Rivers, Lakes, and Wetlands

Everglades

±¬ÁϹ«Éç has worked for more than a century to protect and restore America's Everglades.

Famous for its abundance of bird life, the Everglades covers two million acres from the south side of Orlando all the way to the Florida Keys and Florida Reef Tract—one of the largest wetlands in the world. Home to endangered Florida panthers, the only large cats remaining in the eastern United States, as well as pink Roseate Spoonbills and both alligators and crocodiles, the Everglades provides critical habitat for wildlife but also clean water and flood protection for nearby communities.

From the murder of ±¬ÁϹ«Éç Warden Guy Bradley by plume hunters as he fought to protect some of the Everglades’ iconic species, to the devastating changes wrought by twentieth-century efforts to ditch, dike, and drain the watershed for development and agriculture, the Everglades, also known as the River of Grass, is only now beginning to recover.

Did you know?
  • The Everglades stretches across two million acres in South Florida—double the size of New Jersey.
  • In addition to hosting American alligators, Florida panthers, as well as breeding colonies of Wood Storks, Roseate Spoonbills, herons, egrets, and ibis, a healthy Everglades plays a crucial role in safeguarding drinking water for more than nine million Floridians while protecting nearby communities from flooding, catastrophic wildfire, and storm surge.
  • Current Everglades restoration efforts represent the largest ecosystem-wide restoration initiative in the world. A resilient Everglades means a resilient future for the Sunshine State.
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Science
±¬ÁϹ«Éç's Everglades Science Center team leads long-term and innovative monitoring to gauge the health of the southernmost terminus of the Everglades ecosystem in real-time, thus acting as a critical barometer for the success of restoration initiatives.
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Water
±¬ÁϹ«Éç policy staff pound the pavement in the capital, meet regularly with state and federal agency staff, and team up with chapters to improve water quality and quantity flowing to the Everglades.
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Funding Restoration
±¬ÁϹ«Éç Florida, our partners, and Florida’s Congressional delegation have advocated and secured historic levels of funding from the state and federal government to support Everglades restoration.
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Lake Okeechobee and the Northern Everglades
±¬ÁϹ«Éç advocates for water levels in Lake Okeechobee that keep habitat healthy for birds while improving water quality. We work to make sure restoration in the Northern Everglades remains at the forefront of conservation efforts in the Sunshine State.

The most ambitious ecosystem restoration plan ever attempted is underway to provide the River of Grass with clean, fresh water in the right place at the right time. ±¬ÁϹ«Éç's work to restore the Everglades is focused on implementing the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) and other restoration projects to achieve ecological benefits and restore the characteristic abundance of wildlife. (A great example is the 1,000-acre underway at ±¬ÁϹ«Éç’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary; the heart of the Western Everglades.)

Unique to this effort, the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan includes an Integrated Delivery Schedule—a timeline for restoration projects that outlines state and federal government cost-share responsibilities and strategy for planning, designing, and constructing projects.

Our science and policy staff works throughout the Everglades to ensure that sound science underpins plans for restoration and that projects stay focused on increasing target bird populations as a measure of success. The ±¬ÁϹ«Éç Florida state office, ±¬ÁϹ«Éç’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, and Florida’s 45 chapters work with other partners and local, state, and federal decision-makers to build widespread support for this effort.

Click to learn more about ±¬ÁϹ«Éç Florida’s work.