By Amy Green
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Everglades National Park, Fla. — Mary Barley
pauses and points into the brush. There, perched near the water, is a
green heron. She reaches for her camera. On the boardwalk nearby,
tourists swat mosquitoes. A small alligator floats in the distance.
Somewhere pumps deliver the water that makes this entire scene possible.
It is a warm, bright morning here in the Royal Palm area of Everglades National Park, the first area of the Everglades to be preserved as a state park in 1916. Here North America
meets the tropics, breeding a biodiversity unlike that of any place
else on Earth. And the most valued resource is water. Water fuels the
region.
Ms. Barley and I are here with Tom Van Lent, senior scientist for the Everglades Foundation,
a conservation group. Barley, the foundation’s vice chairwoman, is on
one of her many fact-finding trips into the Everglades. She peppers Mr.
Van Lent with questions as if she’s cross-examining a witness – about
water flows, about man-made water “gates,” about the minute mechanics of
one of the world’s most unusual pieces of outdoor plumbing. She wants
to do more than preserve the Everglades with a photograph. Read more here.
