What is the Everglades?

The Everglades is a large subtropical wetland ecosystem at the southern tip of Florida, covering about 1.5 million acres of slow-flowing freshwater marsh, sawgrass prairie, sloughs, hardwood hammocks, cypress swamps, mangrove forests, and coastal estuaries. The Everglades is sometimes called the river of grass, a phrase popularized by environmental writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas in her 1947 book of the same name. The waters of the Everglades historically flowed slowly south from Lake Okeechobee at a rate of less than one mile per day across a broad shallow plain to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay, a flow about 50 miles wide and only inches to a few feet deep.

The ecosystem hosts a remarkable diversity of wildlife including the American alligator (the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles coexist, the latter being the rare American crocodile), the endangered Florida panther (Puma concolor coryi, with about 200 wild individuals), the West Indian manatee, the snail kite, the wood stork, hundreds of bird species, and many subtropical plants. Indigenous peoples including the Calusa, Tequesta, and later the Seminole and Miccosukee have lived in the Everglades for centuries; the Seminole Wars of 1816 to 1858 included extended fighting in the Everglades, where Seminole resistors retreated and partly succeeded in resisting forced removal.

Agricultural and urban development of southern Florida since the 1880s drained vast portions of the Everglades and disrupted natural water flows. The original Everglades ecosystem covered about 4,000 square miles; the current natural ecosystem covers about half that area, with the remainder converted to agriculture (especially sugarcane in the Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee) or urban development (Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach). The Central and Southern Florida Project of 1948 built about 1,400 miles of canals, levees, and water control structures that fundamentally altered the Everglades' hydrology.

Everglades National Park was established on December 6, 1947 to protect the southern third of the original ecosystem. The park covers about 1.5 million acres and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, authorized by Congress in 2000, is a 50 billion dollar, 30+ year project to restore more natural water flow patterns.

Threats include water diversion, agricultural runoff (especially phosphorus from sugarcane and dairy operations causing harmful algal blooms), invasive species (Burmese pythons have devastated mammalian wildlife since the 1980s), sea level rise affecting saltwater intrusion, and continuing urban encroachment. Major cities adjacent to the Everglades include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Naples, and Homestead.