The Florida Keys boast unique ecosystems just packed with endangered species: the tiny Key deer, manatees galore, and loggerhead, leatherback and green sea turtles are just a few of the animals teetering on the brink. Driving and boating carefully, helps protects these amazing species.

Hammocks (tracts of hardwood forest) grow on land adjacent to the water, and support such native flora as gumbo limbos, which have red, peeling bark, and lignum vitae, one of the hardest woods in the world. Other habitats include freshwater marshes, home to razor-sharp sawgrass; swamps, favored by bald cypress and their alien-like 'knees'; wet and dry prairies, dominated by herb bogs and wire grasses; and upland wooded areas, covered with pines, oaks, and shrubs like wax myrtle and gallbery. The warm climate fosters many troublesome exotics such as melaleuca, Brazilian pepper and Australian pine.

Offshore, the Florida's famed coral reefs are the largest in North America and the third largest in the world. The fans and whips found here are unique to Florida. Global warming has led to the bleaching (killing) of many coral reefs here, as it has all over the world, while agricultural runoff, full of phosphates and nitrates, have disturbed the ecological balance further. Don't touch the coral, but take plenty of pictures - these reefs probably won't see another century intact.