everglades-national-park.us

lies adjacent to Everglades National Park, and is part of the same ecosystem. The Preserve itself is mostly northwest of Everglades National Park, but ecologically speaking, lay adjacent to the Park, covering the western half of the middle of the Florida peninsula south of Lake Oceechobee. In other words, what has been preserved doesn’t cover what used to be. In fact, the cypress swamps used to extend all the way up to Lake Okeechobee, with a section called Devil’s Garden that was more pineland, in the days before white settlers drained the area and began raising cattle in the northern region of the Okeechobee drainage area. The current 729,000 acres of Cypress swampland, although a fraction of the cypress swamps that existed 150 years ago, are still a vital component of today’s Everglades.

Tags: Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades, Everglades Florida, Everglades National Park