Fire is a key ingredient to keep most Florida habitats healthy. In a completely natural setting, they burn on a regular basis thanks to our plethora of thunderstorms. Of course completely natural settings don't really exist any more save large expanses like, perhaps, the Everglades. Land managers use prescribed burns to mimic natural cycles, but when your next door neighbor is Interstate 95, that becomes impossible except under absolutely perfect conditions. The next best solution is mechanical cuts, slicing everything done to ground as seen in this photo and the previous one. It's not pretty, but it's better than allowing the area to become overgrown and unnatural. Note that not everything is cut: toward the left you'll see a small cluster of saw palmetto still standing, marked by a stake. There's either a rare plant or animal residing there that caused managers to leave it untouched.
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