Everglades National Park

There are no other Everglades in the world.They are,they always have been,one of the unique regions,remote,never wholly known.Nothing anywhere else is like them,their vast glittering openness,wider than the enormous visible round the horizon,the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds,under the dazzling blue heights of space.They are also unique in the simplicity,the diversity,the related harmony of the life they enclose.The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of sawgrass and of water,shining and slow-moving below,the grass and water that is the meaning and central of the Everglades of Florida.It is a river of grass-Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Everglades National Park is a US National Park located in southern Florida and protects the original 20 percent of the Everglades.It is the first national park solely dedicated to the conservation of animals and plants and the environment that sustains them.It is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States,visited by one million people every year,on average.It is the 3rd largest national park in the lower 48 states.The Everglades are a network of wetlands and forests fed by a river that flows .25 miles per day out of Lake Okeechobee,southwest into Florida Bay.The park is an important breeding ground for wading birds beyond counting;egrets and ibises and herons of all sizes,Roseate Spoonbills.and the Wood Stork,the only stork native to America.It is the only place on Earth where alligators and crocodiles can be found living side-by-side.It contains the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere.The Everglades is home to 36 threatened or protected species,including the American Crocodile,the Florida Panther and the West Indian Manatee.It is also home to 350 species of birds,thousands of species of plants,300 species of fish;saltwater and freshwater,40 species of mammals,and 50 species of reptiles.Everglades National Park covers 1,509,000 acres throughout Dade,Monroe and Collier counties.The elevation ranges from 0 to 8 feet above sea level.It has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site,International Biosphere Reserve and a Wetland of International Importance,one of 3 locations to appear on all 3 lists.The majority of South Florida's fresh water,which is stored in the Biscayne Aquifer,is recharged in the park Humans have lived for thousands of years in or around the Everglades until plans arose in 1882, to drain the wetlands and develop the recovered land for agricultural and residential use. As the 20th century progressed, water flow from Lake Okeechobee was increasingly controlled and diverted to enable explosive growth of the South Florida metropolitan area. The park was established in 1934, to protect the quickly vanishing Everglades, and dedicated in 1947, as massive canal building projects were initiated across South Florida. The ecosystems in Everglades National Park have suffered significantly from human activity, and restoration of the Everglades is a politically charged issue in South Florida.