Everglades National Park

Early in the twentieth century, Florida's Everglades was a subtropical swampland measuring 140 miles long (north and south) and varying from 30 to 75 miles wide—5,000 square miles altogether. Located south of Lake Okeechobee on a limestone plateau, it was bounded on the east by a higher strip of land along the coast, on the south by mangrove swamps and on the west by Big Cypress Swamp. In the north the Everglades averaged fifteen feet above sea level, and in the south it was a sea level swamp dotted with islands called "hummocks," where palmettos and other vegetation grew. With a landscape that discouraged human settlement, it was a paradise to an astonishing variety of native plants and animals not found elsewhere.

Today, Everglades National Park, America's only subtropical national park, occupies much of that original swampland, and provides visitors with unmatched opportunities to see, experience, and learn. The park is unique because it contains both freshwater and saltwater habitats (nine different habitats in all), and an intermingling of plants and animals from temperate and tropical zones. The Everglades is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles inhabit the same environment. Bird life abounds: roseate spoonbills; wading birds such as herons and egrets, anhingas, wood storks, and the once-rare limpkins; birds of prey such as red-shouldered hawks and the very rare snail kite; painted buntings, woodpeckers and warblers of many kinds; wild turkeys, sora and purple gallinules. Park rangers and other personnel lead visitors on walks, "slough slogs," tram tours, bicycle tours, and airboat tours through several forms of habitat. However, according to a 2020 report from the National Parks Conservation Association, Everglades National Park remained among the most endangered national parks in the United States.

History and Conservation

Very early in the twentieth century, when sparsely settled south Florida began to attract more land speculators, conservationists grasped the uniqueness of the Everglades, and undertook to ensure that as the state was developed and swamps were drained, at least part of this rare ecosystem would remain. As a start, the state of Florida established a 4,000-acre site on Paradise Key as the Royal Palm State Park, a protected area. During the 1920s, Ernest F. Coe, a Florida-based landscape architect, helped organize the Tropical Everglades Park Association (the name underwent modifications) with the sole purpose of advocating and working toward a national park in the Everglades. In 1929, a committee of the National Parks Association reported favorably on the proposed park to Congress, while admitting that the beauty of the Everglades, "though sometimes very grand," might be "rather subtle for the average observer in search of the spectacular."

In 1934, Congress authorized the creation of an Everglades National Park to preserve intact "the unique flora and fauna of the essential primitive natural conditions now prevailing in this area." No programs for visitors were to interfere with this purpose. Although Congress authorized a park, in Depression-era America it provided no funds for one, and no donations materialized. Meanwhile, drainage and construction efforts continued to damage the local ecosystem and natural environment.

In 1944, to protect the area to some extent, Congress established a national wildlife refuge there. Two years later, the Florida legislature appropriated $2 million to acquire private lands at risk, which eventually became part of the 460,000-acre Everglades National Park, dedicated by President Harry S. Truman on December 6, 1947.

Since its 1947 dedication, Everglades National Park has been expanded several times. In 1950, its size was more than doubled (to 1,229,500). In 1989, almost 110,000 acres were added on the park's eastern boundary, mainly to protect and restore the ecosystem. Florida gave Chekika State Recreation Area to the national park in 1991, and another six hundred acres were incorporated into the national park in 2010; the Chekika Day Use Area closed formally in 2013, however, due to insufficient funds.

In 2025, the park included 1,542,526 acres. It contains the largest designated wilderness east of the Rockies, the largest continuous stand of sawgrass prairie in North America, and the largest mangrove forest and ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere. It also includes the most important breeding grounds for tropical birds in North America and, in Florida Bay, an important estuary. It has been named an International Biosphere Reserve (1976), a designated Wilderness (1978), a World Heritage Site (1979), and a Wetland of International Importance (1987).

Ecologically Threatened

The original Everglades was a freshwater "River of Grass" fifty miles wide and six inches deep. Its water came from springs north of Lake Okeechobee, and water quantity fluctuated with the seasons. Conditions are different today, for although the park itself is protected, the Everglades outside it are not. Canals have been built to redirect water both to control flooding and to provide land for agriculture and housing development. The Everglades separating the park from Lake Okeechobee are devoted to sugarcane production, so the "River of Grass" no longer ebbs and flows. The hummocks of palmetto separated by watery paths are far fewer, replaced by essentially flat sawgrass plain. Palmetto hummocks are prime nesting and foraging sites; watery paths attract wading and swimming birds. Wading birds avoid sawgrass, and their population had decreased by more than 90 percent by 2016. Seasonal water flow is necessary for the life cycles of creatures such as the apple snail; with diminished apple snail populations, the predator snail kites have diminished also and are threatened with extinction.

In response to the threats facing the Everglades, federal, state, and independent oversight agencies have initiated the greatest ecosystem restoration ever attempted. The most ambitious, most expensive phases of the plan involve water: modifying canals, etc., to mimic the original flowing water, and restoring the Kissimmee River, which was rigidly channeled in the 1960s. In the 1990s and early 2000s, efforts were also taken to establish some border marshes to filter the phosphorus pollutants from agricultural fertilizers outside the park, and to study and reverse the declining water quality of the Florida Bay estuary. To further address water-related concerns, the US Congress authorized the forty-year-long Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) in 2000.

Managing the water, ecologists believe, means managing its quality, its quantity, its timing, and its distribution. If this can be done satisfactorily, the decline of plant and animal populations can be reversed. Some ecological threats would remain. For instance, the continuing spread of non-native species of plants, such as Brazilian pepper, Melaleuca, and Australian pine, and non-native fish, birds, and reptiles (probably let loose by park visitors) threatens to push aside native species. Air quality in the park, like water quality, is affected by the surrounding urban growth. The Everglades National Park is forty minutes from downtown Miami—a good thing for the children of Miami visiting the area, but an additional challenge for those charged with preserving a wilderness.

The Everglades are also experiencing the ecological impacts of climate disruption. Sea-level rise has also been increasing the salinity (salt concentration) of the waters in the Everglades, potentially endangering the unusual species that live there. As part of CERP, canals have been closed to try to stop the loss of freshwater and to limit saltwater intrusion. The National Park Service also sought to minimize its contributions to climate change by installing solar energy systems at park facilities, switching to more energy-efficient vehicles, and creating an energy conservation plan.

During the first years of CERP's restoration efforts, progress was slow, and often hampered by funding issues, political infighting, and other factors. By 2017, ballooning costs had raised the projected costs from $7.8 billion to $16.4 billion; by then, the National Academies of Sciences estimated that CERP would take nearly a hundred years to complete.

However, by the late 2010s and early 2020s, more consistent funding and political support helped ensure that multiple projects under the CERP umbrella began to show signs of progress. For example, in 2021, the Army Corps of Engineers completed the Kissimmee River Restoration Project, which rerouted the Kissimmee River to its original, natural pathway and restored much of its original floodplain area. In early 2022, the federal government granted over $1 billion in new funding toward restoration efforts. Much of this new funded was directed toward the construction of the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Reservoir, a key project that will treat and transport clean water while reducing the spread of polluted discharges from Lake Okeechobee.

Bibliography

Audubon Staff. “New Funding Coming for Everglades Restoration.” Florida Audubon, 6 Apr. 2022, fl.audubon.org/news/new-funding-coming-everglades-restoration. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

"Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP)." National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 19 May 2022, www.nps.gov/ever/learn/nature/cerp.htm. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

Cox, Kelly. “Kissimmee River Project—Largest Restoration Initiative of its Kind—Complete After Nearly 30 Years.” Florida Audubon, 27 July 2021, fl.audubon.org/news/kissimmee-river-project-largest-restoration-initiative-its-kind-complete-after-nearly-30-years. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. The Everglades: River of Grass. Pineapple Press, 2007.

Errick, Jennifer. "The National Park with the Most Endangered Species." National Parks Conservation Association, 30 July 2018, www.npca.org/articles/1900-the-national-park-with-the-most-endangered-species. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

"Everglades National Park." The National Parks: America's Best Idea, PBS, www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-national-parks/everglades. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

"Everglades National Park." UNESCO World Heritage Centre, whc.unesco.org/en/list/76. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

"Everglades National Park, Florida"National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 10 Feb. 2025, www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

Rubio, Marco. “After 20 Years, Progress on the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan is Starting to Yield Results.” The Sun Sentinel, 11 Dec. 2020, www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-rubio-everglades-restoration-20th-anniversary-20201211-wj4w2fgip5gfjfp4wxzeaqafli-story.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.