Calusa Waterkeeper met at the Broadway Palm Dinner Theater Thursday to raise funds, discuss the state of the Caloosahatchee River, and learn more about the group’s mission during a lunch that doubled as an earth-science lesson in Southwest Florida’s environmental challenges.
The waterkeeper sounds singular, but it refers to a passionate group of people dedicated to an environmental cause – in this case, the Caloosahatchee River and the 1,000 square miles around it.
That’s no small task, and why Calusa Waterkeeper is among the top nonprofits in Southwest Florida focused on water quality advocacy.
The Caloosahatchee River is an expansive watershed home to diverse wildlife and is crucial to the region's economy.
The river’s natural course was never connected to Lake Okeechobee, but it was dredged, exploded, and willed into being part of a trans-Florida waterway nearly a century ago by wannabe land barons and the federal government.
The Calusa Waterkeeper faces mounting challenges to the river’s ecosystem, including population growth, development, and climate change. In response, the group aims to stay grounded in scientific principles as it works to address water quality issues that impact both environmental and human health.
At the annual luncheon and fundraiser, the group invited a half dozen of the region’s most knowledgeable water quality experts, including Michael Parsons, a marine science professor at The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University. Parsons is also director of FGCU's Vester Field Station, and an expert in harmful algal blooms, ecosystem health, and coastal ecology.
In 2019, he was appointed to Florida’s Blue-Green Algae Task Force by Gov. Ron DeSantis to work on reducing the impacts of harmful algae in the region.
Parsons spoke of overcoming the politics and other issues right after the blue-green algae task force was created.
“You have competing interests. So there's a lot of, you know, human behavior and human nature that gets involved in that, too,” Parsons said. “So it's beyond the science making this work, which makes it a very, I'll say it, as a scientist, an interesting challenge - but it's a hard task.”
Calusa Waterkeeper’s volunteers, known as rangers, collect monthly samples across the watershed to create data on water quality trends.
The nonprofit has also pioneered research into airborne algal toxins.
Calusa Waterkeeper is part of the Florida Waterkeepers, a regional entity composed of 15 “waterkeeper” organizations working across Florida to protect and restore water resources.
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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