lake is way too high.

And they've got to draw it down, you know, a foot and a half, something. like that. And at a billion gallons of water a day, it's not going down an inch a day. Now, it takes a long time for that to go. And there's still water flowing into it. This start has typically occurred during the rainy season, which for us is, you know, May through, oh, the end of October. And it may start May 1st sometimes. It's pretty crazy how early in the season you can get it. We get it a lot in the summertime. You know, The thing to really remember is it's, you know, it's just untreated water that's coming down. It has all the runoff from all the land.

So it has all the fertilizers. It has all the pesticides and herbicides and chemicals. It's a mess. It really is. At one time, I was snorkeling down in Hope Sound and I swam into that water. And I got an earache. That was the first week of lobster season. So that was in first week of August.

And I had an earache from that in December. took me to get rid of it from the bacteria that was in that water. Everybody knows the answers, and everybody knows what has to be done, but it seems like these large industries are just controlling the political will these days. Okay, like I said, there's a lot to unpack here. The locals are upset. Got it. It's causing all kinds of issues.

Got it. One thing we did just hear that I want to highlight, though, is that Captain Mike said part of the reason why people are getting so frustrated is because the solution to fix all of this is already known. It's just not being carried out. The comprehensive Everglades restoration plan was put into motion in the year 2000. This plan is extensive.

There's a lot in there. But for our intention purposes, it includes projects that involve building reservoirs that would store and clean excess water from Lake Okeechobe and would also reduce some of the incredibly harmful freshwater discharges that we've been hearing so much about. So the obvious question is, if they know this is the solution, why isn't anything being done? But before we switch to that topic, I want to hear what Cody has to say about the

effects that all this is having on wildlife. It's awful. And so the impacts are like same, same but different from the East Coast to the West Coast. So when you have these discharges, the West Coast deals with red tide. And that's something that I'm sure everyone from all 50 states and around the world has seen when red tide happens in the gulf that's what makes the news and so every you know i have a lot of people i'm on the east coast a lot of people call me oh my god i saw that that's so awful look at it you know you have giant groupers and manatee and all sorts of stuff and like miles and miles of death and they have to bring backhose to scoop up all the wild life to die it is absolutely awful that's its own situation where you get this massive nutrient

loading and it ends up in the Gulf waters. The Gulf is a very specific ecosystem and you build these hypoxic zones. And so you have a red tide equation on the West Coast. And when these discharges happen, it extremely fuels this. And eventually, well, you know, we're going to talk about some of the Senate bill stuff, I think, that just went down. But like, this is one of those things that is a major threat to public health, to wildlife health. And as science has changed with this stuff, there would be certain times where there would be certain science about red tide that was, they were trying to challenge, say, oh, red tide isn't fueled by these discharges. So when we start to talk about free speech and the ability to have these really difficult conversations,

I don't want to jump the gun. But that's one of those cases where you actually wouldn't be able to talk about it. So you have the red tide getting juiced on the west coast. On the east coast, this massive flood of freshwater does a couple things. Sun, sunlight, and seagrass growth are critical to our inshore estuaries, not just for fishing and having good environments to target red fish and snook. These are also the nursery habitats for a lot of our inshore fish and near shore fish, birds, mammals, turtles, you know, anything, anything. The entire ecosystem is built upon clean water. When you get this turbidity and all this fresh water into the system, two things. One, a lot of the grass and the bases of the pyramid, the ecosystem, in the,

estuary can't support all that fresh water. They can't handle that fresh water, so the fresh water will do its own damage. And you also have this turbidity that's going to change the water quality, so you're not going to get the same vegetation growth as well. When you lose the sea grass, that's the base of everything. You know, it's the classic food leb you got in first grade. The grass makes the little shrimp, which makes the crab, which makes the pinfish, which makes the sea trout. You start to go up to all the big names that are on the, you know, the tourism flyers, you know, tarp and stuff like that. when you lose the grass, everything is gone. So the ecosystems cannot handle these massive, and it's not just also what's coming in, but the sheer volume.

I've taken on some of the days a couple of years ago when they opened it back up in a significant way. I went down to the side of the locks where basically that gate's being open, that metaphorical and literal floodgate into my ecosystem that I live on. And it's horrifying, man. I mean, it's hundreds and hundreds of millions of gallons of just dark brown black water. It looks like something out of a movie. You can't, you can't. The last time they did it, I took a scoop of water in my live oil because I run a bayboat

and I went to a coffee shop that's on the water a couple miles down the river. And I bought like a cappuccino. And I put them side by side and then I texted people photos and they couldn't tell which one was the coffee. Oh, gracious. So the impact from the East Coast to the West Coast is just a little bit different ecologically. but same, same, but different. I feel like we've got a solid idea of all the problems that this is causing, as well as the public sentiment towards it.

So now let's turn our attention to what we learned earlier about how there's apparently a solution known for all this, but for some reasons not being carried out. I want to find out why that is. It's not like everybody doesn't know the answer that the water needs to go south. Yeah. The Everglades needs it. You know, they need it just for their natural salt, freshwater balance.

but also the entire Everglades ecosystem needs it, you know, to create the river of grass, which no longer exists, and to keep all that area healthy as well as for, you know, to maintain our drinking water for all of South Florida. And really all of this boils down to an issue of water. And if you think about it, you can go a month without eating, but three days without water, and you're dead as a stone. You think people will be a little more concerned about it. Yeah, I know that. So that leads me to the other question. It's like, I mean, you outlined it.

I mean, it's like the right answer is not hard to figure out. What's hard to figure out is how do you get there? Like from your perspective, is there a path forward? Well, you know, the nonprofits that are all fighting for Everglades Restoration are making headway. For the first time we've seen in a very long time. It wasn't going anywhere until about, you know, 2016, 2018. In the last six or seven years, these projects are getting done and they're getting funded. And it's all built on political pressure.

And it's actually built really the first time that you're seeing the power of social media. And making people aware, you can control the slant and the information it gets out when you control social media. And, you know, when the truth comes out, people are pissed. You know, they care about their wildlife. It's very important to them. And it's very important that we have these large wild spaces that are still natural that we can get away to. And it's very important that we have these national parks, like Everglades National Park, that we can escape and get away to. Not just buffers for our wildlife, but, you know, helping maintain the carbon balance and our oxygen balance on this planet.

According to both Captain Mike and Captain Cody, there actually does seem to be some momentum being made in terms of seeing some of the Everglades restoration. being carried out the way it's promised. And personally, it's always nice to hear of the democratic process functioning the way that it's supposed to by way of the public letting their voice be heard. Listening to Captain Mike there, seems like that's happening down in South Florida. In fact, Cody has an example of this happening very recently.

You know, as this clean water fight has gone on, and I've really been involved with it, let's say, the last six or seven years, you know, throughout each year, you're trying to, to progress Everglades restoration, right? And so you're watching all these different bills and you're just trying to protect progress. And one really crazy one came on the radar during this legislative session that transcended everything that I've ever been a part of. You know, I got my degree in marine science and I'm a fisheries guy working fisheries advocacy and clean water advocacy.

I'm proud to be an American, but I'm not like a day-to-day, you know, these are the amendments that I'm out here to protect them. I've never been a free speech advocate, like in a very public setting, obviously, I support it. But there was a really unique bill. It was a farm bill. And so it has a Senate and a House proponent that both have to go through. But there was a provision hidden in both of these versions of the bill. I'm not making a statement when I said this. The bill sponsor on the Senate side said he was specifically doing this for the sugar industry,

and he can be found quoted as doing so. there was a disparagement clause. And so the short of it, and I have, I can read us the text, you know, so we're going word for word or whatever, but the short of it was industry could sue anyone that was speaking in a disparaging way against them. And so a food libel law has existed in Florida. There's like a dozen states that have them. It's existed for like 30 years, something like that, 25, 30 years, to protect perishable crops, right? So me and you couldn't say, hey, farmer, Joe's strawberries. I think, you know, they're making me sick. No one go eat Farmer Joe's strawberries because they're perishable because something like that could be the reason, you know,

all of his crop doesn't sell and it goes back. So that's already existed and it's almost never used. I believe it's only been used once or twice in its like 30 year existence. What was changing was an amendment to that that had three kind of important aspects to it. The first was that it removed perishable goods. So it was also referencing non-perishable goods. was to focus on sugar very explicitly the second was that it was not just about the product it was about all the processes involved so that comes down to management decisions around water and agriculture also comes down to pesticides herbicides all the things that are used in the process of it and then the third thing was

in addition of one-way attorney fees so a conversation like me and you are having right now if they deemed that I was a threat to their business, they could sue me. And in doing so, at worst, I would be on the hook for my own attorney's fees. I'm not a rich man. You can see one of the three rooms in the apartment that I live in right now, right? But then if I were to lose the lawsuit against this massive industry that has a million times the resources that I do, I would be on the hook for their attorney fees as well. So this is essentially what you would call a gag bill, because the reality is that those lawsuits aren't going to play out that much because it's it's meant to impose fear. Like you're not going to say anything bad

about me because you know even if you're on the right side of this lawsuit, all it takes is me to sue you. You can't talk about anything related to the case for a couple years and you're going to be on the hook for a lot of money. And so that gets really scary because I'm a man, I am fully and wholeheartedly rely on free speech because I like to have difficult conversations about fisheries, clean water, everything. I think that's productive in what our country is based on whether you know if you disagree or let's let's and you've you've done a great job i've seen with your podcast where you'll say we're going to have both sides of this conversation on let's have let let people make their own decisions can you imagine if the starting point of one of those conversations

was illegal so that's the basis of it i'm happy to field any questions but like holy shit you go from like i want to defend how water's flowing in some water management you know process which watermen, you know, that's stuff that a certain small sector the community should care about, even though more should, but a small do. All of a sudden, like, free speech is literally under attack in Florida, and it has consequences way outside just Florida. Right. Yeah, no, no doubt.

Well, I mean, like, my first question is, like, what came of it? Like, I mean, did it not, it didn't pass or did it? It didn't. And so all of us drove, if you're driving up to Tallahassee to get a minute on the microphone to give a public comment, you're driving anywhere. from 10 to 24 hours round trip. I mean, one of my buddies, Captain Brandon Sear from the Keys, drove about 22 hours round trip. So you say, okay, we can't let this happen.

You get the bill language. You figure out what's going on and you mobilize. We're going to go speak on it. The first time that a group of advocates went up to speak on behalf of it, it was immediately pulled from the docket. So they're sitting there waiting to give their public comment. Pulled, nope, there's nothing to talk about here. That immediately raises some red flags, right? That was on the Senate side.

The next step is the House version, because it's two versions of the same bill, is being heard in essentially like an appropriations or budget committee. And so they say, oh, this is just about budget. We can't make any changes to it. And you've seen a lot of the videos of people giving public comment. That's where everyone flooded. Like, you have to be an honest and respectful American and play by the rules. But at the same time, you've got to shake the game up a little bit.

So, like, everyone funneled into this arena. they're hoping that they can just pass this really quickly and say it's about a budget and move on. And you get hours of testimony from all these people explaining how big of a threat this is. You have farmers in the room, right? You would think like, oh, this sounds like fishermen versus farmer. No, you have farmers in the room saying, we're sick of the government. Everyone leave us alone. We don't want nothing to do with this.

So you have a voice like that. I mean, calling your representatives to the point they're all unplugging their phones. You're just trying to get through to say, like, hey, representative, do not support this. And you're getting the dial tone every time you call. all because they're getting hundreds of thousands of calls. And that basically you get told from start one, the bill sponsor tells you, we can't remove this. We don't need to and we can't.

And how it ended, they removed it. Word for word, exactly what we asked. That one line, we want that out. You remove that. And then go on with the rest of this. So this is a great example of we the people standing up against basically massive industry trying to pull political strings. and if there's one thing people can take away from this, if they're not from Florida,

and they have no clue what's going on and how we got to this conversation, is that Florida just went through trial by fire, and if this had passed, this would be everywhere else. It would be in Maine, Montana, Texas, California, you name it. This would be the next, well, you guys can't talk about public land sales. You can't talk about, you know, how this agricultural operation in Montana might be destroying this iconic river and creek that, you know, it would be deployed everywhere else if it went through here. Yeah.

Well, like I said, that's the one silver lining I could pull out of that story is like the same kind of silver lining you could pull out of the, you know, proposed public land sale from last summer. It's like if the public gets involved and calls their representatives, it can work. I think it's a growing groundswell. I mean, this fight's been going on for decades, right? But I think each year you have this evolution of social and digital communications and all these things. There's two things coming to a head.

Our ability to connect and communicate has never been greater at scale. And also the damage to all these ecosystems has never been greater. So I think there's less place to ignore it. And also what's really cool is I think this has expanded far beyond just some fishermen realizing their favorite places are dying or some hunters realizing realizing their favorite places are dying. It's like hotel industries. Florida's entire economy is based on tourism. If people stop coming, the way the taxes and everything are set up, like it's a you come visit here. It's so incredible. It's hard to live here. You come visit and that's how our economy's based. If this place all dies, all of our natural resources die and everyone stops coming here, this entire

ship collapses in on itself. So you have hotels and restaurants and, you know, all these other industries that are realizing their voice matters, that their way of life matters, that their public health and their drinking water at stake, you have more people recognizing that's what's going on is far bigger than the outdoor industry, just like the public land fight, right? Like, that wasn't just a couple guys who like Elkhunt, right? Like, that was like, no, this is what our country's based on and our natural resources. Here's the reality. We, the people, they work for us. Yeah. That's how the system set up, and they always will. And it's really cool to see like, I'm just an average dude.

I mean, I obviously dive head deep into this. I'm just a 30-year-old fishing guide. And like the fact that my voice mattered in a way to protect free speech, even in 0.1% capacity, I'm not claiming anything from this victory. It's really cool. And it should inspire a lot of people to realize no matter where you live or what you believe in. Like, your voice matters way more than you think. I'm very optimistic that the change will come about. The plan's already enacted.

They're working on building the reservoir right now. They've already built the STA around it. Now they're working on the reservoir. If you stop the water from coming to our coasts, you will clean up the coast. Nature is resilient. It will come back. It will take some time, but it will come back.

And the freshwater going to the Everglades will help that area come back and there's seagrass to come back and become healthy again. The people are getting more and more frustrated every day and the political pressure is increasing every day. People are tired of it. And, you know, they're just tired of seeing the things they love destroyed. And you look like, dude, I never thought I'd be an activist.

I'm a fisherman, you know. But when you see something you really love destroyed in front of you, you have two options. You can move or you can fight. And I just love this place too much to move. So all of a sudden, you know, you're in this fight and it's one voice. Then it's two voice. then it's 100 voices, then it's 1,000 voices, then it's 10,000, then it's 100,000.

And at some point, the army and the voices are so loud that the politicians have no choice but to listen. You know, their job is to get reelected. They will not get reelected if they don't. And so I feel like now the outrage is there and the rest of the country is seeing it. You know, if you look at South Florida and the Florida Keys, you know, that's a bucket list place to go fish for a lot of people. And when they see that that place is disappearing, they get pissed. And, you know, this will not happen without federal funding. So it's not just the state of Florida that has to be behind it.

You have to have people in Montana. We care about Florida in the Everglades. We care about the Keys and it being there. We want to be able to go back and fish there. And I think the awareness is getting there. I think we're starting to get it, much like we've seen in the, you know, like in the pebble mine issue and in the boundary waters, mind issues, we're starting to see public awareness, really heat up that pressure. And that's what it takes. And you can fight City Hall. We're seeing it, for real. I think we all realize the importance

of wild areas and the ability to escape from, you know, the concrete jungles that we've created. For a lot of us, it's very calming. More so than, you know, when I go fishing, I really don't even care if I catch a fish. I'm just kind of, I just, I'm happy to be on the water and just, you know, it's peaceful and it's nice and there's no pressure. And I'm seeing beauty. When I go somewhere, travel, the natural beauty of it is what amazes me. And everywhere in this country is so different. And they're all very unique and they're all very beautiful and very important to our lives. And when they're gone, they won't come back. You know, when you put it, when you put a a building there, you put a parking lot there, it's never going to be a bunch of trees again.

It's never going to be a little pond, you know, that you could walk over to and catch croppy or perch or whatever it is, bass, whatever it is you like in your area, that as a kid set you free and put you on this trek into the outdoors and enhanced your life. It's funny. I mean, we all work extremely hard so that we can go do these things and be in these places that set us free. We just have to protect him. It's super important.

I mean, you know, going all the way back to Teddard Israveld, he's the one who had the vision who said, you know, these places are super important to us, and we really need them. And even such small things is a park in a city. If you think of where you live, if you didn't have those parks, what that would be like. And how much time we spend it and how much happiness they bring to our lives. Wild places like the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, the St. Lucy and Colusahatchee Rivers, they are important to us all. And I know they're important to you if you're listening to this podcast, to kind of what we talk about here. To wrap this up, I think it's clear that these particular natural resources of South Florida still have a long road ahead of them.

However, thanks to the perseverance and care from like-minded folks, it seems the momentum is moving in the conservation direction. This story is far from over, so we're going to have to keep up with this one and see how it unfolds. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University, as well as bear Greece and this country life. It means so much to all of us over here. If you like this episode, share it with a friend this week. And stick around.

There's a whole lot more on the way. First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings full days in real use, hard wearing where they need be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.