But in the middle of this wilderness, hidden within the forest, nineteen wells pump a briny, rubbery form of crude that looks more like roofing tar than what one thinks of as oil.

These wells have been operating in Big Cypress National Preserve without any serious accidents, spills or other extreme environmental disruptions since the early 1970s. One of these drill sites, Raccoon Point, was developed by Exxon during the 1970s. It has been so well run and maintained to such high environmental standards, it was used in a national video campaign put out by the oil company in the 1980s.

But since November 2001, an environmental assessment published by the National Park Service in response to a proposal by the owner of the subsurface minerals to develop more oil wells has provoked an outcry about drilling from the environmental community.

The major complaint is further human and industrial incursions into this delicate ecosystem. Collier Resources Company, the south Florida mineral speculator and real estate developer that owns most of the minerals beneath the preserve would like to construct a landing strip and conduct seismic testing in the interest of building several new oil wells. This would mean more roads, new staging pads for oil-related activity, noise and air pollution, and habitat degradation.

Then there is the swamp buggy issue. Big Cypress has been for years a popular spot for swamp buggies. The souped-up all-terrain vehicles used by many who travel off-road in Big Cypress have created huge ruts and perturbations in the marshlands. They create pollution and destroy habitat. Locals drive them into the swamp to go hunting, fishing and just plain gadding about. But skyrocketing swamp buggy popularity has turned deer paths into swamp buggy superhighways and created 23,000 miles of rutted, eroded, vegetation-denuded unofficial roads.

Besides being intrinsically valuable because of its other-worldly beauty and the habitat it provides to countless species, Big Cypress National Preserve is the watershed for the Everglades estuary system. The preserve owes its creation to a 1974 act of Congress that saved the Everglades from ruination: the government purchased the land from the Collier family to thwart the building of a major airport in the Everglades watershed. “The airport, had it been built, would have had a catastrophic effect on wetlands in southwest Florida,” said John Donahue, superintendent of the preserve. “It would have created thousands of acres of concrete and no place for rainwater to run off to.”

Between fifty-five and sixty inches of rain falls each year on Big Cypress and seeps through the porous limestone crust and swamp mud into the aquifer. In the Everglades estuary a few miles south, hundreds of species-from plant to mollusk to mammal-thrive in a very narrow salinity range. The infusion of fresh water from the aquifer regulates the brackishness of the tidal water. Even subtle changes create water uninhabitable by many species.

The preserve serves as a 729,000-acre development buffer on the northern boundary of Everglades National Park. Its vegetation consists primarily of slash pine, mixed hardwood hummocks, wet prairie, dry prairie, marshes and mangrove forests. The preserve is also habitat to a number of rare and endangered animal and plant species. Dale Crider, a retired biologist from Florida’s fish and wildlife agency, put the number at more than thirty-including the Florida panther and the elusive ghost orchid, which blooms only a few times a year in the depths of the mangrove forests. Although Big Cypress is operated under the aegis of the National Park Service, whose charter emphasizes protection and preservation of natural resources, national preserves are not national parks: preserves have charters that include sustained use of natural resources as well as their preservation.

Federal lands and mineral rights

Oil drilling has been taking place in the area that now includes Big Cypress for more than sixty years. During World War II, when oil was in short supply and badly needed to power the war effort, the federal government created incentives to locate and drill for oil in Florida. It awarded $50,000 to the first successful driller. In 1943, the Collier family found oil in Sunniland Field, near the northwest corner of what is now the preserve. The Colliers have been in business in south Florida since the 1920s and have bought and sold or developed more than 1.5 million acres.

Although the Colliers and their business concerns have sold much of the surface property they once owned, they have made a point of retaining ownership of the mineral estate-the minerals, oil and gas that lie beneath the ground. The family owns more than 800,000 acres of mineral rights beneath the surface of southwest Florida. In Big Cypress National Preserve, the Colliers own about 400,000 acres of mineral interests, or about 51 percent of the mineral estate. The remaining rights are owned by small inholders, owners of one or two acres of subsurface minerals.

Unlike leases on federal lands, mineral rights originating in private hands are owned in perpetuity. They may be sold or they can be leased to the government or to private concerns. According to Bob Duncan, president of Collier Resources, ownership of the subsurface is equal to-even supersedes, he maintained, under Florida law-ownership of surface land.

“Oil and gas dominate in Florida law,” said Duncan, “but development of subsurface resources has to be carried out in a reasonable manner.” Just what constitutes a reasonable manner is still up to several federal and state agencies. Collier’s plan is just the beginning of a paper storm of submittals-for drill sites, roads, staging areas, pipelines. Each must be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Florida Geological Survey before Big Cypress management decides what the company may build.

Duncan was quick to emphasize that wildland restoration is part of what is considered reasonable practice. “Re-storability is a big part of the conditions under which the permitting will happen,” he said. “And the restorability of Big Cypress is something to behold. What we want to do should not be measured by human lifetimes. [Developing oil] is temporary; we will be in and out in twenty years; five years after that, no one will know we’ve even been there.”

Environmental thumbprints

Don Hargrove, the preserve’s environmental protection specialist, drove me eleven miles over a private road built of crushed limestone that leads from State Route 41 to the Raccoon Point drill site, which has been producing oil since 1978. We passed cypress trees decked by bromeliads, cabbage palms, royal palms, myrtle, willow and more cypress. The cypress trees in the preserve are primarily dwarf pond; the great bald cypresses were logged almost to extinction during the 1930s and 1940s and I saw only a few on the horizon.

The Raccoon Point site, said Hargrove, is owned by Calumet of Florida, which leases drilling rights from Collier. Raccoon Point produces 1,800 barrels a day from its five operating wells. (Total production from the oil wells operating within the preserve is 65,000 barrels a month.)

At the site, holding tanks, storage areas and pumps are arranged around a central staging area. The wells at Raccoon Point are powered mostly by natural gas, a petroleum byproduct. Excess gas is fired off in a stack a short distance away. Because there is little natural gas here, said Hargrove, it is not economical to market.

In addition to the wells, an abundance of other machinery was in view, including saltwater disposal wells that pump brine back into the ground after crude oil has been separated. “Extracting oil from this kind of geology can’t be compared to oil extraction in other parts of the world,” said Hargrove. “The oil occurs in a layer of porous limestone about 11,000 feet below the surface. You have to force it out of the limestone and force it out of the ground. It doesn’t flow by itself.”

Once the oil is extracted, a 4,000-foot pipeline transports the oil to the Miccosukee Indian Reservation north of Interstate 75, and from there it is trucked to Port Everglades. It is then barged to Gulf Coast refineries.

Spillage is minimal; and leaks of any kind-water, brine, oil-are contained by wide shallow pools lined with a rubbery nonporous material placed beneath every tank and piece of equipment. Two Calumet employees live at the site in a mobile home field office and monitor equipment around the clock. But the oil is as viscous as tar-maybe even more slow moving-and there is little danger of catastrophic spills.

Although oil drilling presents little danger to Big Cypress habitat, neither Hargrove nor Donahue has interest in seeing further commercial development here. Collier’s proposed plan includes construction of eight miles of access road, drilling 14,700 twenty-five-foot-deep holes and filling them with seismic explosives as part of the testing process for the presence of new oil sources and building a 4.5-acre seismic staging pad and a landing strip. The operation would put 26,993 acres out of commission, create air pollution and noise pollution and disturb or endanger countless plant and animal communities.

“Seasonal wetness and climatic conditions make for incredibly difficult issues here,” said Hargrove. “Big Cypress is a contained water system. There is almost no water flow from the north entering the preserve, or very little. All of the water in the preserve comes from sixty inches of annual rainfall. As a result, whenever you build a roadbed, it either has to be at ground level, so water can run off it [and leach back down to the aquifer], or if it’s a raised roadbed, there have to be culverts and tunnels for water and wildlife to pass through.”

Because the sheetflow, the natural movement of water through the preserve, is from north to south, east-west disruptions like roads or trenches that impede water flow, said Hargrove, “are a big deal.” Although not in favor of new development, Donahue sees Big Cypress as being far more damaged by the presence of vehicles than it would be by drilling of, for example, a new horizontal well from an existing pad. “We are not saying they should start something in a virgin area,” said Donahue. “We have to balance the multiple-use mandate with preservation ... Compare oil extraction here to what has happened with swamp buggies.” Donahue has already announced plans to restrict swamp buggy access inside the preserve and consolidate the existing 23,000 miles of unofficial roads that zigzag through the swamp into 400 miles of legal roadway. Locals who have been hunting and fishing in the swamp for years are not happy with his decision.

The end of drilling?

Although Collier Resources, the National Park Service and environmental groups continue to forge ahead with proposals, environmental assessments, independent compaction tests and protests, controversy over new oil drilling may soon be a moot point. On January 16, Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced her office had entered into negotiations to acquire the mineral estate in Big Cypress with the intention of halting oil extraction inside the preserve. It may be more profitable for the Collier family to sell its oil rights to the government.