The Everglades is filled with beautiful natural around you. Enjoy the scenic drives going through the everglades on Everglades Airboat Tours. Royal Palm to Flamingo, a 76-mile round-trip. This scenic drive along Main Park Road passes through prairies, rare pinelands, Mahogany Hammock, and ends at Florida Bay. The trip will last all day if you take the opportunity to stop at the overlooks, trails, and backcountry waters. The main road is an excellent place to spot wildlife. Shark Valley to Everglades City is a 49-mile one-way trip along the Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41). This tour across the northern part of the park offers unobstructed views of the natural wilderness of the Everglades. The Shark Valley visitors center, Miccosukee Cultural Center, and Big Cypress National Preserve are just a few of the must-sees on this drive.

The diverse ecosystem of the Everglades hosts more than 750 animal species. Habitats range from Caribbean tropical to temperate North American, making it possible for a range of creatures to co-exist in the park. The Everglades are also home to 14 threatened or endangered species, including the Florida panther and the West Indian manatee.
More than 1,000 plant species can be found in the park. The sawgrass that makes up most of the prairies in the Everglades is one of the oldest green plants in the world. The roots of the plant are adaptable, allowing it to survive during wet and dry seasons. The park’s ecosystem is distressed because of several non-native plant species, including the Brazilian pepper and seaside mahoe.

To capture the natural beauty of the Everglades, take your camera to Pahayokee overlook. Standing on the platform will give you excellent views of the vast sawgrass prairies and unique bird species. On the Mahogany Hammock Trail you can capture the park’s rare, jungle-like hammocks—tree islands—and the largest living mahogany tree in the country. But the best place to photograph the Everglades may be on the water trails at Flamingo and the Gulf Coast, where you can find an abundance of wildlife. Remember, some of the best photographic conditions occur in early morning and at dusk, when the lighting is soft. Taking your photographs at these times is also a great way to beat the heat.

To get a better understanding of the everglades, take a guided tour. The information you learn will enrich your experience.

This week Florida has experienced some unusual news on dozens of whales being stranded in the Florida Everglades.

Wildlife officials, scientists and volunteers have been scrambling this week to save dozens of pilot whales that beached themselves in the shallow waters of Florida’s Everglades. A fishing guide on Dec. 3 discovered a pod of 51 whales in a remote area of the Everglades called Highland Beach, more than 20 miles away from water deep enough to support them. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries department responded to the call the next morning, they found six of the pilot whales already dead and were forced to euthanize four more.

The chances of success were not high — past whale strandings in the same area had led to mass deaths, and in general, it can be difficult to coax whales from shallow water back to the open sea. This is especially true for highly social animals like the pilot whale, which travel in close-knit family groups, known as pods. Pilot whales are loath to abandon family members, even if it puts the entire group at risk.

On Dec. 4, though rescuers found another whale dead, they were surprised to discover that some 35 of the whales had begun to move themselves into deeper water. But even when whales move offshore, they can restrand. In a Friday morning update on Twitter, NOAA officials said that they had been unable to locate a larger group of 24 whales, though a handful of individual whales were seen free-swimming in deeper water, and weather had made it harder to spot the whales from air. (It doesn’t help that sharks have begun to feed on the bodies of the dead whales, creating a danger for rescuers on the water.) Still, the fact that the whales can’t be spotted could be good news — it’s possible that they’ve made it out to open sea. But it’s impossible to know yet for sure.

The question remains, though: Why would such a large group of whales put themselves in such danger? Some of the pilot whales may have been sick — the whales are known to carry the morbillivirus, a highly contagious disease that can cause respiratory problems and weakness in affected marine mammals. The virus spread in the mid-Atlantic this summer, with some 800 dolphins falling victim. It’s possible that a handful of the pilot whales could have gotten sick and disoriented, and inadvertently led the rest of the pod into trouble — though scientists won’t know until they’ve had a chance to perform necropsies on the dead whales, which will take weeks.

In Florida, boats and helicopters from the National Park Service and the U.S. Coast Guard are still out searching for the missing whales. And if we’re lucky, they’re already in the open ocean, on their way home.

Read more: Why Did Dozens of Whales Strand Themselves in Florida’s Everglades? | TIME.comhttp://science.time.com/2013/12/06/beach-mystery-why-did-dozens-of-whales-strand-themselves-in-the-everglades/#ixzz2n8yGAMXe

See more things like this on Everglades Airboat Rides Miami!

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted unanimously Wednesday in Weston to push state and federal agencies to adopt a high-water emergency policy to protect plants and animals in the central Everglades. Developed by commissioner Ron Bergeron, calling for time and depth limits on water levels in the vast state conservation area that lies between I-75 and Tamiami Trail and a “tool box” for sending excess water south to Everglades National Park. Bergeron said prolonged high water levels spell disaster for the endangered Florida panther and other animals squeezed together on tree islands and levees to compete for shrinking food and habitat.

Bergeron said wildlife cannot survive completion of various Everglades restoration projects over the next 30 years unless water levels are regulated in the interim.

“What I’m looking for is an emergency policy to protect the environment while we accomplish the largest environmental restoration in the history of the world,” Bergeron said.

Following Bergeron’s lead, the FWC recommended water levels in the central Everglades have an average maximum depth of two feet during the wet season to near ground level during the dry season; maintain a gradual rate of water level increase and decrease, and limiting higher-than-average water levels to no more than 60 days. The commission also pledged to meet with representatives of other state and federal agencies involved in Everglades restoration to develop a “tool box” for sending excess water south through Everglades National Park to Florida Bay during high-water emergencies.

The proposal drew enthusiastic support from members of outdoors recreation groups at the meeting, but state and federal water managers balked.

Ernie Barnett, assistant executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, and Col. Tom Greco, deputy district commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, both said they must consider downstream impacts, such as flooding of homes and businesses, and water quality, before pushing water south of the Trail into the park. Barnett said construction projects to re-establish historic sheet flow from the water conservation areas south to the park will provide the most immediate relief, but he acknowledged they won’t be complete in time for the 2014 wet season.

“This is a huge issue and we are not getting the response we want,” commission chairman Richard Corbett said. “Push this up on top. It’s an emergency.”

With the commission’s support, Bergeron said he wants to go to Washington to meet with top officials of the Army Corps and Department of Interior to hammer out a high-water policy for the central Everglades.

Said Bergeron: “When you have a state of emergency in urban areas, you can deviate so people can get back to their lives. We’ve got to have an emergency policy for our environment to keep it alive.”

*Modified article on MiamiHearld.com*

Let’s keep the Everglades clean so we can go on more Airboat Everglade Tours!