Oasis in the Everglades: a Florida wildlife refuge combines nature and nurture.(This Land)

Publication: Natural History

Publication Date: 01-NOV-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Natural History Magazine, Inc.

Wetlands once covered much of the southern third of the Florida peninsula. Cypress swamps dominated the western part of the region and mangrove swamps the south coast. In the east lay a vast tract of water and sawgrass known as the Everglades. Prior to the nineteenth century, most of the settlement in southern Florida was confined to the strip of elevated land along the Atlantic coast. But by the 1800s people bent on farming began draining the Everglades by constructing canals and levees.

In 1934 Congress established the Everglades National Park to preserve the southern part of the original Everglades. North of the park and south of Lake Okeechobee, however, development continued. There, in the late 1940s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began the establishment of three so-called water conservation areas, which further reduced the natural flow of water through the Everglades. The good news for the plants and animals that...

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