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Inlets in Everglades
Photograph by Otis Imboden
The park’s unique mix of tropical and temperate plants and animals includes more than 700 plant and 300 bird species, as well as the endangered manatee, crocodile, and Florida panther. Alligator poachers have been known to hide in the bends of mangrove trees while on the hunt.
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Egret
Photograph courtesy National Park Service
Egrets, such as this one silhouetted against Florida's setting sun, are part of the unique mix of wildlife that lives among the saw grass and mangroves of Everglades National Park. The park covers just one-fifth of the 'Glades, dubbed the River of Grass by environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
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Young Alligators
Photograph by Ron Levine/Getty Images
The diverse life of Everglades National Park, from algae to alligators, depends upon a rhythm of abundance and drought. Watch out for baby alligators—they tend to stay near their very protective mothers for the first year or two of life.
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Florida Bay
Photograph by Michael Melford
Boating in the Florida Bay takes a skilled and steady hand ready to navigate treacherous stretches of mudbanks and sea grass. Also a potential danger: waterspouts, or intense tornadoes of water that shoot out of the water without warning.
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Baby Alligator
Photograph by Jean-Pierre Dodel, submitted to My Shot
A young gator wends through Shark Valley in Everglades National Park. The spot gets its name from the Shark River, where sharks gather at its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Palmetto Plants
Photograph by Phil Schermeister
Everglades National Park is at the southern tip of the Everglades, a hundred-mile-long (160-kilometer-long) subtropical wilderness of saw-grass prairie, junglelike hammock, and mangrove swamp that originally ran from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.
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Eastern Diamondback
Photograph by Chris Johns
An eastern diamondback rattlesnake perches on mangrove roots in Florida's Everglades. Only about half of this important watershed is left today due to water diversion and draining.
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Egret and Cypresses
Photograph courtesy National Park Service
In the Everglades, unusual adaptations and delicate balances sustain the park's astonishing variety of animals and plants. Here, a great egret stays close to a cypress stand. The bird waits for prey to get close before snaking its long neck out and snapping it up.
