Biologically achievable management goals

Once you've figured out what the system is that you're trying to protect and you've identified the threats to the system, you have to figure out what endpoints are biologically achievable. Even if everyone were moved out of Miami, West Palm Beach, and the Keys and if all agriculture south of Lake Okeechobee were shut down, it probably wouldn't be possible to completely restore south Florida to the condition it was in the mid-nineteenth century.² To identify what things are possible it is necessary to:

• select appropriate measures for the ``health'' of various ecosystem components,³

Harwell doesn't state explicitly what measures he adopted for ecosystem health, but we can figure at least some of them out from what he said about what features of the system are inadequate given current management and agreed, if not yet implemented, management scenarios.

1. Lack of dynamic storage space to capture water releases from Lake Okeechobee.

2. Abnormal water depths and altered sheetflow patterns.

3. Seepage losses to the east.

4. Loss of a substantial portion of the original core area of the Everglades.

An implicit part of defining biological achievable management goals is that the goals are sustainable for the indefinite future.⁴