Eve Samples: Leading Friends of the Everglades in detention center fight

When Eve Samples became executive director of Friends of the Everglades in early 2020, she wasn’t new to the fight. For years, she had reported on Florida’s environmental struggles from the newsroom, tracking the politics, pollution and policy decisions that put the state’s water and wildlife at risk. Taking the helm at the nonprofit founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas felt like a natural next step, a chance to move from chronicling the battles to leading them.

Ms. Samples grew up in North Miami, where South Florida’s natural beauty left a lasting impression. Her curiosity and writing talent led her to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and eventually into a journalism career that spanned nearly two decades. She began at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette before returning to Florida, where she worked as an opinion editor for the USA TODAY Network-Florida, a columnist and editor for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers, and a reporter for The Palm Beach Post. 

Ms. Samples cites her work as an opinion writer as the point when her focus increasingly turned to environmental issues, especially toxic discharges from Lake Okeechobee and the urgent need to restore the Everglades. So, when the Friends of the Everglades leadership role opened up in 2020, it felt like a full-circle moment. The nonprofit had been founded more than 50 years earlier by Ms. Stoneman Douglas, a fellow journalist-turned-activist whose legacy helped define the modern environmental movement in Florida. 

Since then, the organization has tripled in staffing and expanded its reach across the state. In addition to translating complex environmental policies into public education campaigns and pushing lawmakers to support sound Everglades restoration, Ms. Samples and her team are now tackling high-stakes legal challenges. Among them is a lawsuit to halt construction of a federal immigration detention center in the Everglades that she says threatens to further destabilize the already fragile ecosystem.

Whether rallying supporters or pressing agencies to follow the law, Ms. Samples brings a journalist’s tenacity and a conservationist’s urgency to the work. Her goal: to uphold the organization’s grassroots tradition with advocacy rooted in science, aimed at protecting and restoring the vast Everglades ecosystem and its interconnected web of wetlands essential to Florida’s wildlife, water and future.

Ms. Samples spoke with Miami Today reporter Genevieve Bowen.

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