The Importance Of Everglades National Park

If you are looking to gaze upon a diverse amount of flora and fauna, unique wetland ecosystems, natural communities, or just looking for a place to visit in South Florida, Everglades National Park (ENP) is the place to go. Everglades National Park was established on December 6, 1947, to protect the natural landscape and to further prevent negative impacts on the land, flora, and fauna (“A Beginning For the Park”). Ernest F. Coe and Marjory Stoneman Douglas are two individuals who played a crucial part in shaping Everglades National Park. Ernest F. Coe was landscape architect that wanted to protect the Everglades by sectioning out a portion of the Everglades as a national park. The Tropical Everglades National Park Association, now called Everglades

ENP provides plants and animals with the resources that they need. The park provides many habitats where flora and fauna thrive, such as sawgrass prairies, freshwater sloughs, pine rocklands, estuaries, and hardwood hammocks. These habitats have been altered by many factors including human impacts, hurricanes, non-native species, water quality issues, water quantity issues, wildland fires, etc. (“Environmental Factors”). These factors are the main culprits that are causing the degradation of the park. For example, hurricanes uprooted most of the trees found in the park, which damaged many surrounding habitats. ENP is in need of restoration, and every resident in South Florida should know about the restoration efforts that are needed in order to conserve the

Those trails are the Gumbo Limbo Trail (GLT) and the Anhinga Trail (AT). The Gumbo Limbo Trail can be seen upon entering the area, and there are many plant species that reside in this hardwood hammock, such as Gumbo Limbo, royal palms, and ferns. The wildlife in this area are not abundant, but you may see organisms such as mosquitoes, butterflies, and lizards. The Gumbo Limbo trail guides you through a “subtropical hardwood hammock which is a habitat type that is unique to South Florida” (“Anhinga Trail”). These hammocks are linked to prairies because they both can tolerate fire. Although hurricanes did damage to the plant life in this area, it is still a beautiful part of ENP. Anhinga Trail is the most popular trail that visitors walk along to observe the diverse plant and animal life. It is a sawgrass prairie, which is an ecosystem that “stays wet for most of the year and water levels drop during the dry season” (“Sawgrass Prairie”). It is also a freshwater slough, “low-lying area that channels water through the Everglades” (“Ecosystems: Freshwater Slough”). Here, you can find flora, in particular: sawgrass, cypress, shrub plants, lily pads, and bladderworts. Unlike the Gumbo Limbo Trail, the Anhinga Trail mostly consists of an abundant amount of animals rather than plant life. Alligators, egrets, herons, turtles, catfish, anhingas, and crickets all make up this sawgrass marsh. The abundant amounts of