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Start giftingFrom Swamp to Wetland
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Learn moreThis book chronicles the creation of Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. Prior to the park's creation, the Everglades was seen as a reviled and useless swamp, unfit for typical recreational or development projects.
Park advocates drew on new ideas concerning the value of biota and ecology, the importance of wilderness, and the need to protect habitats, marine ecosystems, and plant life to redefine the Everglades. Using these ideas, the Everglades began to be recognized as an ecologically valuable and fragile wetland—and thus a region in need of protective status.
While these new ideas foreshadowed the later emergence of modern environmentalism, tourism and the economic desires of Florida's business and political elites also impacted the park's future. These groups saw the Everglades' unique biology and ecology as a foundation on which to build a tourism empire.
Yet, even after the park's creation, conservative landowners successfully fought to limit the park and saw it as a threat to their own economic freedoms. The battle to save the swamp's biodiversity continues, and Everglades Park stands at the center of ongoing restoration efforts.
Chris Wilhelm is associate professor of history at the College of Coastal Georgia. His research has appeared in the Journal of Southern History and the Florida Historical Quarterly. He lives in Brunswick, Georgia.
Born and raised in Queens, NYC, Steve Menasche is a child of Egyptian and German immigrants. He completed BS studies in percussion from Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music as well as his minor in theater. He was also a student at Manhattan School of Music, Third Street Music Settlement, and American Conservatory Theatre. He has toured the world three times, was a member of New York City's American Folk Theatre for two years, narrated over 250 audiobooks, performed countless voice-overs for major brands, appeared in national commercial campaigns, and continues to perform as both an actor and musician/composer. He previously owned and taught hapkido and jujutsu in San Francisco and continues to teach when his old knees allow.