Everglades National Park
The Everglades ecosystem once stretched across a mosaic of wetlands and subtropical wilderness from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Unfortunately, by the mid-1900s nearly half of the slow-moving “river of grass” had been drained to make way for farms and urban development. The park was established in 1947, after decades of activism, to preserve a treasured 1.5 million acres of the ecosystem.
The Everglades is a complex mix of salt and freshwater wetlands, hardwood hammocks, and pine rocklands that support a wide variety of flora and fauna. The ecosystem functions as a giant water purifier, filtering and cleaning water that drains from farms and impervious surfaces before reaching Florida Bay and the Ten Thousand Islands. The Everglades also contributes to South Florida’s climate resilience, naturally absorbing the impacts of hurricanes and minimizing coastal erosion and flooding.
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I found lots of masks, gloves, and sometimes face shields, Otazo tells
New Times. Literally everything you can imagine.
Otazo says he found all manner of strange items washed up on the island this year, including a 50-gallon oil drum, a piece of a boat from Louisiana, and a large number of not-so-savory items. Needles, clothes, condoms, and underwear. An unnerving amount of underwear, he reports.
While he normally goes out with groups of volunteers to do cleanups, Otazo says he decided to go it alone this year because of COVID-19. His parents are getting on in years and he doesn t want risk to exposing them to the virus, so he chose to forgo a gathering, even if it was for a good cause.
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