Florida Everglades Essay

Words: 980
Pages: 4

Why Wetlands Need Our Help When the words wetlands or Florida Everglades are mentioned what comes to mind? The science lesson that you really weren't paying much attention to. A dark scary swamp filled with Indiana Jones' worst fear, snakes. Or maybe even that field trip to the Everglades you took in middle school where talking to your friends and looking at the native American jewelry was more important then paying attention to the slowly dying ecosystem around you. Back then none of these situations made you understand why it was so important to save a "snake pit" in the first place. Now after many scientists and the government have decided to start making a difference its necessary to understand why the wetlands of America need our help. …show more content…
In the passage, Are the Everglades Forever? It is mentioned that reports from only a year ago say that thousands of these dangerous and unwelcome snakes have been making their way into the Everglades by jeopardizing the native species. A specific example of how these fanged beasts are imposing on the natural flow of the everglades ecosystem is how they are destroying the food chain, a vital part of any ecosystem. Also in the article it says, "The invasive pythons and anacondas..... have few natural predators, so their numbers grow with little to keep them under control.... They’ve crippled the Everglades' populations of opossums, rabbits, bobcats and foxes, thus dominating the food web to such a degree that there's not much of a web anymore." It's not even just the animals being threatened, plants have been suffering an increase in invasive species too. There is one such vine-like plant that grows over original trees and plants that is able to block water flow and the movement of animals around it. Also, "America's Everglades is home to 67 threatened or endangered species." A quote from The Everglades: Quick facts. This large number of species in danger is due to many things but if the numbers of invasive species continue to go up so will the numbers of the endangered and