how mangroves shaped southwest florida water level
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How Mangroves Shaped the Gulf Coast

The tangled forests protect waterfront homes, sustain fisheries and provide a natural backdrop to everyday life along the Gulf.

Nature + Recreation

More than anywhere else in the country, the mangrove defines how this region lives, looks and feels.

From the Ten Thousand Islands to Charlotte Harbor, the gnarled, tangled tree frames the shoreline: Beach visits begin with walks through shaded forests, condominiums overlook estuaries, and kayakers slip into verdant tunnels minutes from downtowns. Today, we know mangroves underpin the Gulf’s fishing, birding and shoreline protection, entwining life with nature. But this defining feature wasn’t always guaranteed. “Until the 1970s, they were seen as something to be removed,” Gladesman and Everglades conservationist Franklin Adams says.

Throughout Florida’s early 20th century, waterfront development largely replaced mangrove forests with seawalls, canals and high-rises. Southwest Florida saw its share of dredging and filling. Still, the region’s biggest development boom didn’t come until later, when environmental conscientiousness and new legislation were changing how coastal communities were designed. “People began to realize [mangroves] didn’t cost us anything,” says Franklin, who has spent most of his 80-some years as a fishing guide in the Ten Thousand Islands, North America’s largest remaining stretch of forest. “They provided so much value.”

Even before federal and state laws, the region attracted nature stewards, who formed organizations such as the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and the Lee County Conservation Association, which was largely responsible for securing the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve, where The Ritz-Carlton Residences recently emerged behind a mangrove buffer. “They had moved here from Ohio or Pennsylvania or Michigan or Minnesota, and they’d seen what happened in different habitats in their home states,” Franklin says. 

Pelican Bay, founded in 1972, became the test case. When new wetland regulations made the classic dredge-and-fill plan impossible, executives faced a choice: Fight the rules or rethink the community. Collaborating with scientists at the Conservancy, they built an enclave where more than 500 acres of protected wetlands stand beside the residential streets, and a wooden boardwalk carries residents to the beach. “Embracing nature was a stroke of genius,” Byron Koste, who helped lead the project, says. “All of the real estate appreciated because of it.”  

Half a century later, that shaded trail has become one of Pelican Bay’s defining luxuries. Byron says they designed it to draw attention to different wildlife habitats. “If you pay attention, you’ll clearly see, ‘We just went through a white [mangrove] neighborhood, a red neighborhood and a black neighborhood.’” 

Other developers absorbed the lesson. Communities like Bonita Bay, Fiddler’s Creek and West Bay Club continued to be built with natural systems front-of-mind. As a result, mangroves aren’t relegated to urban parks or impenetrable wilds; they form part of everyday life. 

Depending on who’s looking, the same stand tells a different story. Some newcomers still see a tangled eyesore, harboring seasonal mosquitoes and blocking broad water views. But the perspective soon shifts. The fishing aficionado looks to the tannin-dark water, holding the shade where snook and mangrove snapper wait to feed. A birder clocks the 180 species, including songbirds and pollinators drawn to the black and white mangroves on the forests’ inland perimeters. For the chef, there’s the black mangrove’s caramel-sweet, slightly salty honey, harvested from its white summer blooms. 

Everyone sees a wall of defense. Franklin talks about a time when locals in Everglades City would tie their boats up in mangrove canopies before hurricanes, trusting the bending, porous root network to hold. He and his brother did the same during 2005’s Hurricane Wilma, their boat emerging with little more than leaf debris. Now, we know how to quantify the impact: Annually, the forests are credited with saving $67 million in Collier County alone by slowing down the waves that make it ashore. A 2025 study calculated that the savings during Ian totaled about $4 billion in property damage. 

For those drawn to the trees’ inherent beauty, it’s not as simple as going to the nursery and planting one by your seawall. Unlike palms, which can usually be planted, pruned or relocated at will, mangroves are subject to state laws governing where they grow, how they are maintained and when a Professional Mangrove Trimmer is needed. 

Despite the protections and heightened conscientiousness, the trees remain vulnerable. Storms now arrive faster than the forests can recover between them, with trees already stressed from polluted waters. Meanwhile, rising seas leave mangroves with nowhere to retreat as development closes in behind them. “There are human factors that are contributing to most of the areas we’ve noticed are not coming back naturally,” says Kealy Pfau, coastal watch director at SCCF. Illegal cutting still happens, sometimes under the cover of darkness, with homeowners and developers willing to risk the penalties in exchange for a clearer sightline. “The big problem is enforcement,” Franklin says, adding that neighbors can help educate each other and maintain accountability.“

It takes seedlings 10 to 15 years to become mature trees,” Kealy says. Each year, her Adopt-A-Mangrove program invites people to raise a seedling on their lanai through winter before planting it at a restoration site in spring. “Mangroves were there to protect us,” she says. “Now it is our turn to return the favor.”