Everglades National Park

Everglades national park, located at the southern tip of Florida, was the first national park created specifically to protect not scenery, but one of the most unique and endangered ecosystem, the world largest marshland. Although the water appears at first still, it actually is part of a river, moving 100 feet a day, a few inches to a few feet deep, and 50 miles wide, flowing from Lake Okeechobee into the Gulf of Florida. The cycle of this water, where six dry winter months alternate with six wet summer months, is essential for the survival of the rich and complex web of life of the park, but has been disturbed by development and canals upstream.

Most visitors are justifiably drawn to the dynamic inhabitants of the park, the wading birds and alligators. Nowhere else in North America are the birds that diverse, abundant and easy to observe and photograph. The plant life is no less interesting, in its unique mix of temperate and tropical species. The saw-grass prairie, with its stands of cypress, is progressively replaced by mangroves as the water gets more salty near the Florida Bay. The rock bed beneath the Everglades, only 6000 to 8000 year old, is one of the youngest on the continent, surfacing only since the Ice Age, and nowhere higher than 8 feet. A difference of elevation of just a few feet give rise to small islands called hammocks, which are a whole different world from the wet prairie, and are densely forested with tropical trees such as gunbo limbo and mahogany.