Dear Future President,

I am a resident of North Miami, Florida, and I am writing because there isn’t enough action being taken about the spread, containment, and removal of invasive species in my city.

While I’ve grown up in Miami, I have always thought that the animals I saw around my community were native to Florida. This changed when one day my father recalled a time when there used to be hundreds of land crabs migrating to Miami every year, huge flocks of Ibises soaring through the skies, and even box turtles roaming the land. Now all I see is maybe a dozen Ibises, if I’m lucky, no turtles whatsoever, nor any crabs. All that’s left are a variety of animals that do not belong and grow more rapidly than we can contain them. Out of the many non-native animals I see around my community, such as Green Iguanas from Central America to pythons from Europe, most do more harm than good. It appears that everything, even the trees, that are alive are from somewhere but Florida. In fact, Burmese python populations have more than doubled since 2006 and are running rampant in the Everglades, leading to dramatic decreases in native wildlife. This issue spiraled out of control as introduced species from pet stores and agricultural processes took over, transforming the native wildlife of Miami into a melting pot of animals from other countries. This reduced the population of native animals to close to nothing compared to what it used to be. This can result in the extinction of Miami’s diverse flora and fauna.

Personally, I believe that the protection of an areas’ native wildlife is extremely important because these are characteristics of a place that are unique to its location and history. This is a hard issue to deal with because of the complexity of removing millions of non-native animals in such a large city, however, through raising awareness to individuals and raising funds to help remove invasive species and preserving native life, Miami can be restored to having its native species flourishing as they did long ago.

The main reasoning behind this letter is to help bring about a positive change in the community and possibly even other communities that can benefit from the removal of non-native species as well. North Miami is a city that does take action to deal with non-native species, but more action can be done, and I say this as an individual who didn’t get to grow up seeing the extraordinary sights of native wildlife in their glory as my father was able to when he was a boy. This is a sight that should be sought after for the future generations that are to come in Miami’s time.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter.

Sincerely,

Sebastian Suarez-Rocha