New book highlights the 0.1% of old-growth cypress swamps left in the American South

By Mike Kiniry,

Published August 18, 2026 at 1:37 PM EDT

Zach West, the land steward for the Nature Conservancy, paddles amongst ancient cypress trees on a foggy morning on the Black River, North Carolina. The Black River is home to the oldest cypress trees on the planet.

Mac Stone grew up in and around Gainesville and spent a whole lot of time outdoors and in cypress swamps in North Central Florida as a kid. He got his first camera, a film SLR, in high school and that sent him down a road he's still on today.

A late rain event in the Everglades forces a mother raccoon to rescue her babies from their den and relocate them to a new den in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Naples, Florida.

Mac is an award-winning conservation photographer and a National Geographic Explorer. He's a contributing photographer for National Geographic Magazine and a senior fellow with the International League of Conservation Photographers.

His work focuses on swamps and wetlands — he says he's trying to change public opinion towards these often misunderstood and maligned ecosystems.

We discuss his new book "Cypress: The Last Old-Growth Swamps" which is filled with photographs of the American South’s ancient wetlands and intricate webs of life that grow beneath ancient cypress canopies, including Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. Click here to visit his website and pre-order his new book. Click here to listen to our conversation from 2021.

Each tree represents 10,000 acres of virgin cypress forest once found across the Atlantic Coastal Plain and Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Of the historic 40 million acres, less than 0.1 percent of old-growth cypress swamp remains.

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