Everglades National Park is an American national park that protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades in Florida. The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States, the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River. An average of one million people visit the park each year. Everglades is the third-largest national park in the contiguous United States after Death Valley and Yellowstone. UNESCO declared the Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve in 1976, listed the park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, while the Ramsar Convention included the park on its list of Wetlands of International Importance in 1987. Everglades is one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists. Most national parks preserve unique geographic features; the Everglades are a network of wetlands and forests fed by a river flowing 0.25 miles per day out of Lake Okeechobee, southwest into Florida Bay. The park is the most significant breeding ground for tropical wading birds in North America and contains the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere.

Thirty-six threatened or protected species inhabit the park, including the Florida panther, the American crocodile, the West Indian manatee, along with 350 species of birds, 300 species of fresh and saltwater fish, 40 species of mammals, 50 species of reptiles. The majority of South Florida's fresh water, stored in the Biscayne Aquifer, is recharged in the park. Humans have lived for thousands of years around the Everglades. Plans arose in 1882 to develop the land for agricultural and residential use; as the 20th century progressed, water flow from Lake Okeechobee was controlled and diverted to enable explosive growth of the South Florida metropolitan area. The park was established in 1934, to protect the vanishing Everglades, dedicated in 1947, as major canal building projects were initiated across South Florida; the ecosystems in Everglades National Park have suffered from human activity, restoration of the Everglades is a politically charged issue in South Florida. Everglades National Park covers 1,508,976 acres, throughout Dade and Collier counties in Florida, at the southern tip of the Atlantic coastal plain.

The elevation ranges from 0 to 8 feet above sea level, but a Calusa-built shell mound on the Gulf Coast rises 20 feet above sea level. The terrain of South Florida is and flat; the limestone that underlies the Everglades is integral to the diverse ecosystems within the park. Florida was once part of the African portion of the supercontinent Gondwana. After it separated, conditions allowed a shallow marine environment to deposit calcium carbonate in sand and coral to be converted into limestone. Tiny bits of shell and bryozoans compressed over multiple layers forming structures in the limestone called ooids, which created permeable conditions that hold water; the Florida peninsula appeared above sea level between 150,000 years ago. As sea levels rose at the end of the Wisconsin ice age, the water table appeared closer to land. Lake Okeechobee began to flood, convection thunderstorms were created. Vast peat deposits south of Lake Okeechobee indicate that regular flooding had occurred about 5,000 years ago.

Plants began to migrate, subtropical ones from the northern part of Florida, tropicals carried as seeds by birds from islands in the Caribbean. The limestone shelf appears to be flat, but there are slight rises—called pinnacles—and depressions caused by the erosion of limestone by the acidic properties of the water; the amount of time throughout the year that water is present in a location in the Everglades determines the type of soil, of which there only two in the Everglades: peat, created by many years of decomposing plant matter, marl, the result of dried periphyton, or chunks of algae and microorganisms that create a grayish mud. Portions of the Everglades that remain flooded for more than nine months out of the year are covered by peat. Areas that are flooded six months or less are covered by marl. Plant communities are determined by the type of amount of water present. While they are common in the northern portion of Florida, no underground springs feed water into the Everglades system.

An underground reservoir called the Floridan aquifer lies about 1,000 feet below the surface of South Florida. The Everglades has an immense capacity for water storage, owing to the permeable limestone beneath the exposed land. Most of the water arrives in the form of rainfall, a significant amount is stored in the limestone. Water evaporating from the Everglades becomes rain over metropolitan areas, providing the fresh water supply for the region. Water flows into the park after falling as rain to the north onto the watersheds of the Kissimmee River and other sources of Lake Okeechobee, to appear in the Everglades days later. Water overflows Lake Okeechobee into a river 40 to 70 miles wide, which moves imperceptibly. At the turn of the 20th century common concepts of what should be protected in national parks invariably included formidable geologic features like mountains, geysers, or canyons; as Florida's population began to grow and urban areas near the Everglades were developed, proponents of the park's establishment faced difficulty in persuading the federal government and the people of Florida that the subtle and shifting ecosystems in the Everglades were just as worthy of protection.

When the park was established in 1947, it became the first area within the U. S. to protect flora and fauna native t

Euskaltzaindia is the official academic language regulatory institution which watches over the Basque language. It carries out research on the language, seeks to protect it, establishes standards of use, it is known in Spanish as La Real Academia de la Lengua Vasca and in French as Académie de la Langue Basque. The academy was given status of a royal academy in 1976; the Euskaltzaindia was established within the context of the Basque Renaissance in the framework provided by the Congress of Basque Studies held in Oñati in 1918, at a time when the Basque language was being proclaimed as a central cultural value to be protected and promoted. Important figures from the 19th century had demanded the setting-up of an academy in defence of the language, it was during the first two decades of the 20th century when various entities – some scientific and others more popular ones – emphasized the need for its immediate creation; the scientific contributions of major foreign figures and from within the country, as well as the express demand on the part of Basque language loyalist organisations created a favourable climate for the public authorities to take on the task of setting up the academy.

The first initiative in this direction came from the provincial government of Biscay, which the other three provincial governments in the peninsular part of the Basque Country subsequently joined, with articles of association being approved and Euskaltzaindia being constituted in October 1919. One year its journal Euskera was launched, the official organ for the publication of its rules and research work, which has survived to the present day; the current internal structure and organisation can be summarised as follows: the academy is governed by a ruling body composed of the chairman, deputy chairman and treasurer. The heads of the Research and Watchdog Sections are members. Plenary sessions must be held at least once a month. Under current rules the Academy has an unlimited number of associate members; the Academy is present throughout the area where Basque is used, with a head office in Bilbao and regional offices in Bayonne, Donostia-San Sebastián, Iruñea-Pamplona and Vitoria-Gasteiz. The Academy's articles of association set out the institution's objectives, first published in 1920.

Those articles have been reformed with the aim of adapting the institution to the linguistic and cultural circumstances of the day. However, the initial articles defining Euskaltzaindia's ultimate goals have been ratified over the years, with new details being added where necessary; the aims of the Academy were set out. 1 – The aim of this institution is to watch over the Basque language, paying close attention to its promotion, both philologically and socially. Art. 2 – Accordingly, the Academy deals with both these areas in their respective sections: the Research Section and the Tutelary Section, with members belonging to both. It is thus clear that the work of Euskaltzaindia is concerned with both the corpus and the status of the language. Since the Academy has maintained these two sections in order to carry out its mission. In the decade and a half prior to the Spanish Civil War, the Academy managed to consolidate itself as an institution and set about its project of promoting the birth of a standard literary language, although it was unable to provide a precise, solid academic formulation for that aim.

On the other hand, its work in that period contributed decisively to a better understanding of the language through Resurrección María de Azkue's studies and far reaching surveys among speakers of the language. The journal "Euskera" is a faithful witness to the work carried out at the time. In 1936 and the years which followed, under the language politics of Francoist Spain the Academy's previous activities were reduced to silence until Azkue, with the collaboration of Federico Krutwig, was able to timidly reinitiate academic life at the beginning of the 1950s; the articles of association were reformed in 1954, new full members were elected and from 1956 on the Academy started to enjoy a more settled existence both in its internal affairs and in its public conferences and open meetings. The following decade coincided with a new generation of collaborators, the increasing introduction of Basque in bilingual non-state schools, the revival of the Basque language press and the first attempts at teaching basic literacy in Basque, among other initiatives.

The Euskaltzaindia has been a vocal and active advocate of the introduction of a unified dialect of the Basque language, known as "Euskera Batúa", or Unified Basque. Basque has been divided into 8 different dialects, varying in their level of mutual intelligibility; the first detailed dialectical analysis was by Louis Lucien Bonaparte. However, many people have seen this as a weakness in the language's fight for survival in a world in which minority languages spoken in states are wiped out by the states' official language. Having been for centuries pressured on both sides by Spanish and French, under the rule of Franco coming close to extinction, the Aca

The Îles Tuamotu-Gambier geographically consist of the Tuamotus and the Gambier Islands which are geographically located together. Because of a difference between administrative districts and electoral circumscriptions on the Îles Tuamotu-Gambier, French Polynesia has 5 administrative subdivisions, but 6 electoral districts/electoral circumscriptions. Administratively, the Îles Tuamotu-Gambier form one of the 5 administrative subdivisions of French Polynesia, the administrative subdivision of the Tuamotu-Gambier with 17 communes: The 16 communes Anaa, Fakarava, Hao, Makemo, Napuka, Puka-Puka, Reao, Takaroa-Takapoto and Tureia of the Tuamotus and the commune Gambier, comprising the Gambier Islands, the Acteon Group, a few atolls. Whereas all other 4 administrative subdivisions of French Polynesia are at the same time electoral districts/electoral circumscriptions for the Assembly of French Polynesia, the Îles Tuamotu-Gambier are the only administrative district of French Polynesia, not identical with an electoral district/electoral circumscription, but consists of 2 different electoral districts/electoral circumscriptions for the Assembly of French Polynesia.

These 2 electoral districts/electoral circumscriptions are: electoral circumscription of the Gambier Islands and the Islands Tuamotu-East with 12 communes: The commune Gambier on the Gambier Islands and the 11 communes Anaa, Hao, Makemo, Nukutavake, Reao and Tureia in the eastern part of the Tuamotus. Electoral circumscription of the Islands Tuamotu-West with the 5 communes Arutua, Manihi and Takaroa in the western part of the Tuamotus. French overseas departments and territories Administrative divisions of France Official site of the administrative subdivision of the Îles Tuamotu-Gambier