Essay On The Everglades

The Everglades has seen its fair share of damage throughout the years, and this mostly stems from problems with the water supply. Alterations to the water supply, primarily made by humans, have made significant changes to the Everglades and the many life forms that rely on it. Some of these changes have been helpful to the subtropical wilderness, but a large majority of them have hurt it as well. According to the article Past and Present: The Florida Everglades by Tobey Haskell, settlers started to make major changes to the Everglades in 1905. These changes were made in an attempt to make the land more feasible for agricultural purposes. The settlers, with assistance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, did things such as regulate the water flow and construct upon much of the Everglades. What seemed like a good idea at the time would come back and hurt the Everglades later. The Everglades was reduced to merely half the size it once was. The Everglades would continue to get damaged for decades until 1947 when the Everglades had received the national park treatment, and thus would be worked onto to restore the prosperity it once had. Not much change would come as a result of this, although according to the source mentioned before, it did prevent things such as construction of an airport near the Everglades, which would
This plan would help fund restoration of the Everglades, other smaller groups would chip in too, making the restoration a community effort. The amount of water in the Everglades wasn’t the only problem, though. Inhabitants of the Everglades mainly grow sugarcane. Sugarcane crops let off phosphorus into the water and as a result, not only is there even more effort required to clean up the water supply, the various ecosystems who rely on the water are endangered as