The Government Shutdown Really Sucks At Everglades National Park (PHOTOS)

Miami schools are operating short on staff because they've been unable to to check that new employees are eligible to work in the U.S. through the Department of Homeland Security's e-verify website.

“We have 123 new hires, mostly educators, who can’t start work,” Miami-Dade School District spokesman John Schuster told the Miami Herald. “These are people who have been interviewed, selected and can’t begin work. That’s including vacancies at some of the schools with the most critical needs.”

The gorgeous Roseate Spoonbill hit a period of decline when its wings became a popular item for fans and hats in the 1800s.

Fortunately, "the establishment of Everglades National Park in 1947 seemed to have a positive affect on south Florida's spoonbill population, which began reusing nesting sites that hadn't been occupied since the late 1800s," according to the National Park Service.

However, an 80-year-data set on nesting spoonbills is now threatened because scientists with the Tavernier Science Center cannot access to Everglades National Park to conduct their survey during the shutdown, according to photographer Mac Stone.

The Tampa Tribune reports that the 1,500 workers furloughed through Sunday amounts to an estimated $2 million loss in wages "with a strong ripple effect on the local economy that depends on the base and the people who work there." It also meant longer hours for those airmen who remained at work.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced they are closing campgrounds and parks because of the shutdown, including those in Stuart, Moore Haven, Clewiston, and Alva along Lake Okeechobee-fed waterways.

Food bank distributor Feeding South Florida reaches 949,910 hungry residents -- the most of any such agency in the state -- but it's been hit hard by the shutdown: USDA funding accounts for more than one-third of its supply, the Miami Herald reports.

“They sent us an email saying we can’t order anything else. So once we distribute this, that’s it,” Sari Vatske, the distributor’s vice president of programs and initiatives, told the Herald. “We need Publix, Target, Walmart and Winn-Dixie to step up. We’ll need to double efforts on food drives and fundraisers.”

Research critical to endangered species, water quality, and Everglades restoration has been hobbled by the shutdown with 40 percent of the staff at NOAA's South East Fisheries Center sent home, forbidden to keep up with studies, experiments, and surveys. Long-term studies will be damaged if the shutdown continues, according to ecologist Dr. Margaret Miller:

"On the internal side, your agency understands that we know we have a gap in the data because we couldn't help it. But when you go to publish that work or submit to reviewers or publishers, it's no good. And that's where scientists are really put in a bind by this situation: Scientific implementation is curtailed and it jeopardizes long-term data sets."

Home loans available through the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been halted, leaving real estate agents without commissions and families unable to close on homes. The USDA loan program is focused on rural communities, affecting roughly 80 percent of the state of Florida.

One realtor in Central Florida was banking on four closings in the coming weeks to pay for her wedding next month: "We've been through so much these past six years. We're tired," Addie Owens told the Orlando Sentinel. "And the people who are supposed to help us recover have shut things down."

In Niceville, Robyn Murray was among U.S. Department of Labor staff sent home without pay. She has already filed for unemployment and begun looking for part-time work. Though her husband's job has not been affected, Murray told nwfdailynews.com that finances will be strained: "[The shutdown] is going to keep me from paying half of the rent or my car payment or a bill or two."

Only nine of 2,078 civil servants will report to work at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral during the shutdown, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

Thanks to the shutdown of Dry Tortugas National Park, no sea turtle nest monitoring will take place on seven islands in the Keys. A Florida Fish and Wildlife official told HuffPost that endangered green turtles may still be nesting in the area.

Florida has the highest number of Head Start and Early Head Start programs whose grant funding is tied to an October 1 cycle, Lilli Copp, director of the Head Start State Collaboration Office in Tallahassee, told The Huffington Post.

Nearly 10,000 children in Florida are potentially impacted. Head Start agencies provide preschool, medical, dental, mental-health, disabilities and nutritional services for children of working parents living at the poverty line -- many of whom will be unable to go to work without Head Start because they cannot afford childcare.

"It's not a choice they should have to make," Copp told The Orlando Sentinel.

Already, 9 Head Start programs in the Tallahassee area were shuttered for a week before reopening Tuesday. Programs in Volusia county were going to close Monday, but will remain open another week through a line of credit. Copp said Jacksonville programs may have to close on Friday; Suwannee Valley programs had enough other funding to stay open for six and a half weeks; Orange and Palm Beach Counties have enough to stay open through the end of October; and Hillsborough County can stay open through the end of November.

The longer the shutdown lasts, the more likely it is that Head Start programs will close -- affecting not only children and parents but also employees.

“They need to know that this situation is affecting a lot of families,” Victoria Thomas, a mom enrolled in a graduate program at Florida A&M University, told Bloomberg. “I’m not sure if they don’t know, or if they don’t care.”