The southern end of Florida is home to Everglades National Park, which is also a UNESCO Biosphere and a World Heritage Site. Since 1900, the area has been both protected and threatened, with political battles needed to protect bird plumage, to create the park, and to protect the large, diverse ecosystem here. Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote a book to explain how the Shark Valley River Slough runs as a “river of grass” through the Everglades. When summer rains fill Lake Okeechobee, a sheet of water overflows the low bank and floods the flat grasslands, revitalizing fish eggs and a whole ecosystem. A cross Florida road called the Tamiami Trail prevented that flow, and a political battle was fought to restore it partially. The fresh water eventually sinks through the limestone, filling the Biscayne Aquifer to provide drinking water for Miami. There are also canals crisscrossing lower Florida, including here, and that’s where these two young alligators were hanging out. Alligator Alcatraz, a temporary migrant detention center, is in the Everglades ecosystem, but it’s not in the national park. Alligator Alcatraz is north of the Tamiami trail in Big Cypress National Preserve.

The park is 1.5 million acres, including the mangrove islands that form the southern end of Florida, before the Keys. The best place to see the mangroves is by boat, either from Everglades City west of Big Cypress or by driving to Flamingo. I took my family to the latter, and we saw a large crocodile near the dock, plus much more wildlife on a quick cruise in the “submerged wilderness” of Florida Bay. Personally, I wouldn’t kayak these waters, but many people do, camping on the Chickees or raised bits of ground where natives camped seasonally and for different purposes for centuries at least. There’s even a paddling waterway to go between Everglades City and Flamingo. Before the highway was built out to Key West, visitors commonly took a similar route by boat.

The work of environmental protection is never done. Burmese pythons entered the park in the 1970s—likely as discarded pets—, and now they’ve wiped out most of the native animals, threatening the Florida panther with extinction. I was disappointed to see the dramatic decline in wildlife evident from the Shark Valley Tower, since I first visited decades ago and even since I visited again with my family not so many years ago. And since last year, the state government is not allowed to mention climate change, global warming or sea level rise, but that obviously won’t do anything to prevent rising sea levels from submerging much of southern Florida, including most of Miami and almost 1/2 the park in the coming decades. Especially if the government refuses to take action, climate science clearly shows that the environment will only continue to worsen more rapidly.