The Everglades: Florida’s Perpetually Dynamic River of Grass – Everglades, Florida, USA

Everglades, Florida, USA
By Llew Bardecki

Coming from Detroit in February, south Florida seen from the air was something of a departure. Every speck of land I could see was covered by swimming pools, golf courses and canals running alongside the raised roadways.

The typical images of southern Florida didn’t stop once I hit the ground. Lunch was Cuban cuisine. The evening saw my hotel’s lounge turned into a bingo parlour for the (primarily elderly) guests, the air filling with laughter and shouts in New York Jewish accents.

But this wasn’t the south Florida I was looking forward to seeing. That was further south still, and at once removed from, but inextricably linked to, what I’d seen so far.

On Sunday morning I hopped in my rental car and headed down the Turnpike to Everglades National Park, south Florida’s “river of grass.”

The everglades are the vast wetland that drains over 15,000 sq km of south Florida into the Gulf of Florida, which lies between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. They are a place of stunning diversity of life, as well as very subtle, but important diversity of land. Given that it takes hundreds of kilometers for the land to drop from 4 meters above sea level down to the ocean, tiny differences in local elevation can make huge differences in the nature of this soggy landscape.

Founded in 1934, the area is not only a US national park, but also a UNESCO world heritage site. The everglades are home to an astonishing array of wildlife, ranging from plentiful alligators and wading birds to endangered animals such as American crocodiles, snail kites and Florida panthers.

Perhaps the most interesting part of my visit to the everglades was a walk through the mangrove forest with a park ranger and a school group from Ohio. It seemed that with every step we took there was a question, or something alongside the trail that bore explaining, from the recent changes in vegetation due to salty mud blown inland by hurricane Wilma, to bare gumbo limbo trees with all their leaves blown off photosynthesizing through their bark, to a strangler fig tree (strangler figs begin their lives in the branches of host trees, dropping down roots that slowly grow to surround the host, eventually cutting off its light supply, killing it and leaving the adult fig in its place.) All around there were epiphytes (plants like bromeliads and orchids that grow on but, unlike the strangler fig, don’t steal resources from host plants.) There were even cacti, which gained their competitive advantage not from resistance to dry conditions, but from their ability to survive the brackish water just inland from the sea. Even on a dark and cloudy afternoon with little wildlife about, this was still a wondrous place. By the time we arrived back at the start of the trail, everyone on the walk had decided that they wanted to become ranger/naturalists (and were only slightly dissuaded by the ranger’s explanation that the only qualifications necessary were a love of the land, a love of sharing it with others and a vow of perpetual poverty.)

Though the walk with the ranger was inspiring and educational, the true highlight of the trip was the wander on the trails and boardwalks at Royal Palm during the late morning sun. They illustrated magnificently some of the things the ranger had spoken about. The effect of hurricanes was evident in the nearby hammock (a hammock is an ever so slightly raised section of land that supports a grove of hardwood trees.) I vividly remembered this same hammock from my previous trip to the glades, 17 years before. Back then it was a dark and primeval place, cool and full of shadow from the boughs of the ancient trees above the trail. Shortly after that visit, however the glade was ripped open by the 260km/h winds of hurricane Andrew. Now, so many of the trees I remembered were felled, and many more (including the venerable strangler fig I’d had my picture taken under all those years ago) were still struggling to recover.

Even more memorable than the hammock was the stroll along the boardwalk. Though it was busy with tourists, the wildlife that had congregated in this damp patch as the dry season drew in didn’t seem to mind. Everywhere one looked were birds. I saw six different types of heron alone! Perhaps the only thing more prevalent than the birds themselves were the birders there to watch them. The everglades is birder’s paradise, as the telephoto lenses and Audubon field guides under so many arms evidenced. If one could see past all the birders, the glades’ most famous residents, American alligators were everywhere to be seen too. At one point I walked up to a dead end on the boardwalk and found a half dozen alligators sunning themselves, one with its mouth agape in a seeming yawn.

I could easily have spent hours more in the small fraction of the park I visited, but the setting sun had other ideas. On the way back to Ft. Lauderdale I passed the same farm fields, sprawling subdivisions and towering skyscrapers I’d seen on the way in. But now had an even better feel for what they meant to the land around.

Almost all of this had, in one way or another, been built at the expense of the Everglades, whether the draining of vast sections to allow agriculture, the construction of dams and dykes to reduce flow and prevent flooding, or the quarrying of the underlying limestone for the manufacture of roads and buildings.

In the earlier days of development the cost was tremendous. At one point so much water was being diverted in upstream areas of the Everglades that NONE was entering the national park. Today things, while not perfect, are better. A balance has been struck between economic growth and preservation. Now the coastal mangrove forests, which guard both natural and man-made environments, are protected. A deal has been struck that ensures at least a portion of upstream water is always allowed to flow into the national park. And just before my departure, Miami’s mayor announced that the city would not be permitting development further out into the Everglades, though like all political decisions, this will always be prone to change.

All in all, the future of the Everglades is looking up. If you ever find yourself in southern Florida, do make certain to take a day away from the beaches to enjoy this wondrous wetland. Whether it be through the now-tempered actions of man, or the fires and hurricanes spawned by nature, you can be assured that the Everglades won’t ever again be quite the same as on the day you visit.

Post Script:
Two months later, in mid-May, I returned to the Everglades and found a whole new world… There were many fewer birds around, most of the migratory species having come and gone. Compensating for this was the increased visibility and activity of ‘gators, as their water and food sources continued to shrink. So many places that were waterlogged ponds and marshes before were now terra firma. On this later trip I also visited the pinelands, coniferous forests lifted up above the land, the trees saved from being overrun by light-dominating hardwoods by regular fires. If I hadn’t already been convinced, this second trip provided further evidence that the Everglades are never the same place twice.