Tons of gators! Everglades National Park: Ochopee, Florida

The Everglades National Park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River. Around one million people visit the park each year. Everglades is the third-largest national park in the lower 48 after Death Valley and Yellowstone. UNESCO declared the Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and listed the park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, and the Ramsar Convention included the park on its list of Wetlands of International Importance in 1987. Everglades is one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists. It once stretched across a swath of wetlands from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay but by the mid-1900s nearly half of the area 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.
You may be surprised to learn that the most likely place to see a bigfoot, outside of the Pacific Northwest, is in the Florida Everglades. The region around the tiny town of Ochopee is particularly favored by smelly, hairy creatures that are six to seven feet tall and 350 to 450 pounds, and it is here that the the world's only Skunk Ape Research Headquarters is located. The Skunk Ape earns its name for its unusual odor, which some say is the smell of rotting garbage, methane or skunks. Researchers attribute the mammal’s odor to its natural habitat of alligator dens “filled with swamp gas and animal cadavers,” while others maintain that the smell is a result of their lack of bathing. Whatever the reason for the smell, all Skunk Ape sightings have made reference to their distinct scent. Follow Trim and Head this week as we paddle the Turner River Canoe Trail through gator country and search of alligators and skunk apes in the Florida Everglades!

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/dark-matters/there-must-be-chaos-within-you-to-give-birth-to-a-dancing-star-aboutface
License code: JCLFXXLXROYHSNNJ