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Randy Kautz
“In our very midst, we have a tract of land one hundred and thirty miles long and seventy miles wide that is as much unknown to the white man as the heart of Africa.”
Hugh L. Willoughby, Across the Everglades 1900
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The Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area is part
of what remains of the largest freshwater marsh ecosystem in the United
States. Once water covered—for at least part of each year—nearly
all of south Florida from the custard apple and cypress swamps bordering
Lake Okeechobee through flat expanses of gray-green sawgrass veined
with sloughs and tree islands to the mangrove forests along Florida
Bay. Today the 671,831-acre Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife
Management Area is the northern and central core of the Everglades,
buffering Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve
from extensive agricultural fields to the north and residential development
to the east. Although airboats and tracked vehicles are necessary to
reach the interior, the extensive network of levees and canals constructed
for flood control and water supply afford ample opportunities for fishing,
frogging, hiking, biking, and wildlife viewing.
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