Will You Bare Your Feet in the Everglades?

E V E R G L A D E S  N A T I O N A L   P A R K, Fla., Dec. 19, 2003 -- Not far from where the tram full of tourists glimpsed an alligator lurking among saw grasses, a guide dares them to wade knee-deep into the swampy, darkwater surrounding them.

"Is she serious? Are you going to go in?" Kathy Nubling askedher husband, Al, not budging from her seat.

The California couple was touring the country trying to visitevery national park. Just to be adventurous, they bared their feet,crossed the wet grass and stepped blindly into the black water.

Nine-year-old Catherine Morrison tried to get as far, butsettled for getting the bottoms of her feet wet.

"It was icky. There was all this gooey stuff in the water,"she said after skipping over a pile of ants and retreating to thesafety of her seat.

Mosquitoes and Humidity Keep Visitors Away

The Everglades has never been a glamorous vacation spot. Despiteefforts to promote the wetland as an eco-tourism destination, theinhospitable scenery keeps many tourists at Florida's more popularbeaches and theme parks.

As if mosquitoes and smothering humidity weren't enough totarnish the park's image, decades of development and pollution haveswallowed more than 5,000 square miles, half of the originalwetlands. The changes wiped out some of the wildlife andsurroundings that would be among the park's biggest attractions.

An $8.4 billion restoration project, now underway after years ofplanning, aims to reverse some of that damage. State officials hopethe plan — billed as the world's largest environmental restorationproject — will lure more tourists to discover the rare wilderness.

"People who live in Indiana will scrimp and save because theywant to make sure they take their kids to see the Grand Canyon. Ihope with this kind of investment, people in Indiana will scrimpand save so they can make sure their kids have seen theEverglades," Florida Department of Environmental ProtectionSecretary David Struhs said.

Largest National Park in the East

Everglades National Park is the largest national park east ofthe Rocky Mountains, covering 1.5 million acres. More than amillion people visit its sawgrass prairies, mangrove shorelines andcypress forests each year, but that number is a fraction of themore than 75 million vacationers who came to Florida last year. Thenumber of annual visitors to the park also has dropped offsubstantially since the early 1970s, when visitation peaked at morethan 1.7 million people.

Meanwhile, millions more visitors are heading to other nationalparks each year, including Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemitenational parks. In the last decade, visitors to Grand CanyonNational Park have approached 5 million. At Yosemite, visitationtopped 4 million in the 1990s.

It doesn't help that Everglades National Park is recognized asthe nation's most threatened. More than a dozen species areendangered, making it difficult for visitors to snap pictures ofmany of them, including the Florida panther, West Indian manateeand red-cockaded woodpecker. The panther remains the most elusive;researchers estimate only 75 roam the marshland.

The bird population has dwindled to 10 percent of what it was inthe early 1900s, when hunters started killing birds for theirfashionable feathers. Despite the decline, bird watching has becomeone of the park's most popular activities.

Shirley McBride, a tour guide at the park's Shark ValleyVisitors Center, often tells groups of visitors that hunters wouldmake more off an ounce of feathers than they would if they haddiscovered the same in gold.

"I would think there would be nothing more beautiful than tolook at a little tree island and see nothing but a plume offeathers like they used to," McBride lamented recently to a tourgroup scanning the skies for birds. While hunters started abusing the Everglades in the late 1800s,the worst disruptions started in the 1940s, when developers begancarving the marshland with roads for subdivisions and canals tocontrol flooding. The changes permanently altered the flow anddepth of the slow-moving river. Pollution from farms and urbanareas over the past few decades has choked out more native habitat,making some of the wetland's unique plant life hard to spot.

The plant at the center of the best seller The Orchid Thiefrecently gave the Everglades some much-needed publicity. Butvisitors who brave the depths of swampland searching for thesought-after ghost orchid will likely meet disappointment. AuthorSusan Orlean never saw the mysterious white flower and readersmight even be put off by her description of the "miserable"place.

"This is definitely something you don't normally experience. Itwas different than the usual rides and excitement," said MichaelMorrison, who brought his three children to the national park fromtheir home in Fort Lauderdale, about 50 miles away. "But this isgoing to allow them to appreciate the wildlife and what is righthere. It's important that they know that."

A Few Brave Tourists

Tour guides recognize that many visitors understand little aboutthe complicated ecosystem and spin tales that make it relevant, atleast for Floridians.

As the Morrisons and others marvel at the few brave tourists whostep into the muck, McBride reaches in and pulls up some slimy,dark algae called periphyton, which is eaten by fish and snails andserves as the base of the Everglades food chain. The algae supportsmore biodiversity than anywhere else in North America. The watersupplies a region with 6 million people. "The water that you're looking at is the water you used tobrush your teeth and take a bath last night in South Florida,"McBride tells them. "A lot of people find that unsettling."

The Everglades is the only large, subtropical wetland in NorthAmerica — comparable only to Brazil's Pantanal, which is theworld's biggest expanse of wetlands.

A Leisurely Journey

Appreciating the Everglades, the tranquil waters, toweringcypress trees and sawgrass prairies that stretch for miles untilthey touch the clear blue sky, just takes more time, says touroperator David Harraden.

"The more you're out there, the more it just becomes an amazingplace. It's so remote and quiet," said Harraden, who leads campingand kayaking trips through the western Everglades. "We poke alongand see the water gliders, what's in the spider webs. You seeospreys and rare birds, like the wood stork. Then we'll paddle outin the Gulf and there's the dolphins."

Many tours focus on what the Everglades looked like decades ago,how the water was cleaner, how the skies filled with birds and howorchids seen nowhere else in the world made their home amongstrands of cypress trees.

If the Everglades restoration meets its goals in the decades tocome, state officials hope those tours will have to alter theirmessage and millions more tourists will come to hear it.

"I'm just fascinated with the wildlife and the water thatstretches on forever," Kathy Nubling said after a two-hour tramride through a sawgrass prairie. "Everywhere you go in our countryand our world, we're losing or abusing something. We're just luckythat someone's working to preserve this." If You Go…

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK: Open daily, 24 hours a day. Nearestairports are Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers. The mainentrance is near Homestead and Florida City. Admission fee is $10per car. Visitation is highest December through April, when theweather is mild and pleasant, although occasional cold fronts maycreate freezing conditions. Summers are hot and humid. For a24-hour weather advisory for the park area, call (305) 229-4522.For information on boat tours, try Flamingo Lodge Boat Tours at(239) 695-3101 or Everglades National Park Boat Tours at (239)695-2591. For tram tours, call (305) 221-8455. For generalinformation about the park, contact (305) 242-7700 or visitwww.nps.gov/ever. EVERGLADES RESTORATION PLAN: Visit www.evergladesplan.org. EVERGLADES ADVENTURES: Based in Everglades City. Call (239)695-3299 or visit www.evergladesadventures.com. Tours, canoeing,fishing, packages.