Everglades National Park

Though construction and development have diminished the Everglades to half their original size, South Florida is still defined by this vast wetland. Just how, exactly, do they help protect us from flooding, which is intensifying as a warmer climate brings more precipitation and stronger hurricanes?

On "The Florida Roundup," Kate Payne with AP and Ted Hesson with Reuters talk about how the Everglades facility has been called temporary, but the timeline of its existence is unknown.

“Detaining immigrants at a remote airfield in the Everglades, with no clear legal framework or due process, is about fear, not safety,” José Javier Rodríguez said Wednesday. “The most obvious reason seems to be political theater, just trying to get attention in Washington, rather than looking out for the interests of our state and its people.”

By the several hundreds on Sunday, people gathered outside the gates of an abandoned airport tarmac in a remote area off U.S. 41 protesting that Florida is proposing to be the next site of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. The state is calling it the Alligator Alcatraz.

As South Florida national parks reckon with staff layoffs from the White House, the latest visitor data shows attendance steadily rebounding and in some cases breaking records following the COVID-19 shutdown.

Winter is the perfect time to visit Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park, where new accommodations and a new tour catamaran named in honor of a key conservationist bring nature even closer.

Everglades National Park has (re)joined the ranks of national parks with an on-site hotel. That means real beds, air conditioning, WiFi, even a full-service 110-seat kitchen and bar.

WLRN environmental editor Jenny Staletovich and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Patrick Farrell talk about what it was like to wade through the muck of the Everglades to check on the decades-long battle to make the River of Grass work as nature intended.

We listen to the part of the first episode of Bright Lit Place, a new WLRN podcast distributed by the NPR Network. It was reported by WLRN's environment editor Jenny Staletovich. We also hear behind-the-scenes stories from Jenny and Patrick Farrell, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who worked on the project.

The long-lost Flamingo Lodge is reopening its doors after nearly 20 years.

Construction on the long-awaited visitor's center in Everglades City begins September 30th with the halting of onsite concession services including boat tours and rentals.

WLRN's Carlos Frías is joined by poet and interdisciplinary artist Arsimmer McCoy. She tells us about her solitary month in the Everglades as the park's artist in residence, fishing with her dad and the music and scents of Friday night football in Richmond Heights.