President Truman and the River of Grass.
In Persia there is a proverb about a bug in a rug. This bug spent his whole life scurrying around the rug, living off crumbs people dropped in it. If the bug had been able to rise above the rug he would have seen that his life did have a pattern. He was living in the most beautiful rug that had ever been woven. Sometimes, like the bug in the rug, we don't stand back and see the overall picture. According to Tebeau in Man in the Everglades, "Everglades National Park is at once a limited and vast sampling of a region full of contrast. This park, which is chiefly of biological interest, requires a different perspective on the part of the visitor" (NPS: Quotes).
The early movement to protect a segment of the Everglades coincided with the settlement and growth of South Florida, as people began to recognize the uniqueness of the wilderness (NPS: Park Establishment). People were lured by developers who transformed wetlands into dry lands. Some of these people had other ideas for development of the land, such as small farms and real estate development. There was an early emergence of conservationist versus developer, a part of Florida history that repeated itself during the rebuilding of south Florida after Hurricane Andrew. Advocates for the post-hurricane expansion of the Miami airport felt it could bring the city thousands of jobs, and billions of dollars, without hurting the Everglades. Yet they opposed a proposed environmental impact study, fearing it could kill the development project (Vito). .
Support for conservation was slow to gain public support at first. In Daniel Beard's Wildlife Reconnaissance: Everglades National Park Project of 1938, the first superintendent of Everglades National Park remarks, "To put it crudely, there is nothing (and we include the bird rookeries) in the Everglades that will make Mr. Jonnie Q. Public suck in his breath.