One way to look at Everglades restoration is as a dress rehearsal for the kind of tough work it will take to help society adapt to climate change: sustaining a political coalition, and pulling off massive engineering challenges, even as the natural conditions around us continue to change. Florida is spending more than ever on restoration, but that doesn't mean we're keeping up. And the state's bruising politics offer a cautionary tale—no amount of ribbon cutting guarantees success.<br/><br/>Learn more about sponsor message choices: <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a><br/><br/><a href="https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy">NPR Privacy Policy</a>

Introducing the American Storytelling collection

When the U.S. government and state of Florida unveiled a new plan to save the Everglades in 2000, the sprawling blueprint to restore the wetlands became the largest hydrological restoration effort in the nation's history. Two decades later, only one project is complete, and the Everglades is still dying. Bright Lit Place heads into the swamp to meet its first inhabitants, the scientists who study it and the warring sides struggling to find a way out of the muck.