Wlrn | Presents

Let’s start with what we’re losing: One of the most biologically diverse places on Earth, from sawgrass to cypress trees, apple snails to alligators. The historic home of Florida’s Miccosukee and Seminole tribes. A national park. The ecosystem that ensures fresh drinking water for more than 8 million Floridians. Everglades advocate Marjory Stoneman Douglas talked about all this in an interview in 1983. “It was a marvelous expanse of flat green land with its strangeness and its openness and its birds,” she said. “So utterly unique, you see. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.” More than 30 years later, Wayne Rassner stands knee-deep in a pool of water in a cypress dome in Everglades National Park. He’s a volunteer guide, a canoeing enthusiast and the head of the South Florida National Parks Trust. He takes people into the park so they can learn about the challenges the Everglades face. And so they can see its beauty firsthand. “We don’t have a giant waterfall or an