Corkscrew Swamp

On our fourth field trip of the year, we went out the furthest we have gone, all the way to Immokalee, to a place known as the Corkscrew Swamp. When I first heard we were going here, I had no idea about the place. In fact, I just thought the Swamp was actually right on Corkscrew road near the university. Little did I know that it was actually an hour away! When we arrived at the swamp we began by going inside and then discussing the history of the water flow in Florida. I found it all very interesting because I hadn't known about the impact we have as a civilization on the water flow in Florida. We saw the three different maps about the water flow way back many years ago, and the population in Florida at the time, which was rather small. We then saw the map of how Florida is currently and I realized then how important it is that we help to restore the natural water flow in Florida for the sake of the environment and ourselves since we rely on the natural water our aquifers provide. After learning about that, we went along the boardwalk and split up into two groups. I felt this was smart since we could both cover much more ground splitting up rather than being together. Plus there wasn't much room on the boardwalk as it was for our entire class. We followed along the grad student who had a lot of information on the swamp. We learned about the background of the swamp and how it was purchased. We also learned about the animals in the swamp as well and spotted a few of them.
One of the animals we saw was a green anole. This was actually pretty cool to see because I hardly see the green anoles. We have the brown "cuban" anoles all over the place on our campus. We also saw some red-shouldered hawks as well. The most interesting site for me though was the divide between the cypress and the pine trees across the sawgrass.


It was an amazing site because I've never seen such a natural divide in nature. Overall I would like to visit the swamp again because I would like to see more of it and I also think it's just a nice quaint place to visit anyways. My only hope for next time is that I can see more wildlife and possibly a few alligators too.