Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

 *The following is a response to several questions given by my professor*

  Only about 10 minutes away from my house, I took a trip to the corkscrew swamp sanctuary as my second field trip for my colloquium class. Here are a few animals and plants that i saw and got good pictures of. The entire swamp is considered a wetland, but there were only patchy areas that actually held any amout of water like the picture below with the alligator swimming. There were three main ecosystems that made up the corkscrew sanctuary; these were the pine flat woods, the cypress dome and the oak hammock. Each having a different role in filtering the water before it reaches our aquifers and each were at a different elevation so that the flow of water is specifically directed. 

  The corkscrew sanctuary along with all the other national parks in Florida are usually run by non-profit organization in which require volunteers and donations to help run the day to day organizations. In order for everything to be maintained and run smoothly there needs to be cooperation among the people to have an understanding of how the ecosystem works and how it needs to be maintained to keep the ecosystem working properly. We cannot be ignorant and destroy the environment otherwise the damage will be irreversible.

   It would be a terrible ecological decision to bulldoze and build condos not only where corkscrew is but any amount of swamp land left in south Florida. The swamps play a crutial role in filtering the water and dispersing the water and nutrients to the ecosystems in the everglades. Without the swamp to slow down the flow of water, all the freshwater will flood into the ocean changing the salinity of several marine environments and droughting all the land further inland.