Acrylic Fridge Magnet: United States. Florida. Everglades National Park Long Pine Key Nature Trail

The author of the photo: Miguel Vieira. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).

Majestic Pine Trees in the Florida Everglades

You can almost smell the pungent, tangy aroma of pine sap when you look at this picture taken on the Long Pine Key Trail in Everglades National Park. The image has been captured and made into a keepsake fridge magnet souvenir from Florida that you can look at any time you want for a reminder of your visit to the amazing wilderness and wetlands of the Everglades.

Everglades National Park is a nature reserve located in southern Florida that protects about twenty percent of the original vast region of vanishing wetlands and forests that used to cover land now drained and developed into metropolitan areas. One and a half million acres of parklands are devoted to protecting the fragile ecosystem of the Everglades and its endangered species. Everglades National Park is a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve.

Hiking and Biking the Long Pine Key Trails

More than a million people visit Everglades National Park every year to explore the trails and waterways of this incredible and diverse wilderness. The Long Pine Key Trails run west through the Pinelands, beginning at the Long Pine Key campground and connecting with a few side trails to meet the main park road at Pine Glades Lake. The pineland trails run 22 miles through dense stands of tall pine trees and thick palmetto bushes in a forest surrounded by thousands of acres of sawgrass prairie wetlands.

Hiking and biking along the Long Pine Key Trails provides rare opportunities to see some of the most rare species of plants and animals, perhaps even one of the 36 endangered species that live in the Everglades. The Florida black panther lives here, as does the manatee, the snail kite, the American alligator and the American crocodile, as well as many other endangered birds, plants and sea turtles.