The Everglades national Park

By Rachel Théberge

 

 

The Everglades National Park is a place with a nice ecosystem and a big history. It’s a mosaic of ponds, sloughs, sawgrass marshes, hardwood hammock and forested uplands. We can go there to visit this wonderful ecosystem.

 

Water in south Florida once flowed freely from the Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee and southward over low  lands to the outlet of Biscayne Bay, the Ten Thousand Islands, and Florida Bay. This shallow, slow-moving sheet of water covered almost 11,000 square miles. This land is now called the Everglades National Park. Two Native American tribes lived at the southern tip of the peninsula: the Tequesta lived on the eastern coast and the Calusa, on the West Coast. The Everglades were a natural border between the two tribes. The Tequesta lived into one large community near the outlet of the Miami River while the Calusa had 30 different villages. The two groups traveled in the Everglades, but didn’t live there. They preferred to live along the coast. However, for the settlers and developers the Everglades were potential farm land and communities. By the early 1900s', the drainage process to transform wetland to land ready to be developed was on going. The results would be severely damaging to the ecosystem and the species in the park. With the support of many conservationists, scientists, and other advocates, Everglades National Park was established in 1947 to conserve the natural landscape and prevent further degradation of its land, plants, and animals. The park earned 28 million dollar in 2005. 14,8 million of it was given to the National Park Service, while the other 13,2 millions were given to other organisms, donations and other grants. The entry fee for vehicles were between 10$ and 200$ for buses. Among the millions of visitors, more than 38 000 camped in the park, paying 16$ for the night, or 10$ for permits naturalness. The visitors have spent 2,6 million dollar in the park and 48 millions in the local economic zones. More than 900 jobs have been created in the park and around it, which added a value of 35 millions dollar to the local economy.

 

In this National Park, visitors can do a lot of activities. Roads, created by logging, fire roads and old farm access roads have created a 43 miles (69 km) network of paved and primitive trails trough the park. Close to the vehicular traffic, they are ideal for long, leisurely hikes, and a few are open for bicycling. Also, the Everglades National Park offers many paddling opportunities to explore the natural beauty of the park through freshwater marsh, mangrove forests and the open waters of Florida bay. Canoe and kayak trips range for a few hours to several days, depending on the complexity of the trail. You can also do some bird watching, visit the Ernest F. Coe visitor center gallery, do some boating, fishing, camping, geocaching,… You can also do the Tamiami trail triathlon! A lot of opportunities to go outside and have some fun into a wonderful landscape.

 

Even if the Everglades National Park have planned a lot of nice activities and was created to protect the ecosystem, accidents can happen anywhere. May 11th , 1996, a plane crashed in the park. The crash of the flight 592 of the ValuJet company was caused by some oxygen generators that were improperly sealed, and caused a fire. Recently, December 8th, 2014, a car accident with a bear caused the death of 3 people and injured 8 others.

 

To finish, a lot of the 36 federally protected animals live in the park, some of which face grave threats to their survival. Within the United States, the American crocodile’s only habitat is in South Florida. Four Everglade species of sea turtle including the Atlantic green sea turtle, the Atlantic hawksbill, the Atlantic loggerhead and the Atlantic ridley are endangered. Also, the leatherback sea turtle is threatened. Two species of birds in the park are in danger of disappearing. The West Indian manatee has been upgraded from endangered to threatened. Human is one of the first reasons this animals and a lot of others are in danger.