Environmentalists warn that each day Alligator Alcatraz remains up and running is one more day of irreparable damage to the Everglades, and area that is North America’s only subtropical wilderness and home to thousands of native plants and animal species and dozens of which are endangered or threatened.

“We know the species like the Florida Panther, are just barely clinging to existence. We have one population, the only in the world, that is found here in South Florida,” said Elise Bennett/Florida Director and Attorney/ Center for Biological Diversity .”There’s roughly 200 of them left in the wild.”

MORE ON THE STORY: See a special report to air about the Everglades detention center on Southwest Florida in Focus

Bennett said the significant increase in traffic could be doom the Florida panther.

“Dump trucks, staff coming to work on the site, transporting folks to be held at the site, all that increases the chances of losing more panthers to road deaths which drives them closer to the brink of extinction,” she said.

Bennett added that the facility also threatens one of the rarest bats in the world — the Florida bonneted bat.

1 of 7 — Alcatraz PHOTO NEXT TO THE ENTRANCE.JPG Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center. This photo was taken next to the entrance. Anthony Sleiman / Special to WGCU 2 of 7 — ALCATRAZ JAN 26 BCY_ORION_FROM_JETPORT_JAN26.jpg Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center. A shot of the night sky from the detention center site in January, prior to the center being erected. Anthony Sleiman / Special to WGCU 3 of 7 — ALCATRAZ FROM WAGON WHEEL RD (21 miles away in a straight line)MARKED.JPG Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center. This photo was taken 21 miles from the center on Wagon Wheel Road. Anthony Sleiman / Special to WGCU 4 of 7 — ALCATRAZ FROM 18 MILES AWAY (1).JPG Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center. This photo was taken from 18 miles away. Anthony Sleiman / Special to WGCU 5 of 7 — snail kite.jpg Snail kite with a snail in the Everglades. Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center. Center for Biological Diversity 6 of 7 — Bonnetted bat.jpg A bonneted bat in the Everglades. Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center. Center for Biological Diversity 7 of 7 — RSFlorida-Panther-National-Wildlife-Refuge-USFWS-FPWC-dg1.jpg Florida panther. Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center. George Gentry, USFWS/George Gentry, USFWS / George Gentry, USFWS

Center for Biological Diversity A bonneted bat in the Everglades. Effects of the Everglades detention center on the environment of the Everglades could cut across flora and fauna and even just causing lightening the night sky around the center.

“We talked with bat experts we know they have been documented miles from the site. They can fly dozens of miles every night so we know it is very likely they are flying over this area they are foraging.”

She says the detention center lights up the night sky reportedly seen at least 15 miles away.

“As you bring all the artificial light into the sites, what you are destroying is their grocery store, their restaurant, the places they go to eat, and that puts them at greater risk. It makes them weaker. It displaces them,” Bennett said

The area where the detention center is located in is known as an international dark sky.

“It is one of the darkest skies east of the Mississippi River,” she said. “Preserving that darkness is not only good for us, people who like to star gaze but also for wildlife like panthers that do a lot of their movement and hunting at night and Florida bonneted bats who need dark, open skies to hunt as well.”

She says they are concerned about chemicals used at the site could be harmful to wildlife such as the Everglades snail kite… a bird who hunts snails.

“If you’re using pesticides and they’re getting into the prey items for these endangered species, that it could impact them at a cascading scale,

Maybe not directly, but through the food that they’re eating,” she said.

Bennett says noise, water and soil pollution are top concerns.

“This is an incredibly, ecologically sensitive area. If you just look out to either side, you see water. And wetlands surrounding the sight all the way up to where that paved runway is. It is very vulnerable to run off,” she said. “We know we have seen new paving. new asphalt. All of that, risks introducing new contaminants from the paving itself. But also, the contaminants of just keeping thousands of people living on the site, all of the solid waste, the trash, the human refuse.”

Governor Desantis has denied the detention center will cause environmental harm.

“Any sense that somehow like this is going to have any impact at all on the overall Everglades, there is zero impact,” DeSantis has said.

But, Bennett has a different assessment: “From the large and charismatic Florida panther to lowly crab grass, the impacts are extensive. And when you destroy the fabric of life by coming into an incredibly sensitive place and develop you are not only hurting every one of those species. You are hurting humanity.”

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