South Florida Love by Nikolai

South Florida Love by Nikolai - February 2024 Scholarship Essay

I have always enjoyed being outside and immersing myself in nature. But from the moment when my bare feet touched the squishy muck bottom of the swamp eleven years ago, I knew true love. That emotional reaction changed my perception of what I wanted out of life, with environmental conservation efforts dictating all my future endeavors.
South Florida is home to a unique ecosystem found nowhere else on Earth: The Everglades. As development in Florida continues to increasingly expand, many try to “tame the glades,” rather than live amongst it and embrace it. However, I stand firmly in the minority of this opinion, rather than the majority, believing that this fragile and beautiful ecosystem should be preserved at all costs.
Over the past years, I have seen drastic changes to this landscape, some good and some bad. I know the importance of the land and how easily it can be altered with the slightest human influence.
When I was five years old, I went to camp at the Loxahatchee River Center, an educational center that teaches individuals about Florida’s local ecosystems. At the River Center, we traveled to Blowing Rocks Preserve, where I got to see and experience what a healthy ecosystem looked like. There I saw many different organisms like manatees, turtles, sea urchins, conchs, and various fish. A few years later, I revisited that same space, only to find a decimated landscape. What was once a lush sea grass bed, teaming with life, was now a desolate area. Due to development and fertilizer runoff in the area, the sea grass had disappeared, along with the rest of the ecosystem. Recently, through the Loxahatchee River Center, I have had the opportunity to revisit this same sight to record the organisms that have returned to blowing rocks due to conservation efforts. Now, the seagrass has started to come back, as well as the wildlife.
Now that I am older, I have been able to return to the Loxahatchee River Center as a volunteer. With this, I have been able to participate and lead in conservation efforts as a volunteer, encouraging people to become stewards of our great state through environmental education and conservation. Learning and expanding my knowledge about how humans affect the environment has greatly impacted what I want to do for a living when I am older.
This passion was solidified in February of 2023 when I attended an event given by leaders in the field of environmental ecology, Denise Herzing and Carl Safina. Both Safina and Herzing are world renowned speakers in the field of environmental ecology. Hearing Safina speak about how he became involved in the effort to conserve and protect the environment inspired me to want to do the same. I always knew that I wanted to pursue a career that had me helping the environment. But, Safina’s tales of being in the wild and finding ways to ensure that wilderness is protected made me realize my desire to do the same with a career in environmental science.
I can't imagine having a career in the future that makes me go into an office every day, just to sit in front of a computer. I feel it is imperative for me to have a job that allows me opportunities to be out in nature to help find solutions that will protect the environment within my home state and beyond. Carl Safina once said “The revelation is this: Don’t wait for some revelation. We make our own luck.” I consider myself lucky to have found my passion at a young age. I know that I am going to pursue a career in environmental science, so I can help be a part of the effort to protect our world.