Community Engagement

Community engagement is at the core of our mission.

Since The Alliance was founded in 2002, we’ve learned a very hard lesson: for the most part, Florida’s national parks go unnoticed and unused by those closest to them, Floridians themselves.

For example, even though Everglades National Park is the third-largest national park in the contiguous United States – and is one of the few national parks that are accessible by both land and sea – its annual visitorship numbers have hovered around the 1 million mark for more than 10 years. By comparison, the visitorship to Yellowstone National Park, the second-largest national park in the lower 48 states, has grown about 20% more than that of the Everglades in that same period, now receiving more than 4 million visitors annually.

We are determined to get to the foundation of this Florida faux pas and we are committed to connecting the Florida community to these national parks for a simple reason: if people experience the beauty of these places and connect with the natural world, they’ll want to protect it.

So while many of the programs that we support advocate for the plants and animals within the parks, we also develop activities and volunteer opportunities that allow individuals to make a difference and we bring thousands of students into the park each year. Because connecting communities to the nature that abounds in their backyards lays the foundation for lifelong stewardship.

Visit each park’s page to see what community engagement projects are currently underway at Big Cypress National Preserve, Biscayne National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park, and Everglades National Park. Or see what events we have coming up!