Wednesday, February 3, 2021 by Jenny Staletovich (WLRN )
Photo: NPS
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The National Park Service announced yesterday that facial masks will now be required in all national park buildings and facilities.
The masks will also be required outside where social distancing isn’t possible.
That means narrow or crowded trails.
Everglades, Dry Tortugas and Biscayne National Parks already have capacity limits for some guided tours and other operations.
Face masks are now required by all visitors in all NPS facilities and buildings. It is also required when social distancing is not possible such as busy trails, overlooks and historic buildings. Read more at https://t.co/7Xq8cv7vUd#RecreateResponsiblypic.twitter.com/OTP7goFq8K
Everglades National Park
The Everglades ecosystem once stretched across a mosaic of wetlands and subtropical wilderness from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Unfortunately, by the mid-1900s nearly half of the slow-moving “river of grass” had been drained to make way for farms and urban development. The park was established in 1947, after decades of activism, to preserve a treasured 1.5 million acres of the ecosystem.
The Everglades is a complex mix of salt and freshwater wetlands, hardwood hammocks, and pine rocklands that support a wide variety of flora and fauna. The ecosystem functions as a giant water purifier, filtering and cleaning water that drains from farms and impervious surfaces before reaching Florida Bay and the Ten Thousand Islands. The Everglades also contributes to South Florida’s climate resilience, naturally absorbing the impacts of hurricanes and minimizing coastal erosion and flooding.