Parks & Partners

The South Florida Caribbean Network serves seven different National Park Service units, encompassing a variety of ecosystems including coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangrove forests, cypress forests, hardwood hammocks, pineland forests, and sawgrass prairies. The network has implemented one or more long-term monitoring efforts in each of the park units, which range in size from 1,000 acres to over 1,500,000 acres. Four of the park units are located in the southern portion of the state of Florida while the other three are situated in the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The seven network parks are: Big Cypress National Preserve, Biscayne National Park, Buck Island Reef National Monument, Dry Tortugas National Park, Everglades National Park, Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve, and Virgin Islands National Park. These parks face many challenges: regional changes in water management, land use changes around parks, coral reef declines, sustainable fisheries, nutrient enrichment, mercury toxicity, sea level rise, climate change, invasive species, rising visitor use, and protection of 270 federal, state, or territorial species of concern.

Click on any of the network parks below for more information.

Last updated: September 23, 2022