Natural wonder

A century of federal drainage projects has destroyed more than half of the Everglades and endangered more than 60 of its native species of plants and animals. So Floridians turned again to their old federal partners and found them willing to help with a different mission. Working side-by-side and splitting costs along the way, federal and state officials crafted plans for the world's largest ecological rescue mission, which will also serve as an urban and agricultural water project. Politicians, ecologists and engineers all around the world are keeping an eye on what happens in South Florida. It is, first, the world's most ambitious ecosystem restoration, an attempt to deal in a holistic way with environmental problems of an entire landscape of 18,000 square miles. Second, the project is a test of how federal, state, tribal and local governments can work together and with multiple competing interests in the private sector.