CHAPTER ONE A RIVER OF GRASS The midmorning sun glints on the water The the swampy Shark River Slough Her tour group park ranger lifts one booted foot and steps into follows Small fish dart through the water Tall cypress trees rise from the marsh A white heron watches the group Tall sawgrass hugs the trees The group follows their guide farther into the waist-deep swamps of Everglades National Park A variety of habitats are found in Everglades National Park 5
Everglades National Park stretches across 1 5 million acres 607,000 ha It is located at the southernmost tip of the Florida peninsula The park’s environment is unlike any other national park This is because it is close to the equator Much of the park is made up of everglades or swampy grasslands Prairies woodlands and islands can also be found here Many animals and plants thrive in this warm and wet climate Preserving Florida’s Wetlands Everglades settlers in the late 1800s and early 1900s saw the wetlands as an inconvenience They could not farm land that was A World Heritage Site Everglades National Park became a World Heritage Site on October 26 1979 The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO chooses World Heritage Sites The site must benefit the community and the world as a whole Everglades National Park was nominated and chosen because of its diverse habitats and wildlife UNESCO also recognized it as a park that protects many threatened animal species 6
Workers dug the Miami Canal in the 1920s underwater They also could not build houses or roads on this landscape So they began digging canals A canal is a long and narrow passageway Water from the marshes flowed into these canals It drained south into the Atlantic Ocean Settlers turned the northern Everglades into sugarcane plantations cattle ranches and vegetable fields Ernest Coe was one of the first to speak up against land development in the Everglades Coe was a landscape architect He was shocked to learn about 7
