FLORIDA BAY AND THE COASTAL PRAIRIE
(elevation: sea level to 2 feet above sea level)
FLORIDA BAY 1 RED-MANGROVE 2 BLACK-MANGROVE 3 WHITE-MANGROVE 4 BUTTONWOOD 5 CABBAGE PALMETTO 6 HURRICANE-KILLED BLACK-MANGROVES 7 FIG 8 POISONWOOD CROCODILE GREAT WHITE HERON REDDIS EGRET COCONUT PALM SUCCULENTS GRASSES SEDGES WATERWAY [MARL] PRAIRIE
Back from the narrow beach is a drier zone of grasses and other low-growing vegetation. Some of the plants of this zone, such as the railroad vine, are so salt-tolerant that in places they grow almost to the water’s edge. (No plant that is extremely sensitive to salty soil could survive on Cape Sable.) Beyond the grassy zone is a zone of hardwoods (buttonwood, gumbo-limbo, Jamaica dogwood), cactuses, yucca, and other plants forming a transition from beach to coastal prairie.
Birds provide much of the visual excitement of the beach [community], just as they do in other parts of the park. Sandpipers, pelicans, gulls, egrets, ospreys, and bald eagles use it and the bordering waters for feeding, nesting, and resting. Mammals, notably raccoons, stalk the beach in search of food. And the big loggerhead turtle depends on it for nesting. In late spring and early summer the female loggerhead hauls herself up on the beach and digs a hole above hightide mark. There she deposits about 100 ping-pong balls—which should hatch out into baby loggerheads. Unfortunately for this marine reptile, however, most of them meet another fate. Hardly has the female turtle covered the eggs with sand and started back toward the water, than they are dug up and devoured by raccoons and other [predators]. These conditions created such high mortality of the turtles that the National Park Service has adopted special protective measures—removing some of the raccoons and erecting wire barriers around turtle nests. These measures have been effective, but continued surveillance is required if the loggerhead is not to disappear from Florida.
THE FLAMINGO AREA
An abundance of raccoons and other [predators] is not the only threat to survival of the loggerhead turtle. A major factor in its decline is the serious depletion of its nesting [habitat]. Park visitors are prohibited from interfering with these reptiles. Cape Sable beach is today virtually the only wild beach in South Florida, thanks to its inclusion in [Everglades] National Park. At present, visitors can reach it only by boat. But it would be foolhardy to take it for granted that the beach will remain unspoiled. Its potential as an attraction is such that someone not ecologically aware might believe that access for motorists would be an improvement. Roads, however, would bring increased pressure on the ecosystem by large numbers of visitors, and demands for further development, for lodging, meals, and other services seem always to go with automobiles. With continued protection from such encroachments, Cape Sable Beach will remain a unique wilderness resource and will not become just another recreational facility.
Merging with the beach is the coastal prairie, an ecosystem supporting red and black [mangroves], grasses, and other plants tolerant of the very salty [environment]. Hardwood [hammocks] have developed here on Indian shell mounds, but the trees are stunted by the saline soils. Though there is no lack of water on the cape, much of the region appears arid because hurricane-lashed tides have deposited soils of [marl] and debris so salt-laden that only sparse vegetation develops.
Big Cypress [Swamp]
To the west of the great fresh-water [marsh] called the [everglades], lying almost entirely outside the park, is an ecosystem vitally linked to the park. Big Cypress [Swamp] is a vast, shallow basin that includes practically all of Collier County. It is commonly called “The Big Cypress”—not because of the size of its trees, but because of its extent. Most of the baldcypresses (which are not true cypresses) are small trees, growing in open to dense stands throughout the area. The swamp is watered by about 50 inches of annual rainfall, the runoff from which flows as a sheet and in [sloughs] south and west to meet the coastal strip of [mangroves] and low sand dunes.