An American alligator defends its mud hole in Big Cypress National Preserve.
Photographer: Mac StoneTrump Plans to Offload National Park Sites, But States Don’t Want Them
The White House wants to trim the National Park Service budget by transferring some parks to state and tribal management. States say their resources are already tight.
Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve sprawls north from Everglades National Park over 729,000 acres of swamp, an ancient forest that protects the endangered Florida panther and the pristine waters of the Everglades — the source of drinking water for millions of south Floridians.
About 2.2 million people visited last year, roughly three times the number at Everglades National Park, according to National Park Service data. The preserve and others like it are “typically the places where the local people enjoy the most,” said Neal McAliley, an environmental lawyer at Carlton Fields in Miami and a former environmental litigator at the Justice Department.