To truly map the vegetation in Everglades National Park requires a “land, air, and sea approach.” The latest video in the “Outside Science (inside parks)” series follows young scientists into the Florida wetlands as they use helicopters and airboats to track how the vegetation is changing in the park.

As a birder and naturalist, I have a love/hate relationship with roads and parking lots in national parks. On the one hand, it’s not difficult to agree with Ed Abbey that all pavement is the opposite of progress. Roads kill things outright and bring more tourists, a certain percentage of which will be destructive in their own way. Then I stop and think about the best birding spots I’ve found in the parks – and a majority of them of were either in a parking lot or within sight of some kind of pavement.

Everglades National Park is our only national wetland park, and one of the largest aquascapes in the world. Perhaps more than any other U.S. national park, Everglades' treasures are hard to defend. Lying at the southern end of an immense watershed the size of New Jersey, Everglades National Park is caught between the largest man-made water project in the world upstream and a rapidly rising ocean downstream.

Another park and a new vendor are selling entrance passes online as the National Park Service tests a variety of electronic services as part of a pilot program. Annual and seven-day passes to Everglades National Park are being sold in advance at Smart Destinations at no additional cost.