Poised, statue-like, in the sawgrass, the ivory-white heron might have been resting, or perhaps waiting for its next meal to come within view beneath its spindly legs. Across the way, an anhinga was resting on a tree branch, wings outstretched to catch the morning breeze to dry off. From my overlook on the boardwalk, an alligator drifted silently below through Taylor Slough.
It's impossible in just a handful of days to truly appreciate, and fully comprehend, Everglades National Park, a subtropical wilderness that has endured while much of Florida has been conquered by efforts to drain the swamp. Most of the park -- 1.3 million of the 1.5 million total acreage -- is out of reach to those who stay on the park road that runs from the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center to Flamingo.
Still, driving that road brings into view not only the expansive sweeps of sawgrass prairie and occasional cypress domes, but more of those snowy white birds -- egrets -- great blue herons, red-shouldered hawks, and other birds that savor the marshes, cypress domes, and hardwood hammocks in the park. Birds such as the iconic roseate spoonbills, white ibis, wood storks and many dozens of others.
While much work and billions of dollars have been spent to restore the natural flow of the "river of grass" from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, a rejuvenation that should pay huge benefits to the park's flora and fauna, on-the-ground battles continue against invasive predators that have been robbing the park of its small mammals and nonnative vegetation that has overwhelmed portions of the mesmerizing sawgrass prairie.
Everglades was the last stop in a nearly yearlong journey by the National Parks Traveler's editors and writers to gain a better understanding not just of the invasion of nonnative intruders on the National Park System's landscapes, but to learn steps National Park Service personnel and contractors are taking in the battle and the successes they are seeing.
The Traveler's coverage has ranged from the impacts from feral hogs in Great Smoky Mountains National Park to those of invading mosquitoes at Haleakalā National Park. We've gathered stories from Colorado River tributaries deep in the backcountry of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah as well as from high-country lakes in Sequoia National Park and even the Great Lakes, where Asian carp threaten to upend the fisheries.
But as we worked on this story, the Everglades kept popping up as the poster child of invasive species in the Park System. Its collective mix of constricting Burmese pythons; sweeps of both Melaleuca and Brazilian pepper trees; opportunistic Argentine black and white tegus, an omnivorous lizard; and lionfish in its marine world present a seemingly unstoppable invasion.
Feral hogs in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park/Meredith Boatman
"It’s not just these reptiles that are getting all this attention," Everglades Superintendent Pedro Ramos told me in April when we sat behind park headquarters to discuss the myriad issues the park is confronted with. "Those big snakes are giving us the opportunity to speak about exotic invasions in general. The exotic plants here in Everglades National Park, and South Florida in general, other parts of the country as well, are also a problem of great concern to us.
“I think this was the perfect storm. This was the perfect storm. It’s a system that, we’re not restoring it just because. It’s a system that we altered, we altered severely. We kept these wetlands dry from the water that they need in order to function properly," Ramos explained. “And that just set the stage perfectly well for this invasion of both animals and plants to occur over the years. It hasn’t happened overnight. This has been happening over the past several decades, and unfortunately we have species like the Burmese python. It is so established in this environment that our scientists are telling us that it’s very unlikely that we would ever be able to eradicate them."
But as this project took Traveler's editors and writers across the country, they found signs of success.
- At Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina, remote-controlled traps are making a dent in the park's feral hog population.
- Crews from Grand Staircase Escalante Partners are making progress in slowing, if not reversing in some places, the spread of invasive Russian olive in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
- Hundreds of nonnative mountain goats have been removed from Olympic National Park, and ravenous, and invasive, lake trout are being reduced in number in Yellowstone Lake.
- At Haleakalā National Park in Hawaii, there's optimism a project there could upend the production of invasive female mosquitoes that carry avian malaria to the park's endemic birds, some of which are listed as either threatened or endangered.
- High-country lakes in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks have been rid of nonnative trout.
Quagga mussels have infested the waters of Lake Powell at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area/Kurt Repanshek
In some cases, though, complete victory is not likely to be achieved. Quagga mussel infestations at lakes Powell and Mead are two examples, and Everglades is not expected to one day be rid of all Burmese pythons.
But, as Superintendent Ramos noted, all is not lost.
"The goal is to bring back the water [through the ongoing Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan] and allow Mother Nature to do its thing and heal," he told me. "The expectation is that while we know that perhaps we will never rid ourselves of these big snakes, and perhaps other critters that are already establishing themselves down here, we know that we can give Mother Nature a chance to heal and restore itself."
It won't be an easy path to healing across the National Park System, nor will it be inexpensive, as Jason Corzine, a vice president at the National Park Foundation who focuses on natural resource issues in the park system, told us at the outset of the project. Unknown is the eventual cost the Park Service will incur in striving to minimize the impacts of invasive species. In Fiscal Year 2020 alone the agency had a $143 million budget to address the problem. Whether the total cost over time eclipses the often-touted $12 billion or so in backlogged maintenance needs in the park system remains to be seen.
"The issue is not going away," Corzine said. "It's going to be a presence within the Park Service. I look at each of these parks as a unique kind of learning laboratory, with climate issues in general, invasive species issues in general. I don't know that they've ever put a pen to paper to say, 'This issue in particular is costing us X dollars a year in perpetuity.' I just don't know that they've approached it that way in a very holistic sense.
"I think they've got science and the expertise in-house where they are thinking about this but at a global picture, I'm not sure if they know the real financial impact that this presents to the Park Service and the visitor experience, ultimately," he said.
Traveler postscript: In the coming weeks we'll be concluding this series with stories and videos from Everglades National Park. In the meantime, you can find the previous coverage from the series here:
Traveler Special Report: The Invasion Of The National Park System
Traveler Special Report: Invasive Fish in National Parks
Audio Postcard From The Parks | Battling Russian Olive At Glen Canyon NRA
Traveler Special Report: Vegetative Invaders In The National Parks
Charitable Dollars Help In Fight Against Invasives In National Park System
Traveler Special Report: The Cost Of Invasive Species In The National Park System
Traveler Special Report: Forest Keepers
Traveler Special Report: Battling Invaders With Fire At National Battlefields
Traveler Special Report: Measuring Successes Against Invasive Species
Traveler's Audio Postcards From The Parks: Hog Wild
Traveler Special Report: Invasive Mammals And The National Parks
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