Air Date: Week of April 19, 1996

Facts about Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the "Grandmother of The Everglades."

Transcript

CURWOOD: Today we pay tribute to the author and environmental activist behind he campaign to save the Florida Everglades. Marjory Stoneman Douglas is called the "Grandmother of the Everglades." Perhaps we should start calling her the great-grandmother of the 'glades. Earlier this month she turned 106. Ms. Douglas lives in Miami, in the same cottage she's called home since 1925. She moved south from New England in 1915, when the Florida resort had fewer than 5,000 residents. She worked for the now defunct Miami News before turning her hand to books. At age 57, Ms. Douglas penned her most famous work, The Everglades: River of Grass. The year was 1947, and the book began to raise the nation's consciousness of the unique habitat of the Everglades, with its rare wading birds and other animals struggling to survive amid rapid urbanization. At the end of the book she wrote, "Perhaps even in this last hour, the magnificent, subtle, and unique region of the Everglades may not be utterly lost." And for this week, that's the Living on Earth Almanac.