On March 22, 2005, the Department of Environmental Protection recognized Marjory Stoneman Douglas as Mother of the Everglades.

Half a century ago she wrote a history book about South Florida, The Everglades, River of Grass, which helped define and shape the world she lived in. She began her book with the unforgettable words. "There are no other Everglades in the world."

A "newcomer" to Florida, like so many of us, she arrived in 1915 at the age of 25, to work for her father, who happened to be the publisher of the Miami Herald newspaper. Miami was just a small, raw village at the time. She was put to work writing about the occasional tea parties, church socials, and tourists who came to the hotels; and went on to affect the policies of a nation concerning environmental conservation of the region.

When she arrived in South Florida, the decision to drain the Everglades had been made by misguided developers and state politicians. The work was already in progress. These businessmen and political appointees thought they had the solution of "What to do about the Everglades?" After all, the region was: "nothing more than a series of vast, miasmic swamps, poisonous lagoons, huge dismal marshes without outlet, a rotting, shallow inland sea, or labyrinths of dark trees hung and looped about with snakes and dripping mosses, malignant with tropical fevers and malarias, evil to the white man."

Therefore, in 1906 the State of Florida began its program to drain the Everglades thus making it suitable for sugar cane fields and vegetables. The prevailing wisdom of the time was to drain the fresh water from the swamp and make the land productive and usable. Their ill-advised intentions reaped the later disasters of pollution, fire and saltwater intrusion.

Marjory Douglas arrived on the scene, a woman with an independent and questioning mind, and a life long habit of research. As she asked questions and recorded answers, she came to understand the complexity and fragility of the big region. She began to teach others through her writings and speeches. Yes, part of it is a swamp, the Big Cypress Swamp, but the Everglades isn't all swamp, just as it isn't all the Ten Thousand Islands. "The major part of the Everglades region is," Mrs. Douglas proclaimed, "a naturally flowing, freshwater river." It is only inches deep. There is nothing like it in the world and it begins with the saw grass at Lake Okeechobee.

Throughout the years, Douglas discovered the Everglades and became its spokeswoman. She examined and wrote about it in depth much as a young mother would examine the fingers, toes, weight and color of her new baby and record the details. Her book is a masterpiece of facts and figures written in layman's terms. Like any good teacher, she began at the beginning in order to educate us on the uniqueness of Florida's, and the nation's, treasure.

The book was published in 1947. It was no coincidence that the southwestern part of the region became The Everglades National Park in 1947. At the age of 78, Douglas was at the forefront of the efforts to preserve the Everglades, create a national park and pass legislation to preserve Florida's natural resources and protect threatened and endangered wildlife. She lived to be 108 and died in 1998.

The problem today is how to undo the damage done during the misguided years. Untold billions of dollars have been spent since the turn of the century and remains to be spent to recover the Everglades. Gov. Jeb Bush established the 50-50 state-federal partnership that is returning a more natural flow of water to the River of Grass. Since 2000, Florida has invested $1 billion and committed more than $2.5 billion through the end of the decade to clean up and restore the 2.4 million acre marsh. In Southwest Florida, the state is restoring a natural flow of water to more than 55,000 acres of wetlands known as Picayune Strand. On the east coast, Florida is moving water through the world's largest constructed wetland, a 16,500-acre treatment marsh using plants to clean pollution from water flowing into the Everglades.

However, according to Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the ultimate responsibility lies not with state and national governments alone, but with an "informed public opinion and citizen action." She concluded her book with these words that I see as a challenge to us:

"The future of South Florida, as for all once-beautiful and despoiled areas of our country, lies in aroused and informed public opinion and citizen action. If more and more of us continue forcefully and untiringly to demand a balanced development of land, of salt and fresh water, of people and wilderness, farms, cities, appropriate industries, wildlife and recreation such as the region can intelligently be expected to support, we can still bring back much usefulness and beauty to a changed and recreated earth."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas passed the torch to you and me. I hope we are up to the challenge.