Alligators are the exact opposite of aggressive. If you walk up and pat one on the head it'll probably just hiss and start slinking away at the speed of syrup. You should be more afraid of the spiders and blood-sucking insects.

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pharrington 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm way more afraid of the humans that want to drain and eradicate the native population of the Everglades!

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ux266478 5 days ago | parent [-]

Even putting aside that it destroys incredible natural beauty for land that's not even productively useful, it astounds me that people still buy into major terraforming projects. Every single time it's had absolutely horrendous consequences often with millions of human deaths attached. Don't make large changes to chaotic systems!

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potato3732842 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

>Even putting aside that it destroys incredible natural beauty for land that's not even productively useful, it astounds me that people still buy into major terraforming projects. Every single time it's had absolutely horrendous consequences often with millions of human deaths attached. Don't make large changes to chaotic systems!

Ah, yes, terrible consequences, such as, the irrigation and suitability for farmland of central California, the lack of frequent flooding of the Mississippi river and tributaries and the present dryness of the Netherlands.

I don't think draining the everglades is tractable and I think it's more valuable as is since you're not gonna out farm the midwest. But it's really easy to be on a high horse and not appreciate the successful projects that we benefit from the results of.

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jonstewart 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It does not take much familiarity with the history of Mississippi flood control and the Army Corps of Engineers to realize how risky, fraught, and short-sighted the whole project has been. The delta's dying and the Old River Control Structure is one bad day away from diverting the entire river to the Atchafalaya.

_The Great River_ by Boyce Upholt from last year is a good place to start learning about the Mississippi.

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jason_s 4 days ago | parent [-]

Or John McPhee's "Atchafalaya".

	▲	jonstewart 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm currently reading Annals of the Former World. :-)

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4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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ux266478 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> the irrigation and suitability for farmland of central California

The unsustainable irrigation that's draining aquifers during droughts and causing permanent damage[1] to groundwater retention? The irrigation that's causing changes in land topography[2]?

> the lack of frequent flooding of the Mississippi river

You mean the system which is a well known ecological disaster?[3][4][5]

And no frequent flooding? Since 2017, the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area (which covers only a small portion of the watershed) has seen the USDA pay out $11.4 billion[6] to cover damages from flooding. I live in the watershed and for most of the summer I get flood alerts every time it rains. Damages are on the news constantly. In 2008, a tributary river flooded so badly it destroyed two mid-sized cities in Iowa[7]. Then you have the the 2011 flooding[8] of the Mississippi which was the most disastrous since before most modifications had been made to the river. Lack of frequent flooding? Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it's not happening.

Like what are we talking about here? Even reaching for what you assume to be innocuous examples, empirically observable negative consequences hang off of them like fruiting bodies. Who knows what the consequences will look like in 100-200 years when they've had time to iteratively feed back into themselves.

[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30197456/

[2] - https://www.usgs.gov/centers/land-subsidence-in-california

[3] - https://repository.lsu.edu/geo_pubs/2126/

[4] - https://repository.lsu.edu/geo_pubs/1614/

[5] - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230306143336.h...

[6] - https://www.ewg.org/research/usda-policies-fall-short-helpin...

[7] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_flood_of_2008

[8] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Mississippi_River_floods

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potato3732842 4 days ago | parent [-]

This is exactly the sort of ignorant of the past viewpoint I was complaining about.

The part of CA we're talking about was a desert shithole before (arguably still is). There's debate about just how much we can sustainably irrigate it, but at least we can irrigate it. The alternative is basically no agricultural activity. Maybe some grazing.

Ditto for the Mississippi. It floods "a little" now vs "somewhere on it is getting wiped out just about every year" before. If it's only happening once a decade now that's a huge improvement. You can mislead all you want by saying things like "worst since X" and whatnot but the fact of the matter is that the system clearly works ok if most of the Xs are from before the system was there.

The material wealth generated by the economic activity enabled by these two projects is almost impossible to quantify.

I think it speaks volumes that you didn't even attempt to address my 3rd example.

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jason_s 4 days ago | parent [-]

You talking about the Imperial Valley or the Central Valley? The former is naturally desert, the latter was naturally abundant in wetlands and flood-prone grasslands, before agriculture took over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Trough

It sounds like you're talking about the Imperial Valley, which is a different ball of wax from the whole wetland-draining argument here.

I object to "desert shithole" --- the Sonoran Desert is an ecosystem worthy of value in its own right, we just don't benefit from it as humans unless we turn to resource extraction or agriculture.

	▲	potato3732842 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		You're right I misspoke. I'm talking about the Imperial valley.

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seszett 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Every single time it's had absolutely horrendous consequences often with millions of human deaths attached

Although I think it's best for nature to leave things how they are, draining the Landes in France (a swampy area comparable to that of the Everglades) and replacing it with a pine forest only had positive impacts on the humans living there (if only because it was a major step towards eradicating malaria in France).

To be honest though, it was originally a forest, and had turned into a swamp after being deforested by humans in the early middle ages.

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thepryz 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I generally agree though I have to say I’ve been impressed by China’s efforts to reduce desertification. It’s not perfect, but they seem to have an evolving strategy and the right priorities.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scotttravers/2025/03/25/why-chi...

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blitzar 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you walk up to me and pat me on the head I will probably hiss and start slinking away at the speed of syrup too

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downut 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I do not think that a 12' gator is going to appreciate you patting it on the head. And for short distances, they can outrun a human. That said I am a 3rd generation S. Floridian who grew up 50 years ago swimming and water skiing in the canals along what was then two-lane Highway 84, out west of Plantation, nothing much else there. Never had a problem, but the big ones got shot, officially or not.

Fun story: I was slaloming bank to bank down that canal and wiped out. The canal is narrow enough the boat has to slow down and idle around the u-turn to then plane up to get back, so it takes a bit. There was a high arched water pipe over the canal and a kid parked on the apex. Kid sez, there's a gator next to you. I said, sure, right kid. Kid sez, there's a gator next to you... and I look and yep, maybe a 6', 7' gator about 10' away. Well... not much to do... I started waving the ski and a couple of minutes later they throw me the rope and I orientated and up and away I went. ha haha. Good times. I think I was 15.

Another one: Buddy of mine is on two skis and is kinda mellowing out just running down that same canal and I'm driving and see a gator ahead in the middle of the canal, and why not, I steer around the gator and then steer him right over it and it explodes in a huge splash ha aha haar I am just laughing at the memory and he looks back and then back at me with a big shit eating grin. I was probably 16.

Same canal: I got this hot gf I'm trying to teach to ski and she's fiddling with the skis, as you do starting out, and a nice 5' tarpon rolls about 6' away from her. Panic! We're like no no no they do not bite, it's just a tarpon, they're friendlies! Oh well, no water skiing for her. I was... 17.

But I'm not here to tell you these stories. I'm here to talk about the river of grass, the Everglades. Many millions have lived around the periphery but you can look at maps and see it's a long way across with "nothing" there. How would you see the vast scope of the interior, in an efficient way, right down at water level?

Family 2 doors over in Melaleuca Isles (still exists, I see) the father was the district superintendent (I think) for the Florida Fish & Game Commission, or whatever it's called these days. In those days the US was a normal country and everybody hung out, the kids, the parents. So I'm over there in the morning and he says want to go on patrol. I say sure. So we drive the airboat out to the launch point on 84 (Alligator Alley) and off we go. This thing had a Lycoming flat six and there's not much to the boat but the Al flat hull, the two tier seats, and the enormous engine and propeller. And for 5 hours, at speeds peaking at 100mph[1], we criss cross the entire sector of the Everglades north of Hghwy 84. I stopped counting deer in the sawgrass in the water at 100. The vistas were of an endless prairie of sawgrass. He drove across the hammocks where there was grass by just powering the boat onto the land and then over.

I came away from that experience with a full appreciation of the scope of the Everglades, the idea of it, and am sad that the idea of wilderness has softened like melting fat into an ideal of a cozy unthreatening warm bath. There is nothing that can be accurately described as wilderness unless organisms endemic there are present and may be out to eat you. Starting with mosquitos and ending with alligators.

[1] In those medieval times we did not know nor understand the term "eye protection" and so I had none, though my neighbor did. He didn't care. At 100mph your face is quite distorted. Some debris is getting through the screen on the front of the boat. What a MF adventure.

	▲	ninininino 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for sharing your stories, I enjoyed them.