The Everglades (Part II)
Everglades National Park was established in 1947. It is located on the southern tip of the Florida peninsula and contains 1.5 million acres. This park is about 15% of the natural, historic Everglades.
During the Nixon administration, the United States introduced the concept of World Heritage Sites. The U.S. organized a World Heritage Convention in 1972. Today 150 nations have ratified the agreement and have placed 500 sites on the World Heritage List. These nations have all pledged to identify and protect their key natural and cultural sites as part of the heritage of humanity. In the U.S. there are twenty World Heritage Sites. Some examples are Yellowstone, Independence Hall, the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, Yosemite, Monticello and Everglades National Park. Included in the 500 world sites are the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Tower of London, and the Galapagos Islands. Most U.S. World Heritage Sites are administered by our National Park Services.
This January, we chose to spend some time in southern Florida. We pulled our camper, a small 21' HiLo, our home for a month. We stayed longest in the Everglades National Park campgrounds. They provided no electricity but do have water, showers and dump stations. A treat just before arriving at the park entrance near Homestead was the joy of picking vine-ripened strawberries and tomatoes. We also bought locally grown mangoes and papayas.
Long Pine Key, a slightly elevated area of slash pine, saw palmetto, and other shrubs was our first campsite. We loved that campsite. At night, rangers gave programs in the amphitheater and in the daytime we hiked in hardwood hammocks with the rangers. The Anhinga Trail gave an opportunity to see many wading birds and a large resident alligator.
Thirty eight miles south west of Long Pine Key is another campground site at Flamingo. Here there are housekeeping cabins, a restaurant and lodge, and a marina that rents boats, and canoes to explore the many islands.
At Eco-Pond, a freshwater pond, we saw ibises, herons, egrets, anhingas and rails. We also saw the wood stork, and the peregrine Falcon, two of the 13 endangered species found in the park. There we heard the bellow oa a bull alligator.
We hiked two miles on the Snake Bight Trail through a mosquito ridden mangrove thicket, hoping to see a roseate spoonbill but the timing or tide was not right.
Traveling on the Tamiami Trail (U.S. Route 41) to the Gulf Coast Visitors Center, we had lunch at a Miccosukee Indian restaurant. Arriving at a campsite along the Tamiami Trail, we spent a morning in among the tall virgin cypress preserved in the Big Cypress Bend State Park. Along a wonderful boardwalk, we saw and heard a pileated woodpecker and young ibis. A lucky, quiet visitor might see a Florida panther, one of the endangered species, at dusk.
At Everglade City we rented a kayak and ventured into the water ways among the mangroves. Our excursion was shortened by the roar of air boats which made it impossible to see any birds.
Plume hunters in the late nineteenth century had almost exterminated the egrets, but by 1940 the populations had almost recovered. Great changes in the flow of water into the Everglades occurred when Lake Okeechobee waters were impounded and channeled. The yearly fluctuations of the water in the Everglades were altered, resulting in devastating changes in the ecology and wild life. Bird populations again became reduced and are now only 10% of the pre-1940 levels.
A management objective for the Park is to gradually restore the hydrological conditions which were characteristic of the natural ecosystem prior to human intervention. We saw many signs of this restoration and are optimistic about the future of the Everglades National Park.
-- Percy & Mary Lilly