Human Impact and the St Johns River: Exploring the Relationship between People and Place

     This paper explores the relationships between people and their environment, presenting an account of the impact that various social and economic interests have upon the St. Johns River watershed in Florida. This impact comes in the form of residential, commercial, and corporate consumption, extraction, and pollution of the waterways, which leads to a complex interplay between local and transnational interests regarding the roles people should play in the St. Johns River Water Management Area. The paper pays particular attention to the role of social media in disseminating local ecological interests to transnational audiences and provides a discussion on the implications and effects of deregulation and unfettered economic growth, which is often detrimental to the environment and at odds with the residential populations’ desire to maintain their way of life. Ethnographic inquiry inspired this work, which has expanded to include ethnoecological and political studies to better frame and contextualize the research.