an advocacy group

The short version: The Wacissa River doesn't seem to have a friends group. I gave a new one some thought.

The longer version:

When I first started this blog, I intended to focus on a small portion of the big bend area of Florida. I did. I really, really did. Then, like all good plans when it gets punched in the mouth, it fell apart. I didn't know it at the time, but I was gradually drifting away from that to the larger area that it was a part of. This week when I start thinking about NGOs and what one would look like, I threw all that stuff from week one out the window. That part of the world already has so much protection going for it.

Recently however (you had to know this was coming) I've been giving a lot of thought to a special place (the Wacissa River) that doesn't have nearly as much obvious protection. It might be better put to say that it doesn't have nearly as much obvious advocacy. Local folks will certainly advocate for it, as will conservationists in general, but there doesn't seem to be a central theme. In my past, I've found that places like this generally have a friends group of some sort. They usually have a clever name (swamp rates, river rats, river keepers) and speak for the river when the river can't. I've been a part of some of these groups. Heck, I've even provided scientific guidance to some of them. So when I learned that there doesn't seem to be an active Wacissa River advocacy group, I dug a little deeper.

It turns out there was one in the past. I generally consider myself to have pretty good Google-fu skills. If it's to be found I feel like I might at least stumble across it on page 427 of 10,000 pages of results. I'll sometimes even be able to track things down using an image search. For images, I prefer Bing, but that's another post for a different blog. Long story slightly less long, a group seems to have popped up when Nestle was trying to siphon spring water for the bottle water division. Once that threat disappeared, it seems the group faded away somewhat. Their online presence is nil and the only real reference to them is in relation to the Nestle group. I was able to track down their former leader and have reached out but not yet heard back. Maybe they only pop up when they're needed? The hero we need but not the one we deserve?

In any event, assuming that the group is at least temporarily disbanded (when does it transition to permanently?), I gave some though to how it might play out were it to revive. As all of the things I post are dynamic documents, I encourage you to reach out if you have any questions about what I've written. In this case, I especially encourage it if you were able to find out more than I about the friends group that was!