Wetlands are a natural part of our earth and nature. They are a supply of fresh water and the home of many different kinds of species. Scientists are just beginning to realize their importance and it is almost too late. The nation has lost 117 million acres of wetlands, which is more than 50% of what we started with and the number is quickly rising (Peters and Reed 16).

America’s population is the driving force behind the degradation of the wetlands in the United States. The population is growing by 2.6 million each year and each person needs living space, farmland, timber, and water. Because each person requires so much to live, the collective impact is enormous (Peters and Reed 16). This vast decline in the nation’s natural habitat not only hurts mother earth but the human population as well.

On the southern tip of Florida lies a vast wetland full of mystery and beauty, one of nature’s most diverse places in the United States. The Everglades begins with the giant 700 square mile Lake Okeechobee next to Lake Michigan which is fed by the waters of the Kissimmee Valley and a chain of lakes yet farther north. The whole region is a shallow decline that slopes southwa

rd at an average of only 2 inches per mile from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico (Golia 12).

The final part of the Everglades is the Mangrove trees. The mangrove is a broad-leaved evergreen that is found all throughout the coastal tropics. Three types exist in the Everglades region, the red, black, and white mangrove. They are salt-water trees with roots sprouting down like fingers. They can take over a water’s edge very quickly by dispersing the mangrove fruit, which grows roots and plants itself. The mangroves can tolerate salt water by excluding it from their tissues which makes them very useful. The mangrove is the predominate terrestrial life form throughout the coastal region. The trees’ leaves feed from many forms of aquatic life, but it has the least diversity of land plants of any part of the glades. Even though the diversity is small, there are still salt-water mosquitoes, tarpons, and dolphins, not to mention many more inside the region. The mangroves have other uses besides diversity, they also help protect against hurricanes, provide nesting for the bird life of the glades, provide a healthy fishery and add to the richness of the nutrients flowing in from the everglades and Big Cypress Natural Preserve, giving the mangrove estuary a rich diversity of marine life. The mangroves are an important part of the function of the Everglades (Golia 34-39).

There is a great pine forest located in the glades slightly higher than the rest of the Everglades. The pinelands are rough, rocky, and rugged. In fact, pines seem to grow on nothing at all when in fact their roots find pockets of soil in the rocks to gain their nutrients. The landscape in the pinelands is also dry but in the wet season pools of water may appear. In the pinelands, over half of the plant species found in the park are located there. (Golia 24). Also, in the pinelands you can find a very diverse wildlife, with wild flowers, woodpeckers, pine warblers, raccoons, hawks, and many more. A very important aspect of the pinelands is their tolerance to fire. Fire is a natural disasters that the pines require for survival. The fire germinates the pine tree seeds, and also burn out any hardwoods that cause a threat to taking over the pinewood forest. The pines can survive the fire because of their bark. The pines’ backs are like rolled up newspapers, the fire burns the outer layers leaving the inside protected (“Everglades, Big Cypress, Biscayne, Fort Jefferson”).

Big Cypress Natural Preserve is also an important part of the Everglades. The Cypress tree is found all throughout the southeastern United States and can survive standing in water for long periods of time, which allows them to survive in the Everglades. The water also keeps dry land trees from crowding them out (Golia 26). The Cypress tree can change radically with different environments. Some may stand over 100 feet tall and some in different locations will not get half as tall (Sand 55). The Cypress Tree forest became Big Cypress National Preserve in 1974 because of its importance to the Everglades. The Cypress National Preserve is a 2,400 square mile basin to the west of the glades and is separated from the glades drainage by a hammock and cypress covered ridge. The Big Cypress National Preserve serves as a buffer for the Everglades by filtering and storing fresh water. In the Cypress Preserve are deep ponds and long sloughs, these depressions in the bedrock and acidic soil favor the growth of the cypress tree (Golia 26.)

The dry season is wintertime for the rest of the United States. In the Everglades, the dry season begins in late November to early December and ends with the start of the new summer. The dry season can be extreme drought or mild drought, depending on the rainfall from the previous wet season. No matter what kind of drought it is, it is always a fight for survival. After the water dries up and the land cracks, fish and other aquatic l

Some topics in this essay:
Peters Reed, Cypress Preserve, Crane O’Donnel, Southern Florida, Everglades Mangrove, American Alligator, Lake Okeechobee, Finally Florida’s, June Eighty, Life Everglades, peters reed, lake okeechobee, crane o’donnel, wet season, southern tip, southern florida, national park, cypress tree, cypress national, dry season, southern tip florida, biscayne fort jefferson”, cypress national preserve, cypress biscayne fort, “everglades cypress biscayne,