A look at the Everglades: How old are they? When did they become a National Park?
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The Everglades info series
See more from ‘The Everglades info series,’ a Miami Herald video series produced by visual journalist D.A. Varela.
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Covering 1.5 million acres in South Florida, the Everglades National Park is the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. The Everglades ecosystem supplies the drinking water for millions of South Floridians.
But what was the origin of the Everglades? When and why did they get the National Park designation? What are some of the challenges the park is facing? And why do the Everglades matter to South Florida?
The third episode of “The Everglades info series,” a Miami Herald video series produced by visual journalist D.A. Varela, answers these and more questions about the Everglades.
Perhaps no place in Florida better illustrates the threat of climate change than South Florida’s wetlands, an area once covering 4,000 square miles and now less than half that size, reduced and fragmented by farms, homes, roads and canals. . Now, the continuing problems of sea rise, water pollution, salt-water intrusion and the erosion of peat soil that make up much of the marshland threaten to compound the historic damage from development.
Subsequent episodes of “The Everglades info series” will look at the fauna and flora that populates the Everglades and the impacts of climate change.
This video was produced with funding from Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald is responsible for all editorial content.
This story was originally published July 26, 2023 at 5:30 AM.