The Everglades are drowning.

Canals along Alligator Alley have spilled over banks into roadside swales. Deer have been driven from flooded-out tree islands to strips of dry ground - mostly canal levees, but a few have even been spotted on the porches of empty hunting cabins.

And the water, already near a record high, is still creeping up - particularly in the area of deepest concern: the sprawling sawgrass prairies north of Tamiami Trail. If the water doesn't recede fast, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission warns deer and other denizens could die in potentially large numbers.

"If we don't start doing something, we're going to end up with a total massacre," said wildlife commissioner Ron Bergeron, who recently took a Democratic US congressman from Florida, Ron Klein, on an airboat trip into the 700,000-acre conservation area west of suburban Miami-Dade and Broward counties, a marsh hammered by high waters over the decades.

Similar conditions decimated the Glades' white-tailed deer in 1982 and 1995, knocking the herd from thousands to hundreds, and killed countless smaller animals that rely on high, dry tree islands for food and shelter.

Those tree islands are anything but high and dry now.

About five miles south of Alligator Alley, Bergeron slowed his airboat near a small tree island, where months earlier he'd spotted a buck. The island used to have a landmark rock outcropping.

"That crop rock shot up 3 to 4 feet there," he said. "It's under water now."

It's not the water depth - which ought to range from 6 to 18 inches depending on location - that presents the biggest problem; it's duration. With the water up since Tropical Storm Fay seven weeks ago, wildlife managers figure they've got less than 30 days before the toll starts mounting.

State and federal water managers, working with an outmoded and overwhelmed flood-control system and sometimes conflicting regulations to protect suburbs, farms, the Glades and the nests of an endangered bird from flooding, say there is not much more they can do - at least until the long-delayed overhaul of the Tamiami Trail and other Everglades projects move forward.

"Right now, we're maximizing all our releases to alleviate the high waters," said Andrew Geller, a senior engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers.

That's not an answer that sits well with Bergeron, a prominent road builder and self-described "cracker" who has spent much of his life fishing and hunting in the Everglades. For weeks, he has been calling state and federal agencies to press for relief - both immediate emergency action and long-term fixes.

The worst flooding is north of Tamiami Trail, a historic road that is the dividing line, and major cause, of much of the damage. The road dams up and drowns marshes to the north and dries out Everglades National Park to the south.

"You've got a desert on one side and a reservoir on the other," Bergeron said.

Bergeron said he aims to be an "ambassador" to get the warring factions of the Everglades - environmentalists, the Miccosukee Tribe, local, state and federal agencies - together to break the gridlock surrounding both Tamiami Trail and a small endangered bird called the Cape Sable Seaside sparrow. It's a tall order: The parties have been arguing for a decade.

Work to fix the road have been tied up for 19 years. Last month, the National Research Council dubbed the project "one of the most discouraging stories in Everglades restoration".

The sparrow plan follows a scheme that seasonally closes four huge floodgates along the Trail to protect nesting areas in the park from floods - and as a result stacks water to the north.

The Corps hopes to break ground before year's end on a one-mile bridge, and a pilot project to improve flow through 19 existing culverts by scraping out a narrow strip of wetlands south of the road. Bergeron supports expanding that project, an option environmental groups haven't embraced.

He also wants federal wildlife managers to reconsider the sparrow plan and broaden protections for animals harmed by the flooding, such as the endangered Florida panther.

His complaints echoed those of the Miccosukee, who have long argued that high waters destroy tribal lands - 250 acres of tree islands vanish yearly - and decimate other animals, including the endangered Everglades kite.

"I understand his frustration," said tribe spokeswoman Joette Lorion. "This area of the Everglades is being trashed, and nobody cares."

Paul Souza, field supervisor for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the sparrow plan, understands the concerns and said the agency has been "thinking through" options in light of studies documenting the freefall of the kite, which has declined by two-thirds since 2000.

Souza agreed that starting work on the Trail was the most promising relief valve.

"It's not the full answer, but it is a step in the right direction," he said.

For now, state wildlife managers are trying to minimize stress on wildlife. Though anglers can still ply canals, the FWC closed hunting and most public access to the interior marsh after Fay's 20 inches of rain officially ended South Florida two-year drought. More storms since have pushed water higher.

At one island, Bergeron, machete in hand, led Klein onto what he said was the highest spot for miles. Most of it was inundated. The driest spot was muddy.

The longer the marshes remain too deep, the lower the odds of wildlife survival.

Animals packed on levees are more prone to disease and can be easier picking for predators. Stragglers left in the belly-deep marsh face even higher risks such as hoof rot - perhaps the unfortunate fate of one startled deer that left a splashing trail as it bolted at the roar of airboats. It was miles from dry footing.

"If there is no place it can get to high ground," said FWC regional director Chuck Collins, "it's a goner".