Everglades

A vast subtropical wetland covering the southern tip of Florida, known as the River of Grass for the slow sheet flow of water that moves almost imperceptibly from Lake Okeechobee south to Florida Bay through seemingly endless sawgrass marsh. Everglades National Park, established in 1947 and protecting roughly 6,100 square kilometers of the ecosystem, is the only place on Earth where alligators and crocodiles live side by side. Decades of drainage and diversion for agriculture and development have shrunk and altered the historic system, which once covered an area roughly three times the current park, and restoring its natural water flow is among the largest ecosystem restoration efforts ever undertaken.