The radio crackled the news as I slowed and turned right off state Highway 41 west of Homestead. “Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today announced plans to establish a new Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge.”

“Halleluiah”! I shouted as I drove across the levee and up the gravel rise to park with a view of a vast ocean of marshy grassland bordering the busy trans-Everglades two-lane highway known as the Tamiami Trail (or, more colloquially, “Alligator Alley.”)