By Coral Gables Gazette staff

Jessica Namath, the Tequesta conservationist who helped stop a state plan to build golf courses and resort hotels inside Florida’s protected state parks, will receive the 2026 Defenders of the Everglades Award on Friday at the Fifth Annual Marjory Stoneman Douglas Legacy Celebration, a sold-out luncheon at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.

The event, hosted by Friends of the Everglades, will bring together more than 300 environmental advocates and supporters under this year’s theme, “Rescuing the River of Grass.” Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald humorist Dave Barry will deliver the keynote address. The luncheon runs from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and is at capacity, with a waiting list available through the organization’s office.

A grassroots campaign that changed state law

Namath is the founder of Floridians for Public Lands, an advocacy organization she built around a conviction that Florida’s publicly owned natural lands belong to all residents and must be protected from development. Her most prominent campaign came in August 2024, when the Florida Department of Environmental Protection quietly released its “Great Outdoors Initiative” — a plan to build three golf courses across 1,000 acres of Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound, along with resort-style hotels, pickleball courts, and other commercial amenities at eight other state parks.

Namath learned of the plan and acted immediately. Within four days of forming a Facebook group to oppose the Jonathan Dickinson proposal, membership exceeded 15,000. The local effort became a statewide movement. Public meetings drew hundreds of residents. Petitions circulated widely. “It’s not about golf,” Namath told reporters at the time. “To me, it’s about destroying an ancient sand dune and destroying the scrub jay habitat.”

The backlash was sufficient to force the state’s hand. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection withdrew all proposed amendments to the state parks. Governor Ron DeSantis distanced himself from the initiative and ultimately signed HB 209, the State Park Preservation Act, into law in May 2025 — legislation that codified protections for Florida’s state park system against commercial development. Namath called the signing a significant achievement but warned that vigilance was still required. “People have loudly and clearly spoken that they want to protect land,” she said at the time. “We’re sick of development. We’re sick of taking away the space that we’re losing.”

That campaign was not Namath’s only engagement. She has been a consistent presence at protests and public meetings opposing the federal immigration detention facility in the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” documenting the facility’s industrial lighting and its impact on Big Cypress National Preserve — the nation’s first certified dark sky preserve — and raising concerns about noise, water, and wildlife disruption. She also spoke out against a proposed data center near protected lands in Palm Beach County that would have consumed an estimated 21 million gallons of water annually. She serves on Tequesta’s environmental advisory committee.

An organization Marjory Stoneman Douglas built

Friends of the Everglades was founded in 1969 by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the author whose 1947 book “The Everglades: River of Grass” redefined how Floridians understood the ecosystem they shared with it. Douglas founded the organization at age 79 to fight a proposed jetport in the Big Cypress Swamp — a fight she won. She spent the next three decades leading the organization, continuing to advocate for Everglades restoration until her death in 1998 at the age of 108.

The organization now counts more than 48,000 supporters and has focused its advocacy on what it describes as the most urgent remaining challenge in Everglades restoration: expanding water storage, treatment, and conveyance capacity in the Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee. The River of Grass — the slow, broad sheet flow of freshwater that once moved freely from the Kissimmee Basin through the Everglades to Florida Bay — has been drained, diverted, and impounded over a century of development. Restoring that flow is the central project of one of the largest ecosystem restoration efforts in American history.

The Defenders of the Everglades Award has been presented previously to Carlos Alvarez, Daniella Levine Cava, Shannon Estenoz, Alan Farago, Juanita Greene, Richard Grosso, Maggy Hurchalla, Theodora H. Long, Jim McMaster, Betty Osceola, Jose Javier Rodriguez, Harvey Ruvin, Matt Schwartz, Paul Schwiep, Katy Sorenson, Hal Wanlass, and Connie Washburn.

The keynote speaker

Dave Barry, whose nationally syndicated column ran in more than 500 newspapers over 20 years, received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988. He spent his career at the Miami Herald and has been a consistent voice for South Florida’s natural environment, often approaching the subject through the particular lens he brought to everything: the recognition that absurdity and urgency are not mutually exclusive, and that laughter can open a door that argument cannot.

The award Namath receives Friday carries the name of a woman who founded an organization at 79 to fight a jetport in the Everglades and kept fighting for nearly three more decades. The parallel is not accidental. Namath built Floridians for Public Lands from a Facebook group, organized a statewide campaign from a kitchen table in Tequesta, and watched the governor of Florida sign a law that her movement helped make necessary. Douglas would have recognized the method.