Wild Bird Challenges In The Everglades

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Wild Bird Challenges in the Everglades
South Florida is home to the Everglades. Contrary to popular opinion, the Everglades is not a swamp. The Everglades is river; a body of water flowing south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. This “river” is 60 miles wide and 300 miles long. The Everglades is one of the largest subtropical wilderness areas left in the United States. It contains many different bio-zones such as mangrove and pine hammocks, open prairies as well as salt and brackish water ponds. This diverse wilderness is home to a large population of wildlife and specifically a home to a large variety of wild birds. The Everglades is relatively young at only 5000 years old but the last 100 years of human expansion in South Florida has dealt the wild birds that live there many challenges never seen before.
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Encroachment occurs when the human population displaces habitat of the wild birds. Human beings have lived in the Everglades for almost as long as it has existed but the they have grabbed more land in the last 100 years. Human beings are land hungry and the land taken from the Everglades causes many problems. The expansion of human population into the Everglades required major alteration to its drainage patterns. Areas once inhabited by wild birds are now either completely dry or flooded. Also, the drainage of the Everglades by the sugar industry over the past 50-60 years has altered the Everglades’ complex water chemistry. Some experts believe that the humans’ extensive encroachment has diminished 90% of the wading bird