Barley family honored with Governor’s Medal of Freedom for Everglades work

The medal for Mary Barley and her late husband George Barley mattered far beyond Palm Beach because Monroe County still lives with the results of every decision made about Everglades water. In the Keys, Florida Bay is not an abstraction. It is the nursery for seagrass, the engine for fisheries and a measure of whether South Florida is sending the right water, in the right amount, at the right time.

Gov. Ron DeSantis presented the Governor’s Medal of Freedom on April 28 in Palm Beach, honoring four Everglades champions: Paul Tudor Jones II, Mary Barley, the late George Barley and the late Nathaniel P. Reed. The awards to George Barley and Reed were posthumous. State officials said the medal, created in 2020, is among Florida’s highest honors.

For the Keys, the recognition lands in the middle of a long restoration fight that still shapes daily life south of Lake Okeechobee. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, authorized by the Water Resources Development Act of 2000, remains the largest restoration program underway in South Florida, aimed at improving the quantity, quality, timing and distribution of water. That mission reaches Monroe County through Florida Bay, which the South Florida Water Management District describes as a 1,000-square-mile system and one of the world’s largest seagrass meadows.

The Bay’s health has repeatedly shown how vulnerable the region remains. The district says direct rainfall supplies more than 45% of freshwater input in today’s managed system, with Taylor Slough providing much of the rest. It also says droughts in 1987 and 2015 pushed salinity too high and caused major seagrass die-offs, and that salinity in parts of the bay rose to more than twice ocean water during the 2015 extreme event.

George Barley and Paul Tudor Jones II founded The Everglades Foundation in 1993, and the organization says it has spent more than 30 years pushing science, advocacy and education in service of restoration. The governor’s office said Jones has been a driving force for more than three decades, helping lead science-based work to restore the historic River of Grass, reduce nutrient pollution and protect Florida’s water systems. Officials said George Barley, a Florida native and Harvard graduate, pushed for natural water flow and accountability for polluters.

Mary Barley had already been recognized for that work when she was inducted into the Everglades Coalition Hall of Fame in February 2025. The coalition created the hall in 2003, and The Everglades Foundation says she served as board chair from 1995 to 2002 and vice chair from 2003 to 2012.

The honor also came as major projects continued to move. Florida officials said the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir can store more than 78 billion gallons of water and deliver up to 470 billion gallons of clean water a year to the Everglades and Florida Bay, and that all federally funded contracts for the project were fully executed in April 2026. For Monroe County, the Barley family’s medal is a tribute to persistence, but also a reminder that the fight for cleaner, better-timed water remains unfinished.