Exquisite Everglades

The Everglades National Park
Photo credit: USGS/SOFIA


One of the most revered and treasured Ecosystems in the entire state of Florida, perhaps even the United States, the Everglades National Park, has just handed down some tough restrictions for the first time in more than 30 years.
This is a long, hard-fought, much overdue win for a beleaguered Ecosystem, that has in the past, had to fight off big money, big business and big politics just to stay alive.
But, no more!
Finally those who run the Park have said enough!
The Everglades National Park and I do now speak from personal experience, is without a doubt, Florida’s most beautiful and most unique little corner of the Earth.
May I offer you one tiny bit of advice, before you venture down for your first trip?
Many years ago, on our first vacation here, we took our first trip to the Everglades while visiting my parents in Miami, in the NOT EVER recommended month of August.
Only an idiot, or a tourist from L.A., would ever do this, everyone who lives here knows better.
August is the heighth of Mosquito Season in South Florida and when they descend upon you in the Glades, they are like a black veil that drops over you, if you are foolish enough to go there in that month.
As for these new restrictions for the Florida Bay Area of the Everglades, they have become necessary because for entirely too many years, all manner of human abuse have rendered this fragile place nearly crippled with what many believed to be irreparable damage.
But the tide may be turning in the Glade’s favor and I only wish that Marjory was here today to witness this change of mind and heart for her beloved Everglades, she died in 1998 at the age of 108.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas fought so hard nearly all of her adult life, to save the Glades and today I would like to believe that she is smiling.
These new restrictions may do what she could not during her lifetime, they may finally and forever, preserve and protect the Exquisite Everglades.


Places to learn more:
Everglades National Park
Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Defender of the Everglades
Florida Boating Restrictions in Everglades Park
Everglades National Park GMP/East Everglades Wilderness Study
Everglades Park to restrict boating in Florida Bay
Protecting Everglades National Park ends way of life for Gladesmen
The Everglades