BIG CYPRESS

Plan to widen U.S. 41 East sparks environmental debate
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 06
A more than $54 million plan to widen U.S. 41 East to the brink of the Everglades is sparking a debate in environmental circles about the needs of humans versus wildlife. Last month, state transportation officials launched in earnest a project development and environment study, called a PD&E for short, into expanding U.S. 41 between Collier Boulevard and County Road 92. The projected widening work stretches nine miles from the outer fringe of Naples' high- end version of civilization to the swamps just outside the official border of the Everglades. Today, cars cruise at 55 mph and above with few interruptions on the rural two-lane drive. But Naples' megahomes and golf courses are fast replacing marshes and tomato fields in the area, one of Collier County's final frontiers. Planners fully expect a population greater than the city of Naples to migrate to a 5-mile radius ar ...

FWC: Endangered panther killed family's dog
Kevin Lollar /News-Press /Dec 22
A Florida panther killed a family dog in Immokalee earlier this month, but was not looking for food, investigators say.The family runs a daycare center out of the house during the day. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a news release that the family has taken steps to ensure the children at the daycare aren't in danger. There was no word on what those measures were. At about 8 p.m. Dec. 12, the homeowner, who could not be reached for comment, heard his Chihuahua barking. Shining a light out the window, he saw a panther attack the dog, which was tied up, and retreat with it to nearby woods. The following morning, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer and biologist found the fresh tracks of a male Florida panther and the dog lying dead in the woods.“The fact that the panther dropped the dog nearby means it wasn’t hunting fo ...

Marco water quality test data shows continuing increase in pollution
Billy Bruce /Naples Daily News /Jan 9
Theres a common rallying cry heard from opponents to Marco Islands mandatoryseptic tank replacement program and from some City Council members who recently questioned the need to force residents to switch to central sewers: Wheres the data thats driving the push for the citys $106 million program toreplace, in seven years, thousands of septic tanks with an expanded central sewer system? âWe just need our staff to summarize the information we already have, council member Glenn Tucker said during a Jan. 3 meeting at which program opponents said theyve been unable to procure the data from City Hall. City Manager Bill Moss and Public Works Director Rony Joel acknowledged in recent days that they havent done a good job of getting that information to the public. So they released an updated water quality report from city Environmental Specialist Nancy Richie that shows pea ...

Wood storks here, not nesting
Kevin Lollar /Naples Daily News /Jan 7
The early birds are baffling the boss.Wood stork nesting season has begun at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, the endangered species' largest breeding colony in North America, but something's a little odd. Most of this week, up to 20 wood storks have been exhibiting nesting behavior in the cypress trees at the sanctuary's so-called lettuce lake — a lake blanketed by aquatic water lettuce plants — early in the day. Then most of them fly away. None has started building a nest. Normally, when nesting behavior starts, actual nesting starts, and thecolony grows rapidly. By now, 40 to 50 pairs should be nesting at the lettuce lake, sanctuary manager Ed Carlson said. "These storks are driving me crazy," he said. "They've been here sinceTuesday, but the colony's not growing."They're doing all the courtship stuff. They playing with sticks. They're copulating. You can hear bill-clacking. Th ...

Feeding Alligators
Editorial /Naples Daily News /Jan 19
Some people just dont get it. They think that a deadly alligator attack cannot happen to them, or theyre just ignorant of the danger. Consider the seasonal influx of gawkers at a watery alligator enclave on East U.S. 41 at Turner River Road. That is in the western end of the Big Cypress National Preserve. Florida Wildlife officers are doing extra duty there these days to keep spectators at a safe distance and remind them to never, ever feed gators. That can help erase gators natural fear of humans and lead to the next senseless,vicious attack. Southwest Florida has endured a series of such attacks. In 2004 alone, two people were killed by gators in Lee County. Wildlife officers say they are so frustrated they had to issue about 10 citations in Collier year to people who insisted on feeding alligators, thereby putting themselves and others in harms way. Ther ...

Deputies put the squeeze on illegal berry pickers
Leon Fooksman /Sun Sentinel /Jan 18
Off the highway and deep in the brush, a trail of discarded water and soda bottles leads to prickly, rattlesnake-shading stalks of saw palmetto plants. The garbage is a telltale sign of migrant poachers slicing their way with machetes into the thicket of protected public lands to steal olive-shaped berries from the shrub-like palms and feed a multi-million dollar business that offers relief to those with prostate problems. "There's a lot of money to be made out here," Palm Beach County Sheriff's Deputy Charles Robinson said, standing amid enormous fields of the plant in remote county-owned land in northern Palm Beach County, where pickers are known to strike. "If you get a crew of 15 people, you can come in and out of here with huge sacks of the berries." Intruders are illegally picking millions of berries every year from county, state and federal preserves and park ...

Hunters renew push for access
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 17
Lyle McCandless, an avid hunter, wants Southwest Florida sportsmen to lay aside their usual weapons for a new one: the power of numbers. McCandless, a former president of the Collier Sportsmen and Conservation Club, is forming a new group to renew the push for more access at Big Cypress National Preserve. More than five years ago, preserve managers restricted swamp buggies, hunters' favored mode of transportation, to designated trails and eliminated existingtrails in the most fragile areas. They went too far, McCandless said. "We've got to go in there and slug it out," said McCandless, a 62-year-old LaBelle resident. "We need to make sure it stays a preserve. We need to makesure reasonable access stays in there." He has recruited a score of hunters who feel the same way, he said. Collectively, they are known as the Big Cypress Sportsmen's Alliance. The group's founding c ...

Everglades homesteader finally packs up
staff /Naples Daily News /Jan 13
NAPLES, Fla. - A man who fought for years to keep his home in the rural Everglades finally packed up to move, acknowledging he'll have to leave some of his belongings behind on land the state claimed for an environmental restoration project. Jesse Hardy, 70, a disabled former Navy Seal, reluctantly reached a settlement and got a check for $4.95 million last summer for thesecluded property on which he's lived for three decades. He'll be moving to a bigger, nicer house, but he said that doesn't make him feel any better about leaving. "I will never see the turkeys run up and down the road again," Hardy told the Naples Daily News on Thursday. "I will never see my deer feed in my yard again....I will never be able to freely do what I wanted to do." State officials went to court to take the land using eminent domain, saying the 160-acre property sits in the path of an ...

Naples Bay mangrove replanting project struggling to sprout
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Jan 20
A pilot project to replant mangroves along Naples Bay has not had much more success than Mother Nature. Crews from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida planted 1,114 red and white mangrove seedlings at various spots around Naples Bay in two planting cyclesbetween 2000 and 2002.Of those, only 95 red mangrove seedlings have survived, or about 9 percent, according to monitoring results reported in a December 2005 report to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Fish and Wildlife Service awarded the Conservancy a $25,000 grant in 2000 to conduct the pilot project. The results illustrate the high hurdles scientists will have to jump to regrow mangroves as part of a larger effort to restore Naples Bay. It will take more than a green thumb. Conservancy researchers have estimated that Naples Bay has lost some 70 percent of its mangrove forest to development. Mangrove loss has d ...

Marco sewer plan
Editorial /Naples Daily News /Jan 26
When the Conservancy of Southwest Florida last year launched a systematic review of Southwest Florida estuaries for water quality and habitat, the idea was for the data to attract attention and be used. The Conservancy hoped that would mean citizens would be watching for updates for improvements or declines. Fast-forward to today on Marco Island, where the Conservancy backs theinstallation of central sewers that opponents say are unnecessary and expensive. The civic debate is already heated and both sides of the matter are bound tolook for supportive evidence to curry public favor. The Conservancys report card on waterways is coming into play, with sewer foes citing A grades plus for water quality and minus for habitat in the Ten Thousand Islands as proof for their side. That is a reach. ...

Corkscrew Swamps nesting woodstork population looking great
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 26
FLYING ABOVE CORKSCREW SWAMP SANCTUARY From 500 feet in the air, the clusterof woodstorks resembled grains of sugar. To Jason Lauritsen, the sight was just as sweet. Oh, look at this. Nice, Lauritsen gushed as the Cessna 172 rolled to the right to give the four passengers a better view. Its not a big colony yet, but itslooking great. Theyre making use of some trees they havent used in the last five years. Lauritsen, a science coordinator at the Audubons Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, saw Wednesday reason to hope that this years woodstork nesting season would not be a repeat of last years catastrophe. In 2005, the endangered birds produced 338 nests but no chicks. Less than a month into this years season, Lauritsen counted about 450 possible nests. That number could drop after he eyes digital pictures of the flocks to eliminate those that are still building nests or g ...

Manatee calf rescued near Everglades City dies from infection
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Feb 8
A malnourished manatee calf that was rescued last week from a canal near Everglades City has died from what veterinarians believe was an advanced bacterial infection. By the time they got to it, it was too late, said Maritza Arceo, a spokeswoman at the Miami Seaquarium. The 80-pound manatee apparently had become separated from its mother and found its way over a berm that separated the canal from another waterway that provides passage to the Gulf of Mexico. Volunteers at the Big Cypress National Preserve first spotted the calf about a month ago in the canal, which is behind the preserves headquarters off U.S. 41 East.A nearby canal gave the manatee its name Sea Grape.Last Wednesday, rescuers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the National Park Service scooped the approximately 3-month-old and 5-foot-long calf from the chilly canal. ...

Panther falls victim to hit-and-run
CURTIS MORGAN /Miami Herald /Feb 4The odds o
the world, are long. Odds of a panther being struck by a car in Southeast Florida are longer still -- it last happened nearly 20years ago.Odds of the circumstances surrounding a female cat that was killed Thursday night along Card Sound Road make winning the 23 million-to-one lottery jackpot sound downright likely. That's because the people who witnessed the panther hit-and-run are environmentalists who two days earlier filed a federal lawsuit aimed at derailing a 6,000-home development proposed just up the road. One of their arguments is the remaining open lands south of Florida City and Homestead provide critical habitat for panthers, an animal protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The activists acknowledged the coincidence sounds improbable, but called it fate that they crossed paths with an unfortunate panther in a place they are battling to preserve ...

When $4 million feels like a rip-off
Nicholas Springer /Miami Herald /Feb 3
Jesse James Hardy kicked the dust off his boots, did it again before he went inside the house. His house: Oh, the majesty of it. The hugeness. Those ceilings 15 feet distant, the size and sweep of pale marble countertops, the crinkling sumptuousness of the leather upholstery on the living room set.He closed on it three weeks ago. Eight hundred thousand dollars furnished, bought from a man who owns race cars. More money thanhe'd ever spent in his life, but well within a multimillionaire's means. It was true. He'd sold 160 acres of Collier County scrubland to the government and made out like a bandit. Hardy was rich. Why, then, did he feel like this? Penned-in. Ripped off. Out of place. The first thought that occurred to him -- 70 years old with unkempt white hair, standing uneasily now in camouflage pants in the eat-in kitchen next to orchids in a vase -- concerned ...

Manatee in Big Cypress finally rescued
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Feb 2
MIAMI Another week in the chilly canal near Everglades City and the manateecalf would have died, veterinarians at the Miami Seaquarium said Wednesday after a third rescue attempt proved successful. State wildlife biologists had failed twice over the past two weeks to net the 5-foot-long sea cow. The female calf was first spotted about three weeks ago in a canal behind the Big Cypress National Preserves headquarters on the south side of U.S. 41 East. Trapped by falling water levels and separated from its mother, the calf lostabout one third of its body weight as it plied the landlocked canal. The skin on its back had begun to flake away. On Wednesday, rescuers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife ConservationCommission and the National Park Service herded the manatee between a pair of nets in the canal and waited for it to surface in the shallows. When it did,they formed a ...

This way to Deep Lake
Chad Gillis /Naples Daily News /Jan 28
Brisk winds shook oak and cypress limbs along a trail through the western reaches of Big Cypress National Preserve. Branches stretched and groaned like a creaky wooden boat, grinding out an eerie wail. Gusts surged and receded, building to whistling crescendos, and then fading to whispers. Leaves rattled. Dead limbs, some hurricane casualties, fell into the swampy waters surrounding the trail. Birds strong enough to battle theturbulence buzzards mostly launched into the cobalt sky to pitch and roll like stunt planes. Nearby, a woodpecker tested the winds, banking through the canopy and erratically landing on a swaying royal palm. The bird clucked and squawked like a muffled machinegun. It stopped briefly, then belted out another string of shrill cries before disappearing into the forest. "It's a pileated (woodpecker)," says Jill Wilson, a ranger at Big Cypress Na ...

No. 79 (aka Don Juan) snagged
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Feb 10
In the dim hours before daybreak, Don Juan stalked his prey. When the time was right, he vaulted over the 6-foot chain-link fence but nothigh enough to avoid snagging his underbellys soft fur on the barbed wire. Undaunted, he snatched a pair of chickens and a turkey the size of a bowlingball and twice as heavy. He ate the fowl, shredding them to pieces. He left the way he arrived, lugging with him the leftovers. He buried what was left beneath separate piles of branches and peat about 50 yards away in a forest of cypress trees and cabbage palms. In the twilight before sunset on the same day, Don Juan reemerged from the forest inside Big Cypress National Preserve. This time, he was lying on a stretcher, barely conscious and hooked up to intravenous fluids.Don Juan is a Florida panther, one of the most endangered animals on the planet. Fearing illness or injury had pr ...

Back on the Loop
JEFF KLINKENBERG /St Pete Times /Feb 12
When I was a teenager, the Loop Road was the real Mister Toad's Wild Ride. It was the most untamed place I knew, the most remote, smoke-'em-if-you-got-'em, people-unfriendly byway in Florida. It was 26 hellish miles of moon-crater potholes, gape-jawed alligators, choleric cottonmouths and swamp men who would just as soon spit on your tennies as say hello. The federal government owns it now, in the 700,000 acres of the Big Cypress National Preserve. The potholes are gone and laws are now occasionally enforced, but otherwise the Loop Road remains a marathon of crushed gravel, reptiles and watch-your-back roughnecks.It begins at Monroe Station on the Tamiami Trail in Collier County, meanders south for a spell, then snakes back north toward the Tamiami Trail at the Miccosukee Indian Reservation in Miami-Dade County. Construction crews built the road in the 1920s but forgot to add civilizatio ...

Urban sprawl restricts panthers' habitat
Editorial /Miami Herald /Feb 13
The estimated 87 breeding adult Florida panthers that still roam South Florida's swamps and prairies need more protection if they are ever to be de-listed as an endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, trying to wipe the egg off its face after having used bad science to support more development in areas where panthers roam, now is emphasizing preservation of that habitat. This is good.Stop urban sprawlThe USFWS and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission must be fully committed to looking out for the panther's welfare. The two agencies should be more aggressive in fighting the push of urban sprawl into any more of the panthers' dwindling habitat. One way to do this would be for the agencies to support groups that have sued in federal court, under the Endangered Species Act, to stop a 6,000-home development on land south of Florida City.That this open space is ...

Recovery plan wants to widen Florida panther habitat
staff /Orlando Sentinel /Feb 1
MIAMI -- Florida panthers should be moved to other locations in the Southeast in an effort to increase the population of the endangered cat, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report said.The report includes a recovery plan that presents ways to help panthers thrive as their southern Florida habitat becomes more limited because of urban sprawl, agricultural development and road building.The only breeding population is located in southern Florida, where roughly 80 panthers remain in the wild, the wildlife service said.``There is insufficient habitat in South Florida to sustain a viable panther population,'' states the report released Tuesday. ``The prospects for population expansion into south-central Florida are questionable at this time.''The wildlife service's plan includes specific recovery objectives and criteria to be met to downlist the Florida panther to threatened under the Endange ...

Birding's Holy Grail: The Ivory-billed Woodpecker
Byron Stout /News Press /Feb 18
Southwest Florida's foremost "wild things" expert believes one of our cypress swamps is a better bet than Arkansas for finding a rare woodpecker — if it's not extinct.Jerome A. Jackson is skeptical ivory-billed woodpeckers really were found in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, as Cornell University scientists and federal officials announced in April.Jackson, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, is known worldwide for his knowledge of woodpeckers. Since 1965, he has been searching for "the Holy Grail of birding" throughout the Southeast and Cuba. He is, in fact, still searching, most recently on a tour organized by The News-Press in Collier County's Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve.The man known as Dr. Jerry Jackson to listeners of his "Wild Things" segment on WGCU public radio rates the remote Fakahatchee as one of the most promising places for the great woodpeckers to ...

Florida panther to move states in survival scheme
Andrew Buncombe /UK /Feb 23
The shy and nocturnal Florida panther once inhabited a vast area of the south-eastern United States,from the Everglades to the forests of Arkansas. These days it is one of the world's rarest creatures, with fewer than 90 animals surviving in the wild. But now conservationists have announced a controversial plan to try to save the panther by taking tiny populations from its last remaining strongholds in southern Florida and re-introducing them to states where it once lived."There is insufficient habitat in South Florida to sustain a viable panther population," says a draft of the plan, drawn up by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service. "The prospects for population expansion into south-central Florida are questionable at this time."The Florida panther - Puma concolor coryi - is the only sub-species of the mountain lion or cougar that lives east of the Mississippi River. As recently as the ...

Plan to Protect Florida Panther Reopens Issue of Its Identity
Peter Whoriskey /Washington Post /Feb 21
MIAMI -- The Florida panther, the feline carnivore that roams what's left of the state's cypress swamps and other wilds, enjoys almost mythic status here.Its image adorns license plates. The National Hockey League franchise is named for the cat. And it is, officially, the Florida state animal.But now a new plan for saving the vaunted predator is reopening awkward questions for the animal's admirers: What, exactly, is a Florida panther?Scientists believe there are only about 80 left in Florida. And given the shortage of habitat in the cat's rapidly developing namesake state, the draft recovery plan for the Florida panther, issued recently by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, proposes to export some of the predators out of state -- and names potential sites in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.The Florida panther roamed those states long ago, wildlife biologists said, ...

Gov. Bush praises Ave Maria
Joan Laguardia /News Press /Feb 17
About 400 people, including Gov. Jeb Bush, gathered near Immokalee today to officially kick off construction of Ave Maria University and its new town.The charm of an old world village combined with the vitality of a college town is the theme of the new community. Bush, whose visit today was his first time back in east Collier County since Hurricane Wilma, said he was pleased to see the area recovering from hurricane damage.“I’m really proud of Southwest Florida and Collier County in how organized you are,” he said.Bush welcomed the new Roman Catholic university for its goals of combining academic accomplishment with reinforcing “timeless values” like humility, compassion and respect for life. He also pointed out that the development is the first project under Collier County’s Rule Land Stewardship program.The town preserved the natural and rural heritage of this part of the state, Bush s ...

Seeds Of Trouble
GRETCHEN PARKER /Tampa Bay Tribune /Feb 27
In Big Cypress, managers also are shifting their strategy. Botanist James Burch, who manages removal of invasive plants from the preserve, plans to tackle the storm-ravaged areas of the preserve first, with the hope that chemically treating those places sooner will halt the spread of new, invasive hurricane babies.The 729,000-acre preserve that feeds the Everglades is known for its miles-wide stands of knobby-kneed cypress trees. Now safe from the lumbering that ravaged the area in the 1930s and 1940s, the gray spindles thrive in the standing waters of a swamp that would drown most other trees.It's the low islands of other trees and brush - called hammocks - that rangers worry about. Wilma had her way here, ravaging about a quarter of them. At least a hundred of these islands lost about 24 percent of their canopies, Burch found in preliminary estimates.With the fresh sunlight streaming i ...

Seven of about 80 Florida panthers have died within the past two months
Kate Spinner /Naples Daily News /March 06
NAPLES, Fla. -- Seven of about 80 Florida panthers left on Earth have died within the past two months _ including two this week _ .as dwindling territory, rampant development, and swift-moving traffic threaten the cat's survival as a species.The animal had rebounded from near extinction in recent years. But a 100-pound male panther, killed by a truck moving up Interstate 75 north of Fort Myers early Monday, became the fifth to die on south Florida roadways since the beginning of the year. Another died Monday of unknown causes on private property, said Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission."It's a bittersweet story, because we've been working for 20 years to increase the population," said Deb Jansen, wildlife biologist with the National Park Service at Big Cypress National Preserve. "We were successful. We've improved their health and their repr ...

A pumping problem
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /March 5
This year, officials are planning even bigger steps forward in the Southern Golden Gate Estates project. If the plan holds, crews will fill in another two miles of the Prairie Canal, grind away miles of roads and start building the first of three giant pump stations. The project s goal is to spread water across the 55,000-acre area, allowing it to rehydrate cypress swamps and replenish parts of the Ten Thousand Islands that have grown too salty. A wetter Southern Golden Gate Estates would attract the right kinds of plants and trees, providing the setting for black bears, Florida panthers and wading birds to return. Or so the theory goes. In practice, officials disagree among themselves and activists have their own ideas about how the pumps should be designed and what they are being designed to do. Activists say the pumps, as proposed by the water management district, are far bigger than ...

Fiddler’s Creek residents enjoy their improved environmental surroundings
staff /Naples Daily News /March 5
Peter Blicher is a former real estate developer and is now a semi-retired resident of Fiddler s Creek. He s also writing a detailed book about the best lifestyle communities in the country and plans to include Fiddler s Creek as an example of what a lifestyle community should be. Not only do you have all of the amenities here, but also the natural beauty, said Blicher. I can walk just a few steps from my home and see wading birds and other wildlife along the creek and natural preserve areas. This is the way I ve always pictured Florida. It s like going back in time. Prior to purchasing a home at Fiddler s Creek, Blicher traveled extensively, looking for the perfect community. Some developments have natural areas thinly spread through the community, said Blicher. Here, it s one large area which is enhanced with new landscaping from one end of the community to the other which helps ...

Big Cypress Basin plots relocation to Estates
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /March 7
The flooding comes once a year, it seems, at the Big Cypress Basin's main office, which is tucked among cement plants, warehouses and auto-repair shops in North Naples' industrial sector. After especially heavy rains, the parking lot drowns beneath a foot or more of water like the floor of an urban sea. Besides being an inconvenience, the flooding is an all-too-real lesson about the challenges of holding back water in Southwest Florida, said Clarence Tears, the basin's director. "It's a swamp trying to be a swamp," he said, referring to the poorly drained land that surrounds the 6089 Janes Lane headquarters. Basin officials are looking to leave their home of nearly 20 years for one that is more spacious, visible and closer to the core of their drainage system. And, of course, they would prefer one that's not quite so wet. An offshoot of the South Florida Water Management District, the ba ...

Wildlife leaders to determine threat panther poses in eastern Collier
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /March 8
High-level wildlife officials today will examine the threat that a female Florida panther, one of the few left in existence, poses to Miccosukee Indians and park visitors along the eastern edge of Collier County. The two-day, closed-door meeting in Naples signals that government agencies are taking the tribe s complaints about the cat seriously, said Darrell Land, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist. The talks are set to include Florida Fish and Wildlife s top boss, Ken Haddad; the director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service s southeastern region, Sam Hamilton; and the National Park Service s regional director, Pat Hooks. That sort of tells you the level of attention this situation has generated, Land said. Last month, agency leaders got an earful about the panther, known as No. 124, when they met with the Miccosukee Tribe s lawyers and consultants. For two yea ...

Specialists panel leans toward central sewers for Marco
Billy Bruce /Naples Daily News /March 9
An eight-member panel of regional environmental specialists agreed late Wednesday that Marco Island s campaign to rid the island of septic tanks was the correct move to protect the future water quality on the low-lying barrier island. After a three-hour workshop at the Radisson Suite Resort on South Collier Boulevard, the members summarized their positions on whether the city had other suitable alternatives besides connecting properties on septic tanks to central sewers. More than 200 residents attended the forum that was moderated by WGUF 98.9 FM radio host Dave Elliott, who spent most of the evening posing questions to the panel handwritten on cards by audience participants. While the scientific jury is still out on whether Marco s gradually degrading water quality in its hundreds of miles of waterways is directly related to discharges from the more than 5,000 septic tanks still in use ...

Off-roaders fight for a muddy mecca to call their own
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /March 10
For decades, all-terrain vehicles, swamp buggies and dirt bikes roamed freely across Southern Golden Gate Estates and its 55,000 acres of isolation. In the name of fixing the Everglades, the South Florida Water Management District took control of the failed subdivision s vast road network in 2003, ending the area s mud-splattered days. An agreement between the water management district and Collier County gave the district until October 2005 to replace the off-roading mecca with 640 acres somewhere else. With that deadline edging farther in their rearview mirrors and with the county s top administrator likening the leading alternative site to "something that came out of Love Canal," off-roading enthusiasts are fighting back. A group that could swell to as many as 500 on Saturday plans to protest the delay at the Collier County Government Center on U.S. 41 East. Organizers say they will ca ...

Developer gets OK to build in midst of Everglades restoration project
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /March 12
A Miami developer wants to drop nearly 500 townhouses among live oaks and slash pine that are in the middle of a stalled Everglades restoration project in Collier County. The South Florida Water Management District is playing a big role in planning the resuscitation of Belle Meade, a sprawling collection of subdivisions east of Collier Boulevard. Its affliction: too many ditches and developments and not enough treatment of the polluted water they generate, experts say. So, when the state agency issued its blessing Wednesday for the Miami developer's proposal, it raised a few eyebrows. Brad Cornell, policy advocate for the Collier County Audubon Society, criticized the water management district, saying it is giving away land that might be critical to the planned restoration project. "They don't know if they don't need it because no one has done any planning," Cornell said. "That's why we ...

Hunt for 'surplus' land causes worries
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /March 12
Affordable housing and dirt and rock for road construction are in short supply in Collier County these days, but the county s search for solutions has environmental advocates on high alert. Collier County commissioners gave Commissioner Tom Henning the go-ahead last month to work with County Manager Jim Mudd to find land owned by the county or that the county could buy from the state or federal government for affordable housing or earthmining. Environmental advocates see the search as a potential incursion into government-owned land that was purchased as preserve or is in some other conservation status and should stay that way, they say. I think it deserves to be vigorously opposed, said Brad Cornell, Big Cypress policy advocate for Audubon of Florida and the Collier County Audubon Society. It s not a very good idea and it should be opposed very vocally and publicly. ...

A Rare Predator Bounces Back (Now Get It Out of Here)
Abby Goodnough /NY Times /Mar 16
OCHOPEE, Fla. — In the weeks before Valentine's Day, a healthy Florida panther kept emerging from the dense, sloshy wilderness around Big Cypress National Preserve to kill things he shouldn't: chickens, ducks, a turkey, a pig and a house cat, all on residential property that his stealthy species normally shuns.The hungry panther — nicknamed Don Juan by scientists who had radio-collared him years earlier and knew he had fathered some 30 kittens — kept coming back for more, despite efforts to deter him. So on Feb. 16, wildlife officials had dogs chase Don Juan up a tree, shot him with a tranquilizer gun and removed him from the wild. It was no light decision, as the number of Florida panthers, the only subspecies of puma east of the Mississippi, is estimated at fewer than 100.Cars have already hit and killed five other panthers in 2006, including one pregnant with four kittens and another ...

The time is always right for a nice hike
Susan Cocking /Mercury News /Mar 15
The strong, windy cold fronts of winter are good for something after all - hiking in the Big Cypress National Preserve. When it's too chilly and blustery to go fishing, diving, or sailing, a swamp walk might be the best way to get outdoors. Bugs have magically disappeared, and the gators and snakes seem to hunker down somewhere that you can't see them.I recently accompanied nine members of the Big Cypress chapter of the Florida Trail Association on a seven-mile, round-trip hike into the marsh. The association of dedicated volunteer hikers and environmentalists is responsible for maintaining a 1,400-mile-long path that runs the length of Florida.It was the morning of the strongest cold front of the season, which might be daunting to some. But chapter president Nina Dupuy has seen every kind of weather in this wilderness - from melting heat to vertical rain - and deals with it by continuou ...

Big Cypress
David Fleshler /Sun Sentinel /Mar 20
More than 750 individuals and organizations have filed comments with the National Park Service about what activities to allow on 146,000 acres of cypress strand, slash pine forest and prairie added to Big Cypress National Preserve in 1988. Hunters want permission to roam the territory in off-road vehicles -- known as swamp buggies -- to kill deer and wild hogs, saying the vehicles are part of the culture of the Everglades. Hikers and environmentalists say hunting and motor vehicles could disturb Florida panthers, damage the land and shatter the area's tranquility. The park service plans to make a preliminary decision this summer, followed by opportunities for public comment before the release of a final management plan next year. Known as the Addition Lands, the territories straddle Interstate 75 and include a strip along State Road 29. Lacking visitors' centers and other amenities, the ...

Glades restoration pumps judges too big by some, too small by others
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Mar 17
Massive pumps with enough muscle to drain as much as 1.7 billion gallons of water a day aren’t big enough to relieve some nearby residents’ flooding concerns. And they aren’t small enough to assure environmental activists that a key Everglades restoration project won’t turn into an urban reservoir. A skeptical audience greeted the unveiling Thursday night of the initial design of three pumping stations that form the backbone of the Southern Golden Gate Estates project in eastern Collier County. South Florida Water Management District officials spent about an hour describing how the pumps would transform three canals into broad, shallow rivers reminiscent of the way water used to flow through the Everglades. No one among the dozen or so audience members who spoke at the meeting said they were entirely pleased with the plan. ...

Plan to protect Florida panthers creates identity complex
Peter Whoriskey /Boston Globe /Mar 19
MIAMI -- The Florida panther, the feline carnivore that roams what's left of the state's cypress swamps and other wilds, enjoys almost mythic status in this region.Its image adorns license plates. The National Hockey League franchise is named for the cat. And it is, officially, the Florida state animal.But now a new plan for saving the vaunted predator is reopening awkward questions for the animal's admirers: What, exactly, is a Florida panther?Scientists believe there are only about 80 left in Florida. And given the shortage of habitat in the cat's rapidly developing namesake state, the draft recovery plan for the Florida panther, issued recently by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, proposes to export some of the predators out of state -- and names potential sites in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. ...

Group wants to build fence around camp to protect visitors from panther
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Mar 21
An activist group is offering to build a fence around an educational camp in Big Cypress National Preserve to protect visitors, including many children, from a female Florida panther. Last week, Defenders of Wildlife sent a letter to National Park Service Director Fran Mainella, offering to dip into its own pocket to raise the barrier. The fence would deter the pack of deer that has been spotted grazing the campground almost every day at the campground for several years, said Elizabeth Fleming, the St. Petersburg-based Florida representative of Defenders of Wildlife. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if you have deer showing up in one place that you’ll have panthers showing up to eat the deer,” Fleming said. The 5-acre Loop Road Environmental Education Center, which is inside Big Cypress and managed by Everglades National Park, is a popular field trip among schoolchildren. ...

Skunk Ape spotted at Marco Library
Jennifer Adams-Mitchell /Marco Island Sun Tim/Mar 23
What's 350 pounds, covered in hair, and smells like rotten eggs? (Please, no jokes about your mother-in-law.) It's the Ochopee Skunk Ape, of course. And it recently made a brief appearance at the Marco Island Library on March 14. OK, so it wasn't the actual skunk ape. As a guest of the Friends of the Marco Island Library, Nathan Martin presented excerpts from his hour-long documentary titled, The Ochopee Skunk Ape. Following the presentation, both he and the star of the documentary, Dave Shealy, the world's foremost expert on skunk apes, answered questions from a curious audience.Martin, born in Naples and raised on Marco, got the idea for the film about four years ago when searching for an inspirational subject for his music."What could be better than a big hairy monster that runs around in the woods?" joked Martin.He had never made a film before. The 27-year-old is actually a recording ...

Small Population Only One Danger Facing Panthers
Will Rothschild /Tampa Bay Tribune /Mar 26
OCHOPEE - The future of the Florida panther is playing out here on Loop Road, a 26-mile route carved through themiddle of Big Cypress National Preserve.Considered the most endangered mammal on the planet when it numbered perhaps two dozen a decade ago, the pantherhas rebounded to about 80.The number of people living in South Florida also has climbed dramatically in the past 10 years. With more peoplemoving into subdivisions chiseled into the scrubby pinelands and hardwood hammocks that once buffered panthers fromurban life, a growing chorus of observers say Florida has reached its limit of cats.Sustaining the recovery, in fact, promises to be much trickier, hinging as much on social and politicalconsiderations as scientific ones. How those questions are answered could determine whether panthers hang on orwhether South Florida decides it no longer has the room or the will to protect them. ...

Big cats no big deal, many in Copeland say
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Mar 27
COPELAND — Life hasn't changed much in Copeland more than five weeks after biologists apprehended a menacing Florida panther within pouncing distance of several homes. And that's the problem. Dogs wander the streets freely. Fences blown down during Hurricane Wilma haven't been mended. Children play outside after sunset. A week after the panther's capture, residents received notices on National Park Service letterhead, urging them to harden their livestock pens, keep pets on leashes and take other protective measures. "It has been proven that once attractive prey, such as livestock and pets, have been properly secured that the wild predator will return to hunting natural prey," wrote Karen Gustin, superintendent of Big Cypress National Preserve. Not everyone is heeding the scientists' advice. ...

Florida’s cats at a crossroads
Will Rothschild /Herald Tribune /Mar 26
OCHOPEE — The future of the Florida panther is playing out here on Loop Road, a 26-mile route carvedthrough the middle of Big Cypress National Preserve.Considered the most endangered mammal on the planet when it numbered perhaps two dozen a decade ago, the panther has rebounded to about 80 today.The number of people living in South Florida also has climbed dramatically in the last 10 years, from 250,000 to more than 300,000 in Collier County alone. And with more people moving into subdivisions chiseled into the scrubby pinelands and hardwood hammocks that once buffered panthers from urban life, a growing chorus of observers say Florida has reached its limit of cats.Indeed, sustaining the recovery promises to be much trickier, hinging as much on social and political considerations as scientific ones. How those questions are answered could determine whether panthers hang on ...

Off-roaders’ trail cause losing traction
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Mar 28
Southern Golden Gate Estates might be placed off-limits to off-road vehicles, despite calls from outdoor enthusiasts to reopen the area's labyrinthine network of roads to weekend fun. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has rejected a state Division of Forestry proposal that would have given visitors at least12.3 miles of trails designated for riding. According to the federal agency's letter, off-road vehicle play is "inconsistent" with the goals of the $10.8 billion Everglades restoration project. The Southern Golden Gate Estates project is part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, a list of 68 projects that state and federal officials agreed to undertake in 2000 to fix South Florida's ailing ecosystem. In the 1960s, a developer transformed the 55,000-acre tract's marshes and hammocks into an interlacing pattern of roads and canals that resembles a car radiator ...

Deputies sweep popular ATV-riding site
Jennifer Brannock /Naples Daily News /Mar 27
All was quiet Sunday throughout the white, dough-like sand dunes and abandoned, rusting train tracks that make up the Railhead Scrub Preserve, an irresistible tract on the Lee/Collier County border for all-terrain vehicle motorists to ride and play. The ATV hot-spot, part of the Conservation Collier property off Old 41Road, usually plays host to 20 to 30 motorists on any given weekend — especially on a perfectly clear, cool day like Sunday, Collier County sheriff's deputies said. Even though the roughly 1-by-one-half mile parcelwas strangely silent, the telltale signs of illegal motorists laid scattered across the ground throughout the preserve. "They must have known we were coming," Collier County sheriff's Deputy Carmine Marceno said,examining a heap of empty beer bottles, cans and other debris. ...

Low water levels force airboats out of Big Cypress
staff /Naples Daily News /Mar 29
Low water levels have prompted officials to close a portion of the Big Cypress National Preserve to airboat travel. Officials announced today that Zone 4 within the preserve will be temporarily closed beginning April 3. Park rangers and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are reporting low water levels in the area. Many of the areas designated as airboat trails are nearly dry throughout the zone, officials said. Zone 4 within the Preserve is located south of Loop Road, a popular driving tour route, and is the only area within the preserve where airboats are allowed. ...

Stand strong against vehicles in the Addition
Lauren MacDonald /Sun Sentinel /Apr 10
Threatened by swamp buggy drivers and hunters, the Addition Lands of the Big Cypress National Preserve in South Florida need aggressive environmental protection or face potential destruction of the land and its wildlife inhabitants if the area is opened freely to recreational activities. Claiming that swamp buggy culture is at stake, hunters want to roam the Everglades territory, killing deer and wild hogs. This self-interested group's recreation would damage the land, destroy the natural habitats of wildlife and demolish the existing tranquility. Our nation continuously fights for the protection of national wildlife reserves. So what makes this situation so different? Although swamp buggies are part of the Everglades culture, the use of these and other off-road vehicles carves damaging ruts into the wilderness, causes soil erosion, and creates areas where non-native vegetation can gro ...

County seeks return of off-road vehicles to Estates
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Apr 11
The Collier County Commission today called on the South Florida Water Management District to allow off-road vehicles to return – at least on a temporary basis - to Southern Golden Gate Estates. With a vocal group of representatives from off-roading groups looking on, commissioners registered their frustration with the water management district over an agreement the two sides struck in 2003. Once an off-roading mecca, Southern Golden Gate Estates is now the subject of a $362 restoration project, one of 68 planned as part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. The state and federal project calls for filling in canals, tearing out roads and using "spreading canals" to transform the southern end of the failed subdivision into a slow-moving river. Southern Golden Gate Estates covers about 55,000 acres south of Interstate 75 and north of U.S. 41 east. Ac ...

Activists, sportsmen differ on plans for preserve
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Apr 17
With words as sharp as saw palmetto and ideas as big as cypress trees, hunters, off-roading aficionados, boaters and environmentalists have written hundreds of letters and e-mails over the past few months. The National Park Service brought this deluge on itself. Last fall, the agency called for a public critique of six recreation proposals it had drawn up for the western sliver and northeast section of Big Cypress National Preserve.From the mosaic of philosophies, a familiar pattern emerges. Sportsmen, already feeling pinched by access restrictions at other public areas, describe the preserve as South Florida's final frontier for swamp buggies, hunting and other types of heavy use. As such, they say, the "Addition Lands" should be as open as possible. "Reopening of the Addition to traditional recreational uses has been extraordinarily delayed, adversely affecting the ...

Colliers to renew oil exploration in Big Cypress
Curtis Morgan /Miami Herald /Apr 25
With a political stake driven through a proposed $120 million land buyout, a powerful Florida pioneer family is reviving efforts tohunt for new oil and gas reserves under the sprawling Big Cypress National Preserve. A company representing the Colliers, namesake of the Southwest Florida county encompassing the preserve, has again filed plans to explore a promising swath between two small existing oil fields with seismic testing, which requires detonating small charges underground. But the new proposal has been sharply scaled back from a controversial one five years ago that envisioned a major expansion from the preserve's nine rigs -- to as many as 15,000 seismic test holes and 26 exploratory wells along with 80-plus miles of new roads along with pads, cables and pipelines amid the preserve's lush swamps, tree islands and cypress stands.That prospect alarmed enviro ...

Everglades activists to urge Senate majority leader to bring bill to vote
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Apr 26
Nearly $1.6 billion for restoring the Everglades is languishing in Congress, and activists plan to remind U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of that in a big way today.Organizers of the nationwide campaign hope to swamp the Tennessee Republican’s office with phone calls and e-mails, urging him to bring the Water ResourcesDevelopment Act to a vote. “We’re hoping he’ll understand the degree of support out around America,” said Worth Hager, president of the National Waterways Alliance, which set up the campaign. The bill would pay for water works projects nationwide, including the $363 million Southern Golden Gate Estates restoration project in eastern Collier County. That effort aims to fill in canals and remove roads once intended to be the foundation for the world’s largest subdivision. Congress hasn’t authorized any of the 68 Everglades restoration projects to move forw ...

Unwanted panther, kittens, can stay in Pinecrest
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /May 16
PINECREST — The sky, particularly blue on this Friday morning, is barely visible through the green canopy of cypress trees along Loop Road. What appears at first to be a pile of discarded tires on the side of the road turns out to be a mob of alligators. This untamed corner of South Florida is an ideal place to hide. Just ask themobsters, bootleggers or any of the other outlaws who have escaped to this swampy refuge over the years. But even here, a four-legged renegade — the Florida panther — is no longer welcome. A handful of residents and a nation of American Indians are calling for a female Florida panther, known as FP 124, and her offspring to be booted from their midst. They are tired of the panthers showing up in their back yards, at ceremonial tribal dances and at a children's education center run by the National Park Service.Despite the complaints, state and ...

Lake Trafford restoration completed
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /May 4
Alligators, an army of them, slide across Lake Trafford, only their backs and snouts poking above the dark surface. Lake Trafford Marina owner Ski Olesky said Wednesday he already can see the water getting clearer now that crews have finished a $10.4 million restoration project at the Immokalee fishing spot. As his airboat creeps closer, one of the gators drops out of sight, but Olesky, from his perch in the airboat driver’s seat, points into the lake’s rusty-colored shallows. “There he is!” Olesky said. “Three weeks ago, you couldn’t see him.” After years of stops and starts, the restoration project cranked up Nov. 3. Its aim was to rid the lake of tons of muck that had been choking it. The dredgeworked around-the-clock to finish the job last week.The South Florida Water Management District estimates crews have removed some 4 million cubic yards of muck — about 22 ...

State sets aside $3.6 million to improve region's waterways
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /May 14
The amount is more like a sprinkle than a good soaking, but Southwest Florida is in line for more money for projects to improve water quality in its rivers, bays and estuaries. During its 2006 session in Tallahassee, the state Legislature approved $3.6 million to be spread over five watershed initiatives and restoration projects in Collier and Lee counties. The projects still must survive Gov. Jeb Bush’s line-item veto pen. The legislative approval compares to more than $11.6 million that the South Florida Water Management District had requested for those projects — an $8 million shortfall that means some local priorities will go unfunded. In Collier County, for example, the water management district requested $3 million. Legislators approved $1.3 million. “It will help, but it will certainly leave a lot of issues out there,” said Gene Calvert, the county’s stormwater manag ...

Big Cypress off-road riding will be studied
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /May 21
National Park Service officials are starting studies aimed at finding potential off-road riding grounds and wilderness areas within Big Cypress National Preserve’s newest frontier. Sportsmen have been pushing for greater access to the preserve since a ruling five years ago that restricted them to 400 miles of designated trails.Meanwhile, environmentalists have maintained pressure against the use of all-terrain vehicles and swamp buggies, pointing to the tens of thousands ofmiles of ruts that tires have left in the preserve. They want officials to make the most untouched spots off-limits to vehicle tires and rifles.The new studies will involve 146,000 acres, known as the Addition Lands because they became part of the preserve in 1988, more than a decade after Congress created Big Cypress. The Addition Lands encompass a swath that straddles Interstate 75 on the northeast ...

Big Cypress super tackles one conflict after another
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /May 23
A 130-pound Florida panther with an appetite for dogs and chickens — and whoknew what else — prowled the woods a few hundred yards south of U.S. 41 East. Late one afternoon in February, a team of biologists and veterinarians tromped into panther 79's hideout to find out why the big cat was acting so strangely. Bringing up the rear was a curious spectator named Karen Gustin. A few minutes later, the superintendent of Big Cypress National Preserve looked into the whiskered face of one of her biggest challenges. "I had never seen a panther up close," Gustin said recently. "I wanted to bemore knowledgeable about what it is when we do a workup. Plus, it was just athrill to be out there." Gustin's enthusiasm for getting her hands dirty, both metaphorically and literally, has impressed her clientele. A year into her tenure, she is receiving surprisingly high marks from e ...

States not putting out welcome mat for Florida panthers
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /May 26
Wildlife officials in five Southeastern states say the Florida panther is unlikely to find a home outside the Sunshine State because of public angst and a lack of wide, roadless spaces. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service roiled debate in January when the agency made public a recovery plan that called for reintroducing the predator to its oldtromping grounds. Paul Souza, Fish and Wildlife’s deputy regional director in Vero Beach, acknowledges it will be tough selling people on the idea of accepting panthers into their midst. “We know this is one of the most complex conservation questions in the country and in the world,” Souza said. In letters to the agency, wildlife officials representing Arkansas, Georgia,Mississippi and Missouri expressed skepticism at the possibility of letting panthers loose in their swamps and forests. In an interview with the Daily New ...

Suit seeks to save wood storks' wetlands
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /June 2
The latest target is Parklands, a golf course community planned for north ofImmokalee Road that would destroy more than 200 acres of wetlands where woodstorks go to feed in a slough next to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, one of Southwest Florida’s most renowned natural treasures.A lawsuit, filed Thursday in Fort Lauderdale, seeks to overturn a permit theU.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued in February for the project. The lawsuitalso seeks an injunction to stop construction while the lawyers fight it out in court. The lawsuit ups the stakes in what is shaping up to be a fight to the finishover a key part of Collier County’s environmental future. Parklands, proposed by The Ronto Group, is one of five projects north of Immokalee Road that have garnered the groups’ attention. The others are Terafina, Cypress Run, Olde Cypress and Mirasol — which together would destroy some 1,5 ...

Wildlife officials angry over golf course project
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jun 5
A project that would destroy nearly 600 acres of wetlands is drawing sharp criticism from federal environmental officials and local environmental groups. "I'm gagging over the wetlands impacts," said Nancy Payton, Southwest Florida field representative for the Florida Wildlife Federation. "It's just over the top." Plans call for building up to 2,000 homes, a golf course and enough commercial space to cover 10 football fields east of Collier Boulevard near the intersection at Rattlesnake Hammock Road. The project lies in critical Florida panther habitat and straddles Collier's urban boundary line. The nutrients generated by the new roads, rooftops and manicured lawns mightcause "significant degradation and water quality impacts" downstream, James D. Giattina, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's water managementdivision in Atlanta, wrote in a lett ...

State should revise imperiled species classification
Patrick Rose /St Pete Times /Jun 5
Conservation and animal welfare groups from Florida and around the nation have petitioned the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, urging the state to revise its imperiled species classification system. Using this flawed system, the FWC has already downlisted the red-cockaded woodpecker, despite opposition from many scientists. If the current classification system is not changed, many of Florida's at-risk species, such as the manatee, northern right whale, Florida panther and Florida black bear, could suffer the same fate as the woodpecker, resulting in less protection and misleading the public into thinking these species have recovered. Florida is rapidly being developed, increasing the threats to wildlife and making not only survival, but also the state's goal of endangered species recovery, an enormous and difficult challenge. According to the U.S. C ...

Everglades restoration lawsuit close to settlement
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Jun 9
A lawsuit over an Everglades restoration project in rural Collier County is a step closer to being settled. LaBelle residents Helen and Bernie Nobel and former Ochopee Fire Chief VinceDoerr sued Collier County in 2005 over the county’s decision to turn over to the state miles of roads in Southern Golden Gate Estates to make way for a project to restore natural water flows there. The lawsuit became a vehicle for negotiations over finding off-roaders a place to ride after they were shut out of Southern Golden Gate Estates. The Nobels and Doerr, who own neighboring parcels at the western ends of 124th and 126th Avenue Southeast, said the deal over control of the roads amounts to a taking of their land because it will cut off their road access. Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet voted last month to spend more than $3.2 million to buy out the Nobels and Doerr -- $2.7 mi ...

Plight of the woodpecker
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jun 11
BIG CYPRESS NATIONAL PRESERVE — Fragile and feisty, the baby bird fought against capture. Finally, after about 10 minutes, the spool of fishing line grasped a wing, and the red-cockaded woodpecker emerged from the dark, golf ball-size cavity. “Here he is,” Deborah Jansen, a National Park Service biologist, said as shegently cupped the flailing creature. “He’s just a little guy — first time out of the nest, you know.” Why book a helicopter at $800 an hour, hike several hundred yards through waist-deep palmetto and don mountain-climbing gear to come face to beak with a noisy, little bird? The chase Such encounters are helping biologists keep tabs on red-cockaded woodpeckers in Big Cypress National Preserve in eastern Collier County. The 720,000-acre preserve harbors an “essential support population” for the endangered birds,federal wildlife officials have said. Jansen ...

Proposal would ban fishing on U.S. 41 in Collier
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jun 14
Backlash from anglers has stalled a proposal to ban fishing from bridges along 32 miles of U.S. 41 East in swampy eastern Collier County.The move would have ended a practice that began shortly after the two-lane, Tampa-to-Miami highway opened in 1928. The canal that hugs the north side ofU.S. 41 through Big Cypress National Preserve is one of the few easilyaccessible fishing haunts in Collier. "I don't believe there's the data to back up that there is a safety issue," Brian McMahon of Collier County Standing Watch, a water access advocacy group, said Friday at a Collier Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting. The 10-member growth planning group includes Collier County commissioners and elected leaders from Naples, Marco Island and Everglades City. The group agreed Friday to lobby against the ban to state transportation officials and local legislators. In response, t ...

Cat habitat cost confuses county
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jun 19
A Florida panther strolling along Santa Barbara Boulevard could play a round of golf, stop by a gas station for a bag of barbecue-flavored chips or hunt forcondo bargains. The problem is no panthers have ever been spotted on Santa Barbara Boulevard. And yet, the Collier County Commission is having to plunk down $275,000 to lessen the damage that adding two lanes of traffic to the road will cause to the extremely endangered animal.Collier officials want to ease congestion along Santa Barbara by expanding the roadway from four to six lanes between Golden Gate Parkway and Davis Boulevard. The estimated construction tab is $42 million.Despite its urban surroundings, the project is inside the Florida panther consultation area, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maps. Developments that fall in the area's boundaries must be reviewed for impacts to panthers. Collier co ...

Storks having fruitful nesting season
Kevin Lollar /News Press /Jun 14
High in the bald cypress trees of Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, dozens ofwood stork chicks squawked raucously, some sitting still, some flying clumsily from treetop to treetop. These birds can fly and are almost ready to fledge — leave the nest and start making a living. But rising waters from Tropical Storm Alberto’s rains and normalwet-season rains might cause some of these birds to “force fledge” — leave the nest before they can fend for themselves. “They can leave the nest under their own power now,” sanctuary manager Ed Carlson said. “But if they’re forced to fledge early, their chance forsurvival is very, very low, much lower than if they hang in for two orthree weeks and get fully fledged.” Taken as a whole, this has been a successful nesting season at Corkscrew, the largest wood stork nesting colony in North America. A June 9 aerial survey showed about 650 nest ...

County offered land for off-roading
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jun 20
The solution to Collier County's off-roading problem could be 750 acres of old tomato fields, officials suggested today. The South Florida Water Management District formally offered the farmland to the county to make good on a 2003 promise. County commissioners agreed to give the water management district 30 days to work out the details to allow off-road vehicles on the property. Consultants need to review recent environmental tests to confirm the land issafe for recreation, said John Dunnuck, director of land management and operations for the district. The potential off-roading park is about a mile south of Sabal Palm Road, a few miles east of Collier Boulevard, in Belle Meade.About 50 off-roading enthusiasts cheered speakers who spoke in favor of a quick solution. All-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes and swamp buggies have been shut out of nearby Southern Golden Gate E ...

Flaws in permit system shut out recreational gator hunters
Byron Stout /News Press /Jun 28
Florida alligator managers admit the process they tried for this year's statewide alligator harvest unfairly shut out many recreational hunters. New rules and computer problems allowed commercial operators to scoop up all the permits before many recreational hunters could apply. Permits went on sale June 15. The problem arose when: ¸ The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission decided to issueadditional permits to hunters who wanted them. ¸ Commercially inspired guides and skinners decided to cash in on a strong market for hides due to hurricane-reduced alligator harvests in Louisiana. The result was the computer used by the state’s license vendor crashedduring the opening-hour onslaught of applications. Plus, a glitch in its program allowed some buyers to snag as many as 95 permits. The state sold out in four hours. That shut out recreational hunters lik ...

Water managers say developers will help restore natural flow
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jul 1
State and local water managers want luxury home developers to help restore severed water connections in Belle Meade, a growing exurb east of Collier Boulevard.Today, rain that falls on rural Belle Meade quickly ends up in canals and agricultural ditches, experts say. That water then gushes into Rookery Bay and Naples Bay, along with ecosystem-damaging pollutants. An upcoming report, unveiled in nearly finished form Friday, calls for watermanagers to spend nearly $14.5 million on seven Belle Meade restoration projects. But those water managers want developers to bear the brunt of that expense. Eager to appear sensitive to environmental issues, developers will line up to comply, officials think. "The developers will work with you," said Clarence Tears, director of the Big Cypress Basin, the local arm of the South Florida Water Management District."They just want ...

Developers back to the drawing board on plans for golf course communities
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Jul 2
It was once promoted as a regional restoration project: a manmade channel that would wend its way through wetlands north of Immokalee Road. Now, with the project running into environmental roadblocks, developers are scratching plans to include the channel as part of proposed golf course communities at Mirasol and Parklands-Collier. The move isn’t placating a coalition of environmental groups trying to keep golf courses and homes out of a key wetland flowway that straddles the Lee-Collier county line. Three projects — Mirasol, Parklands-Collier and Terafina — would affect 1,100 acres of wetlands directly and would indirectly affect hundreds more, according to permit applications. “The wetland impacts are way too high — unacceptable,” said Brad Cornell, Big Cypress policy associate for Collier County Audubon Society and Audubon of Florida. Other groups in ...

Lake dredging will continue; Phase two begins on Lake Trafford
Patty Bryant /News Zap /Jun 2006
Immokalee’s Lake Trafford is going backwards. The three square mile, 1,600 acre lake gained unwanted notoriety in recent years as the location of numerous fish kills. Hydrilla dying and accumulating at the bottom of the lake, coupled with nutrient runoff from the surrounding area, sapped the oxygen from the water, killing fish by the score. Lake Trafford became the example, the test case, for many other lakes in central and south Florida n all of which Director of Big Cypress Basin SFWMD Clarence Tears said are experiencing similar problems. The dredging operation that has been vacuuming up muck from the bottom of the lake has been very successful Phase one, the open part of the lake, was completed by the end of Mayn eight months early. The muck at the bottom of Lake Trafford varied from 2-8 feet thick; the lake itself varies from 8-12 feet deep and averages 4 feet in depth. Phase ...

Gargantuan gator still guards Big Cypress
Kevin Lollar /News Press /Jun 23
Superman was a 14-foot, 1,500-pound alligator that had been on display at Billy's Swamp Safari on the Big Cypress Seminole reservation. The big gator died a year ago, and the tribe contacted Griffin to see about having it mounted. "I've been doing this 36 years, and I've been hunting alligators since the state started hunts in 1989," said Griffin, who lives in North Fort Myers. "I killed a 13-foot-4-inch, 770-pound alligator and I thought he was big. When I saw this son of a gun, it was unbelievable." The Seminoles captured Superman and had him on display for 13 years. When the gator died they put him in a freezer for three weeks until Griffin could pick him up. "He was too big for the freezer, so they bent him into a U-shape to get him in," Griffin said. "We like to never got him out of there — it was1,500 pounds of dead weight in a place where you couldn't get a hold o ...

Drivers running into more bears
Pat Gillepsie /News Press /Jul 5
It's not a question you're likely to find on a driving test: A 300-pound black bear wanders onto a busy interstate at night. What do you do? But that's the scenario some Southwest Florida drivers have encountered in recent months on Interstate 75. The result has been smashed cars, shaken drivers and more dead bears. Experts believe black bears are wandering on the highway and into neighborhoods looking for food and new habitat while Southwest Florida's booming development encroaches on land where they once roamed free. "They're trying to get away — they want to cross the highway to find new territory," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Gary Morse said. "They can't perceive there's that much danger to them." Because much of I-75 isn't lit, it can be difficult to see a black bear — despite its size. "There's not much you can do — it's dark ...

Fast-spreading tree chokes Glades, but control programs working
Georgia Tasker /Miami Herald /Jul 9
MIAMI - It seemed like a good idea at the time. With Floridians clamoring to drain the Everglades, forester JohnGifford had a more modest proposal: plant thirsty trees around the edges to draw off the water near populated areas, but leave the rest of the Everglades intact. This year is the 100th anniversary of his very costly mistake: the wide-scale introduction of the melaleuca, a fast-spreading and hardy tree from Australia that crowds out native trees and plants. "His heart was in the right place, but the melaleuca wasn't the right plant," said Allen Dray of the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Fort Lauderdale. Like the cockroach, they are one of Florida's most tenacious survivors. Burn them and they release seeds, up to 20 million per tree. Fell them and they grow back. Poison them and their seedlings spring up anew. ...

Senate begins debate on legislation funding Picayune Strand project
Amie Parnes /Naples Daily News /Jul 19
WASHINGTON After six years of inaction, the Senate began debating the Water Resources Development Act late Tuesday, bringing a long-awaited federal project a step closer to happening. The legislation, which authorizes hundreds of water projects around the country, includes $1.2 billion for the Indian River Lagoon restoration on the Treasure Coast and $350 million for the Picayune Strand restoration project in eastern Collier County. The measure is part of the $10.5 billion Everglades Restoration plan and would allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin work on water quality issues as well as construct projects and make major modifications to existing projects. “Florida has a great number of important priorities in this bill, including the Indian River Lagoon and Picayune Strand projects,� said Ken Lundberg, a spokesman for Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Orlando. †...

Limiting freshwater releases may clean up Naples Bay
Kara Kenney /NBC2 /Jul 13
COLLIER COUNTY: Unfortunately, Naples Bay is clogged with all kinds of pollutants including fertilizers, pesticides and gasoline. South Florida Water Management officials say freshwater releases from the Golden Gate canal are also damaging to the bay but they have a plan to keep the releases at a minimum which could have a huge impact on the bay's health. Naples Bay is a haven for boating, relaxing, and unfortunately - pollution. Collier resident Tom Marvel has been a boat captain on Naples Bay for 27 years and he has seen the negative impacts of the freshwater releases. "It's a difficult problem," said Marvel. "That water is nutrient laden and when it reacts with the saltwater we see huge blooms and they're not necessarily red tide." For the past 40 years, freshwater has been released from the Golden Gate canal into Naples Bay to alleviate flooding. In fact, 200 million gal ...

Environmentalists test Naples Bay sea grass levels
Kara Kenney /NBC2 /Jun 6
COLLIER COUNTY: Naples Bay is one of the most polluted bodies of water in Collier County. But by studying the sea grass levels in the bay, environmentalists took a big step in the fight to clean it up. Naples Bay is a haven for outdoor activity and wildlife watching. Wednesday, environmentalists started a new study of the bay. "It’s important to get under the surface and see what's going on with it. There's only so much you can tell from aerial photographs or looking over the side of the boat," said Katie Fuhr of Collier County Natural Resources. The conservationists went snorkeling above one of the last sea grass beds in the bay. They were attempting to discover how big the grass bed is. "This is so important because it's a major indicator of the health of Naples Bay," said Collier County Natural Resources Manager Mike Bauer.About 90 percent of sea grass beds have disappeared in N ...

Central Florida not suitable for panthers
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jul 19
Central Florida could support up to 36 Florida panthers, but the area’s prevalence of highways and towns might hinder efforts to expand the species’meager numbers, according to a new federal report. A symbol of Florida’s wild past, panthers steadily are losing habitat to newdevelopments in South Florida, particularly in eastern Lee and Collier counties, biologists say. Male panthers are spotted sporadically in Central Florida, but the more reclusive females haven’t been documented north of the Caloosahatchee River since 1973. A federal recovery plan released in January proposed relocating some panthers north of the river, which forms a natural barrier between the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Okeechobee.A new study backed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pinpoints nearly 1,700 square miles of predominately open land, an area almost the size of Delaware, for that ...

Man vs. nature
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jul 23
Habitat for Humanity, meet Habitat for Panthers. That’s how the low-income home builder was greeted when it introduced plans to hammer and saw together a 400-home subdivision just south of Immokalee. The project, called Kaicasa, is the largest ever attempted by Habitat anywhere. “This will go a long way toward helping the affordable housing problem in Immokalee,” said Sam Durso, president of Habitat for Humanity’s Collier County chapter. Groundbreaking as it is, the development couldn’t escape the growing influence that stiff environmental regulations are having on Southwest Florida’s already steep housing costs. To appease federal wildlife managers, Habitat spent $2.2 million - 2-1/2 times what the organization paid for the 100-acre tract - to set aside habitat for the endangered Florida panther in southern Hendry County. The urban strip between the Gulf ...

ATV riders could see delay in land swap
staff /Naples Daily News /Jul 24
Off-roading enthusiasts face a longer delay in their quest to secure a tract of land suitable for their pastime in environmentally sensitive eastern CollierCounty. In June, state officials offered 750 acres of old tomato fields in Belle Meade, a largely state-owned swath east of Collier Boulevard and south of Interstate 75. The South Florida Water Management District offered the former farmland to the county to make good on a land swap involving an Everglades restoration project. But the land's owner, the state Department of Environmental Protection, needs more time to iron out environmental issues that have cropped up, said Clarence Tears of the Big Cypress Basin, an offshoot of the water management district. The state will ask for a 30-day extension Tuesday before an already impatient Collier County Commission. "We are having challenges finding a section ...

Collier threatens legal action over off-roading
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jul 25
Collier County commissioners threatened today to sue two state agencies unless they find at least 640 acres of land where off-road vehicles can frolic. The South Florida Water Management District and the state Department of Environmental Protection vowed in 2003 to give the land to the county. Nearly 10 months have passed since the agencies failed to meet the contract's Oct. 1, 2005, deadline. The delay raised the commission's ire today. Commissioners voted 5-0 to force a meeting between themselves and the water management district's governor-appointed board to resolve the matter. If that fails, the dispute will head to a courtroom. "It's not out of anger; it's out of frustration," Commissioner Fred Coyle said, explaining his support for legal action. "It's been three years and we stilldon't have a deal." The commission rejected the water management district's plea f ...

Ochopee outpost
Melanie Peeples /Naples Daily News /Jul 29
The Ochopee Post office is 7 feet 3 inches wide by 8 feet, 4 inches deep. Big enough to buy a stamp, weigh your package and turn around, but just barely. And not all at the same time. In fact, it’s so small, you don’t walk into the Ochopee post office. You step in. One step. More than that and you’d be sitting in Nanette Watson’s lap. And while Watson is a very friendly woman, her title is U.S. Postmaster, not Postmistress.She’s a brave woman, not just because she shows up for work in a shed in themiddle of the Everglades with alligators and panthers and mosquitoes with mouths like needles, but because she shows up for work with a plastic jumbo Thirstbuster cup filled with decaffeinated tea. America’s smallest post office has no bathroom. So out in the Everglades, under the blazing, summer sun, Watson has to balance the need to stay hydrated against the need to drive ...

Estates go under famed lens
Mary Wozniak /News Press /Jul 21
It was a perfect morning at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates andinternationally known photographer Clyde Butcher was burning daylight. The burly, bearded man, known more for tromping through swamps to capture the bloom of the elusive ghost orchid or the sweeping expanse of an Everglades horizon, looked satisfied with his feet planted on the estates’ landscaped lawns. “I got a shot just a few minutes ago when the light was all nice and diffused,” Butcher said, looking at the undulating roots at the base of a huge Mysore fig tree. In fact, he already had taken three shots in about two hours — nothingshort of amazing for a man who can spend hours with his large-format camera waiting for the perfect light to capture one image. Barbara Hill, executive director of the Edison & Ford Winter Estates Foundation, was willing to wait all day. Butcher and his wife, Niki, also ...

Panthers could delay I-75 bypass
John Henderson /Naples Daily News /Jul 16
Road planners are concerned an Interstate 75 bypass through Lee and Collier counties that would loop around Immokalee might be delayed by questions wildlife officials are raising.The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has expressed concern that the new bypass section around Immokalee would disturb panther habitat.The proposed bypass could allow drivers to avoid congestion on I-75 by looping around Immokalee and traveling a back-door route through Collier and Lee counties. It’s a road project that Collier County transportation staff believes is sorely needed, but would take eight to 10 years to build even if everything goes smoothly. And it’s not going smoothly right now. Transportation officials worry that a Project Development and Environment (PD&E) study now won’t come to fruition this fiscal year as planned. “This could delay it,” Don Scott, who heads ...

Redesigned weir will give Naples Bay a breather
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Aug 10
Water flowing down the Golden Gate Canal takes a wide and jagged route across Collier County before it empties into the headwaters of Naples Bay — with harmful results.The journey is about to change. The South Florida Water Management District Governing Board voted Wednesday in West Palm Beach to approve a $4.2 million contract to retrofit one of the weirs in the canal to allow more environmentally friendly releases. The retrofit is part of a larger set of plans to stem the flow of water from the canal into Naples Bay, something scientists have called for since the canal was built in the 1960s. “This is just another step in trying to get Naples Bay right,” said Naples City Councilman John Sorey, who also serves as chairman of the Big Cypress Basin, the local arm of the water management district. Questions persist, though, about how much good the changes to the ca ...

'Return to nature' plan revised
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Aug 13
State and federal officials are scaling back miles of protective levees and are considering eliminating two of the three pump stations in the Southern Golden Gate Estates restoration plan. The cuts could slash millions off the project's $362 million price tag. Once envisioned as the "largest subdivision in the world," Southern Golden Gate Estates is undergoing a return to nature at the hands of the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The plan calls foreradicating 227 miles of roads and filling in canals to re-create natural water flows in the western Everglades. Newly updated computer models suggest that the levee system proposed two years ago to protect a massive farming operation, an isolated subdivision and a tiny rural outpost won't have to be so extensive. "The mandate from the (Comprehensive Everglades Restoration ...

Web site brings world of water management to public
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Aug 14
Nearly 60 years ago, Everglades matriarch Marjory Stoneman Douglas observed that South Florida lies at an "unseen tilt" that guides rain water from north to south across a swaying plain of saw grass. Her widely quoted name for this unique landscape — River of Grass — suggested that nature was the boss. Today, a complex system of spillways, levees, pump stations and canals controls where, when and how the water flows. As the keepers of the new order, the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineersmeticulously have tracked the water's journey for several decades. A few years ago, a federal scientist with no prior Web-designing experience got the idea to put the information at the public's fingertips. The result, www.fgcu.edu/bcw/hcu.htm, has evolved into a weekly peek inside the rarely seen — and even more rarely understood — world ...

Gov. Bush moves to speed up buyout of Belle Meade
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Aug 16
Gov. Jeb Bush signaled Tuesday he wants the state to accelerate its effort to buy the remaining one-third of a state forest east of Naples that lingers inprivate hands. The governor and the Cabinet voted to raise the priority level of the 13-year-old Belle Meade buyout project. The area is on the Florida Forever acquisition list, making it eligible to receive a share of the program’s annual $300 million budget. The shift to the highest priority level allows the state to buy properties on its own and for full appraised value, said Sarah Williams of the stateDepartment of Environmental Protection. Before Tuesday, the state could only pay a portion of the purchase price and had to seek outside financial help. “It gives us some more flexibility to work with the landowners,” Williams said. So far, the buyout effort has amassed more than 19,000 acres in Belle Meade at a co ...

Group applies for money to build wildlife underpass
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Aug 17
One evening in July 2004, a 4-year-old female Florida panther tried to crossU.S. 41 East near the Turner River bridge with her two kittens. State wildlife officers discovered the panther the next morning. A car collision had left her with bleeding wounds and a badly fractured right leg. After 10 months of mending, the female panther was released back into the wild about seven miles north of U.S. 41. Within 48 hours, the tawny cat returned to the same bridge where she had last seen her kittens. This time, she didn’t survive. That is a familiar story at the Turner River bridge. Since 1984, four panthers have been killed and three have been injured in the same spot. The environmental group Defenders of Wildlife asked the state Department of Transportation last June to stop the killing by constructing a $4 million wildlife underpass. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agr ...

Plan for fewer levees marks some uneasy
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Aug 18
A proposal to curtail miles of protective levees around farms and homes south of the Southern Golden Gate Estates restoration project was greeted Thursday with unease during the first public airing since the change. Jim Lepp, 55, built a home in Royal Palm Golf Estates to escape the harsh winters in Green Bay, Wis. Although computer-generated flood maps show the subdivision won’t get flooded by the restoration project even during aonce-in-a-century storm, Lepp said he still worries about staying dry.During this summer’s rainy season, a drainage pond has crept up 20 feet from its bank into his yard. That pond drains into the canal that runs along U.S. 41 East just west of County Road 92, where newly restored Southern Golden Gate Estates flows are set to travel. “If (the water) comes up another three feet, it’s in my pool,” said Lepp, who is moving into his new house in t ...

EPA warns of 'unacceptable impacts' at proposed mining site
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Aug 19
Not far from Big Cypress National Preserve, a swampy cow pasture harbors one of the last accessible limestone deposits in Collier County beneath its unassuming surface. Here, a Jacksonville-based mining company sees an opportunity to satisfy a big chunk of the fast-growing county's rock demand for 15 years. But environmental advocates and one federal agency see irreparable damage to an endangered bird species and a loss of nearly 600 acres of pollution-filtering wetlands. The Environmental Protection Agency has warned that the 1,400-acre mine might have "substantial and unacceptable adverse impacts" on wetlands that are uncomfortably close to Big Cypress. To emphasize the point, the agency has declared that the wetlands are "aquatic resources of national importance." Still, Florida Rock Industries, a company with a tarnished environmental record, is pushing a ...

Reviewer worries weir would hurt Naples Bay
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Aug 21
Water managers are facing questions about whether plans to retrofit a weir on the Golden Gate Canal will help or hurt Naples Bay. The South Florida Water Management District voted this month in West Palm Beach to approve a $4.2 million contract to replace Weir No. 2 near the Interstate 75 interchange at Golden Gate Parkway. A new structure, called an Obermeyer weir, at that spot will allow more carefully timed releases of water downstream toward Naples Bay and lessen the need to release big slugs of water blamed for killing the bay, water managers say.But in comments to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has yet to issue a permit for the new weir, a reviewer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raises doubts about it. Wildlife Service reviewer Kim Dryden wrote in a June 23 e-mail to various state and federal agency representatives that the weir w ...

South Florida wildlife management areas
Steve Waters /Sun Sentinel /Aug 25
Conditions are much drier than last year, when hurricanes soaked South Florida and forced the closure of several wildlife management areas to hunting because of high water levels. Bowhunters might have to do a little wading when the archery season opens Saturday at the J.W. Corbett, Holey Land, Rotenberger, Everglades and Francis S. Taylor WMAs, but that beats the waiting they've done since deer season closed eight months ago. BIG CYPRESS Area: 565,848 acres. Archery: Sept. 2-Oct. 1 in all units and Nov. 11-Jan. 1 in Deep Lake. Muzzleloader: Oct. 7-22, except Deep Lake. General gun: Nov. 11-Jan. 1, except Deep Lake.Small game: Jan. 2-Feb. 4. Spring turkey: March 3-April 8. Permits: A quota hunt permit is required to hunt in the Bear Island, Stairsteps, Loop, Corn Dance and Turner River units Nov. 11-19, Nov. 20-26 and Dec. 22-Jan. 1 and Nov. 27-Dec. 21 in Bear Is ...

Growers delighted that Ernesto fizzled
Laura Layden /Naples Daily News /Aug 31
Local growers remember Wilma. They can’t forget Charley. But there won’t be much to remember with Ernesto. As the Tropical Storm dumped rain on Southwest Florida on Wednesday, it was like almost any other summer day for growers. Except, most took a day off midweekafter scrambling to prepare for a hurricane that wasn’t. Ernesto never strengthened into a hurricane. As it pushed through South Florida on Wednesday morning, the weakened storm brought little more than drenching rain. “We’re happy,” said Gene McAvoy, a regional vegetable agent with the Hendry County Extension Office in LaBelle. Wednesday morning the highest winds he recorded were 12 mph. And there had been 2 inches of rain overnight in growing areas, as the storm churned toward Florida. “Everybody is breathing a sigh of relief,” McAvoy said. “We haven’t had any more unusual weather than what we normall ...

Underpasses expected to reduce panther deaths
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Sep 5
Two wildlife underpasses under construction on State Road 29 will help reduce the Florida panther death toll on the bloodiest road for the endangered cats, transportation officials say. An astounding 23 panthers were killed on the highway between 1979 and 2005, nearly double the total for any other individual roadway, according to statefigures. The $7.2 million plan calls for raising the two-lane road at Bear Island Grade, about five miles north of Interstate 75, and at Pistol Pond, about 6½ miles north of the interstate. Since June, when construction began, workers have diverted traffic along the two spots onto a newly built temporary road on the west side of the existing roadbed. The project should be finished in about a year, said Florida Department of Transportation spokeswoman Debbie Tower. The underpasses are a first for S.R. 29. The highway already has fou ...

In the muck
Nicholas Spangler /Miami Herald /Sep 5
It took a long time to get out to Clyde Butcher's gallery on theTamiami Trail, and at the end of the drive, Clyde wasn't even there. ''Out back,'' somebody said.Out back was his 13-acre swamp spread and beyond that, 729,000 acres more of the Big Cypress National Preserve: home to alligators, snakes, egrets, hawks, hogs and even the reclusive swamp ape, according to some not necessarily authoritative sources. So Clyde, who started selling his nature photographs out of his Collier County gallery in the early 1990s, was somewhere out there walking around, and a lot of other people were too. It was the 13th annual Muck-About. There were movies, T-shirts for sale and a storyteller with an eye patch. But the chief attraction, as always, was mucking about in the swamp. All mucking was guided and, if you were lucky, you got a ranger named Lisa Andrews. Andrews spends a lot of he ...

Hotline established to report flooding
staff /Naples Daily News /Sep 6
The South Florida Water Management District has activated a hotline so residents can report flooding and get information regarding water conditions. The management district activated the Citizen Information Line, which will be in effect for the 16-county region. Hours of operation will be based on call volume and weather conditions, water managers said. The number is toll-free (877) 429-1294 or (561) 682-6234. Officials said canals throughout the region have been lowered to accommodate the increased stormwater runoff. ...

Up to 'here' with flooding
Editorial /Naples Daily News /Sep 8
Golden Gate Estates residents rightfully ask: What’s going on? They acknowledge they’ve seen heavy rains before, even ones of the magnitude of the past two weeks. But they have not seen such widespread, heavy flooding for at least 11 years. When homes are in danger and streets are blocked to motor vehicle traffic, thus putting people in potential danger, they are entitled to answers. Is it really the rain, or something else? Is it a result of a drainage system newly manipulated to reduce pollutants heading east to Naples Bay? Or is it due to some alteration of the land amid some of Collier County’s most explosive development?Either way, Estates residents have a right to expect some action. They’re already paying for it. In fact, they pay three times for it. Fundamental drainage service is expected in exchange for taxes they pay to Collier County, the South ...

Estates residents urged to boil water
staff /Naples Daily News /Sep 5
Golden Gate Estates residents who see standing rainwater near their private wells or covering their well heads are advised to boil their water as a health precaution against contamination. The Collier County Health Department issued a boil water advisory today for residents of the Estates with possible well water contamination or they can disinfect their water by adding 8 drops of plain bleach to each gallon of water. Allow the water to stand for 30 minutes before using it. For the boiling option, residents need to let the water come to a rolling boil for at least one minute. Another option is to use bottled water.Heavy rain has led to standing water of 2 to 6 inches in portions of DeSoto,Everglades and Wilson boulevards and drivers are advised not drive on these roads. "The flooding started last Thursday and continues to rise to the point where it is flooding peoples' wells ...

Struggling refuges face more cuts
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Aug 28
Layne Hamilton resisted the idea of managing two wildlife refuges from the third floor of a hotel near an Interstate 75 off-ramp until she saw the advantages. The Comfort Inn and Suites on Collier Boulevard is halfway between Florida Panther and Ten Thousand Islands national wildlife refuges. Every hotel guest she meets in the elevator or lobby is a potential refuge visitor. And the continental breakfast is always free. Making do is a large part of what Hamilton does as the manager of two refuges in the western Everglades that are high on natural beauty and low on money. It's about to get tougher. With the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina recovery topping the federal priority list, National Wildlife Refuge managers across the country are looking to the future with continued cutbacks in mind. In June, high-level managers across the refuge system's Southeast regi ...

Ave Maria gets go-ahead from Army Corps of Engineers
staff /Naples Daily News /Aug 24
Ave Maria University and its neighboring town have cleared their last big hurdle with federal environmental permitting agencies.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wetlands permit gives the go-ahead for the university and town to eventually cover some 5,000 acres of farm fields and pastures south of Immokalee. The Army Corps issued a permit in 2005 for a first phase that is already under construction northwest of the intersection of Oil Well and Camp Keais roads. People could start moving into the town in mid-2007. The campus is set to open in fall 2007.Barron Collier Cos. and Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan are partners in developing Ave Maria, which is generating international buzz about Monaghan's conservative religious beliefs. Ave Maria is the first Roman Catholic university to be built in the United States in more than 40 years.The federal permit review was strictly earthbound an ...

Committee writes rules to protect endangered bird
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Sep 17
An endangered woodpecker would get more protection in Collier County under rules headed to county commissioners. A citizens committee appointed by commissioners in 2005 wrote the rules as afirst step while the committee continues to study the feasibility of alarger-scale overhaul of the way Collier County protects its endangered and threatened species. The rules are aimed at making sure property owners, mostly in the North Belle Meade section of rural Collier County, preserve the pine trees where red-cockaded woodpeckers carve out nesting cavities and the pine forests where the birds look for food. County commissioners could weigh in on the rules Sept. 26. The rules wouldn’t become effective until the rules are written into law sometime in 2007. Members of the committee that wrote the rules cast them, not as additional regulation, but as a way to help property ow ...

Commission exempts county from state ATV law
staff /Naples Daily News /Sep 26
Collier County joined a growing list of Florida counties today that have exempted themselves from a new state law allowing all-terrain vehicles to traverse unpaved public roads. The law, passed by the Florida Legislature earlier this year, is set to go into effect Oct. 1, but it won't apply in Collier. Commissioners expressed concern that an influx of ATVs, particularly in Golden Gate Estates, would further degrade roads, kick up clouds of dust and generate complaints among residents. Commissioner Jim Coletta tried to create an exception for roads along the western fringe of Big Cypress National Preserve, such as Turner River and Wagon Wheel roads. But county attorneys worried whether the exception could be overturned in court if anyone ever objected. The new law applies to unpaved roads with speed limits under 35 mph. Other counties that have opted out of the ...

Coletta calls for elections rather than appointment of water management officia ls
Andrea Galabinski /Naples Sun Times /Sep 27
Which is best: protecting the people or protecting resources? Those are just two sides of a complex coin in a debate over whether or not officials on the Southwest Florida Water Management District's (SFWMD) Big Cypress Board should be elected, rather than appointed by the governor.Several vocal and angry citizens, along with a Collier County Commissioner, say there has been a severe lack of communication between water management officials and the public. "They are not as accessible on a level that they should be," said Collier County Commission Vice-Chair Jim Coletta. "I've felt that way for some time." he is also Vice-Chair of the Policy Committee for the Florida Association of Counties. If the board members were elected, he feels, they would be more responsive. "When citizens call, they'd respond differently," Coletta said. "What it means is they have allegiance to the ...

Collier Enterprises commits to Lely canal widening despite Sabal Bay setback
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Sep 28
A key part of a $61 million drainage project in East Naples is inching forward despite a setback for the Sabal Bay project. The job of widening the Lely main canal, which cuts through the proposed Sabal Bay project, was going to fall to luxury community builder WCI as part of the company’s development of Sabal Bay on some 2,400 acres south of the intersection of Thomasson Drive and U.S. 41 East. That deal went up in smoke when the Bonita Springs-based company dropped plans to build Sabal Bay amid a softening real estate market, company layoffs and a dropping bottom line. That leaves the Sabal Bay landowner, an arm of Collier Enterprises, to take the project from the drawing board to reality under a 2003 agreement with Collier County. “The obligation is still ours and we still plan on fulfilling our obligation,” said Patrick Utter, vice president of commer ...

Proposal would overhaul rule on runoff
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Sep 7
Buried deep in Collier County’s land development code are rules about how developers must set aside land for preserves. This summer, though, those preserves have been front and center in a debate about whether developers should be able to use them to hold runoff. Allowing developers to use their preserves to hold runoff means they don’t have to set aside other land for runoff. That means they have more room forbuildings.But, critics say, what started out as a proposal to allow the county to approve plans to put water back into wetland preserves grew into a proposal that threatened to drown increasingly rare upland habitats and animals that live there, especially gopher tortoises. “It raised a lot of red flags,” said The Conservancy of Southwest Florida Governmental Relations Manager Nicole Ryan. Last week, the county’s Planning Commission shot down a version of the pro ...

Meeting seeks to solve panther versus civilization
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Sep 28
Pamela Mesce shouted and shook her screen door in vain as a male Florida panther walked into the late-afternoon shadows with her 11-year-old house cat in hisjaws. “It was the most horrific thing in my 51 years I’ve ever seen,” said Mesce, who lives in Copeland on the edge of Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. “He just looked at me with my cat’s head in his mouth ... and he just walked(away) like he was moseying through.” A state wildlife biologist confirmed Tuesday’s attack after hearing Mesce’s story and snapping pictures of slash marks in her screen door and a paw print in the muck nearby.Copeland, an easily missed dot on Collier County’s map, was established longbefore the Endangered Species Act and modern zoning regulations took effect. But even existing development rules might not be enough in coming years to protect people from panthers and vice versa, wildlif ...

Big plans, big questions
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Sep 27
In the 1920s, New York advertising magnate Barron Gift Collier began carvingcivilization out of a wilderness that would become Collier County. Some 80 years later, the company that traces its roots to that pioneer is at it again, with plans to found a new town, dubbed Big Cypress, east of Golden Gate Estates. Collier Enterprises wants to build some 25,000 homes in a new town and in a scattering of smaller villages and hamlets on 8,000 acres of farmland surrounded by 14,000 acres of preserve. The project would take 25 to 30 years to build.Work won’t get started until at least 2010, Collier Enterprises CEO Tom Flood said. Big Cypress, along with its neighbor, Ave Maria University and its companiontown, are products of a landmark 2002 growth plan that requires landowners to preserve and restore land to earn credits for development.The 22,000-acre Big Cypress district i ...

Development presses panthers
Kate Spinner /Herald Tribune /Sep 21
Under pressure from developers devouring Florida's wilderness, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to redraw the boundary it uses to protect Florida panthers from people, roads, homes and mining. Wildlife officials expect the boundary to move east, away from growth hot spots in Lee and Collier counties. It also could expand into rural lands north of Charlotte and Glades counties. The anticipated change would lift some development restraints in parts of Collier and Lee and put more restrictions on counties north of the Caloosahatchee River, where pioneering male panthers recently have been spotted.The boundary changes could take place within the next year, said Allen Webb, a supervisory biologist in the service's Vero Beach office. The panthers' migration north points to the recent rebound of the endangeredspecies, which came within a wink of extinction in 1995. ...

Fish and Wildlife Service considers relocation of panther consulation line
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Sep 21
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are having “internal discussions” about whether the Florida panther consultation line should be relocated to better represent the movements of big cats, an agency official said Wednesday. Allen Webb, Fish and Wildlife’s project planning supervisor in Vero Beach, said pressure from the Collier County Commission and other groups prompted the preliminary review. “Whether we would relocate (the line), we don’t have an answer yet,” Webb said. Commissioners asked the acting head of the Vero Beach office Tuesday to move the line to reflect the changing face of Collier County.Proposals that fall in the consultation area’s boundaries must be reviewed for impacts to panthers, one of the most endangered species on the planet. The line follows Interstate 75 through most of the county but reaches as far west as the heavily commercialized s ...

Rare woodpecker gets the bird from developers
Fred Grimm /Miami Herald /Sep 28
Heaven knows, Geoffrey Hill was braced for controversy. Professor Hill had witnessed the outburst last year, after Cornell University ornithologists proffered evidence that the supposedlyextinct Lord God Bird, aka the Ivory-billed woodpecker, was surviving in the woods of east Arkansas.And, Lord God, a mighty ruckus shook the birding community. Ivory-billed believers and ivory-billed skeptics went at each other like fighting cocks. Bird blogs roiled with charges of lying and deception and fraud -- nasty accusations that jolted the image of folks given to long hours of quiet, contemplative observation. ''I knew it would be controversial,'' Hill said Wednesday, the day after Avian Conservation and Ecology published his evidence that the Lord God Bird, last spotted in Florida in 1924, was alive and nesting in the North Florida woods along the Choctawhatchee Rive ...

"Extinct" Woodpecker May Be Living In Florida
Patricia Shehan /All Headline News /Sep 27
(AHN) - According to the National Geographic and new evidence, it is now believed that the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker may be living in the panhandle of the state of Florida.The birds, once believed to be extinct, may actually still be living in Florida, surviving along the Choctawhatchee River. The report was made available from scientists on Tuesday in the scientific journal, "Avian Conservation and Ecology." A biologist from an Alabama university reported seeing an ivory-bill woodpecker back in May 2005 on a kayaking trip in Florida. The biologist's report was made shortly after another report from Arkansas, in which a researcher had reported seeing the bird in the state's eastern Big Woods area. ...

Scientists "Cautiously Optimistic" About Ivory-Bill Evidence in Florida
staff /Wakulla /Sep 26
There is not enough evidence to confirm the birds’ presence yet,” FWC Executive Director Ken Haddad said, “but the indications are promising, and we will work closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Auburn University and the Northwest Florida Water Management District to see if we can confirm the reports.” Auburn University ornithologist Dr. Geoff Hill, who recently completed a year-long search for the endangered woodpecker, unveiled his findings Monday, indicating there are signs ivory-bills might exist on land owned by the water management district. He produced audio recordings that appear similar to historical recordings of ivory-billed woodpeckers. However, he has not collected clear photogra“The water management district owns, manages and protects over 200,000 acres in Northwest Florida, the majority of which are along its major river systems,” said Douglas E. Barr, ...

Expert: Collier rural land plan puts panthers at risk
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Sep 29
Collier County’s plan to preserve habitat for creatures on the brink of extinction might not offer much help to the most endangered animal of them all. A Florida panther expert’s presentation Thursday before a county advisory committee cast doubt on whether a habitat conservation plan, as proposed, would save the best natural areas.That’s because county commissioners in their marching orders to the 11-member committee forbade the panel from administering the habitat plan in the RuralLands Stewardship Area. The stewardship area encompasses almost 200,000 acres of wilderness, farm fields and pastures in northeast Collier, excluding Immokalee. The area is big enough to squeeze Atlanta, Philadelphia and San Francisco within its boundaries. But Collier planners have something a little less congested in mind. Written by a consultant hired by eastern Collier landowners, ...

County looks to increase rock mining areas
Larry Hannan /Naples Daily News /Sep 30
Collier County officials will look into increasing the areas that allow rockmining within the county despite strong opposition from environmentalists. County officials are growing concerned that they may be running out of rock in areas that are permitted for rock mining. "All of our existing (rock mining) pits are nearing completion," County Engineer Stan Chrzanowski said. "We feel with more areas to mine, we could hold costsdown." As a result, the cost of road construction has been increasing because companies have to ship rock in from other parts of the state, adding the expense of transporting it.Rock is used for the construction of roads, driveways and some buildings. InSouthwest Florida, there is a large demand for rock because growth is leading to construction of new roads and the widening of existing ones. Last year, county officials suggested conducting a study ...

Water rules challenge voluntarily dismissed
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Sep 25
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida voluntarily has dismissed a 2003 legal challenge against water-quality rules, citing progress in talks with environmental permitters about reducing pollution from new developments. The Conservancy filed the challenge against the South Florida Water Management District, alleging that the district's water quality rules, written in the 1980s, are based on presumptions and not scientific evidence. The challenge had been on hold while the Conservancy, the district, engineers and developers tried to hash out a new rule. The Conservancy filed paperworkdismissing the case Aug. 18."We feel confident we're moving forward together in partnership," Jennifer Hecker, the Conservancy natural resource policy manager, said last week. The dismissal came after both sides agreed to a new timetable to research and draft a new water quality rule, take ...

Restoration projects being overtaken by development
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Oct 9
A modest repair job on Henderson Creek and its watershed was to be the"showcase" of what the Everglades restoration campaign could accomplish on alocal level. Six years later, those leading the $5.6 million restoration project have little to show for their efforts except for a few reports and dashed ambitions. Meanwhile, development is spreading like a brush fire across what those officials had hoped to save."It's turned into an urban restoration project, and it really didn't start out that way," said Judy Haner, a former resource management coordinator at the state-run Rookery Bay research reserve. Haner helped hatch the Henderson Creek rescue plan in 1994 and guided the project toward its inclusion five years later in the then-$8 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. "The reason we put that in there is it was a doable project," Haner said. "They want ...

Black bear dies in S.R. 29 crash
staff /Naples Daily News /Oct 10
A Florida black bear died this morning after it was struck by a pickup truck on State Road 29 south of Interstate 75. The bear was alive when a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist arrived at the scene. The 310-pound male bear had been struck by aFord F-250 pickup some time before 8:30 a.m. but didn't appear to have any major injuries, the biologist, Rebecca Mihalco, said. After tranquilizing the bear with a dart, she drove the injured animal to a nearby wooded area, called Deep Lake, intending to release it. But when she checked on the bear after stopping, it was dead. "He was obviously more injured than what I thought," Mihalco said, adding that the bear likely died of internal injuries. The accident happened five miles south of the interstate in an area bordered by Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park on the west and Big Cypress National Pr ...

Big Cypress looks to increase exotic plant eradication budget
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Oct 11
Three years after officials celebrated the killing of the last melaleuca tree at Big Cypress National Preserve, a new plan calls for giving a 100-fold increase to the preserve’s exotic plant eradication budget. The goal: to keep the fast-spreading melaleuca away and bring seven other unwanted plants in the Big Cypress to the same fate. For the past few years, park managers at nine national parks in southern Florida and the Caribbean have been developing a strategy for dealing with exotic plants. The 1,000-page draft plan, released last month, recommends spending up to $634 million to poison, burn and hand-clear exotic plants and replant infested areas with natives.“It’s not likely we’ll be able to eradicate everything,” said Sandy Hamilton, a National Park Service environmental protection specialist in Denver. If park service officials approve the plan and Congres ...

Eco-Tour Operator Series, Part II: How do we live here responsibly
Carl Kelly /Marco Sun Times /Oct 12
A juvenile wood stork has feathers on the neck and head and the beak is a light color. As they age, the beak darkens and they lose their neck and head feathers. How do we live here, work here and play here without also adversely affecting the ecosystems in which we all live? A wide range of public and private agencies and organizations in Southwest Florida currently work on that question as well as its corollary. But how do we undo some of the damage we have already done? Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and co-sponsor Society for Ethical Ecotourism in Southwest Florida in their Eco-Tour Operator's Series has provided a forum where eco-tour guides can meet with scientists who study this environment, thusestablishing one link between scientific study and public education. It is their hope that better informed guides will lead to a better informed ...

Board approves Mirasol wetlands permit
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Oct 12
The governing board of the South Florida Water Management District voted unanimously this morning to approve a revised permit for the controversial Mirasol golf course community in northern Collier County. A coalition of environmental groups plans to file a legal challenge to the revised permit "very, very shortly,'' said Brad Cornell, Big Cypress policy advocate for Collier County Audubon Society and Audubon of Florida. Mirasol is planned for up to 799 homes and two golf courses at the northwestcorner of the intersection of Immokalee Road and Collier Boulevard. The water management district approved a permit for the project in 2002 thatincluded a meandering shallow channel cut through wetlands. Project engineers, calling it a flowway, advertised it as a way to restore historic water flows. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected the permit in 2005, citing theflowwa ...

ATVs: Nowhere to run, nowhere to ride
Silvia Guzman /News Press /Oct 17
The father of a Fort Myers teen killed in the collision of two all-terrain vehicles Sunday in Lehigh Acres is trying to cope with the loss of his son as he hopes the boy’s death serves a purpose. Mark Flint said he hopes a place can be found for people to rideall-terrain vehicles safely after his son, Kyle, was killed in a collision on Sunday. “There’s no space for them to ride,” Mark Flint said. “As long as theykeep building four-wheelers and not having a place for them to ride, this is going to continue to happen. I don’t want my son to die in vain."Kyle Flint, 16, was killed when the ATV he was riding hit head-on into one driven by Wesley Aaron Sullivan, 16, also of Fort Myers.The teenagers were riding along State Road 82, west of Rue Labeau Circle, an area popular among ATV riders. High vegetation prevented them from seeing each other. Both were ejected in the crash ...

Scientists say panther response plan is flawed
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Oct 16
It is the "what-if" that shakes Southwest Florida conservationists to the core: What if a Florida panther ever injures or kills a human? State and federal wildlife officials are finalizing a plan that will prescribe how agencies should respond to panthers behaving badly. Called on to review the plan recently, several independent scientists and officials reached a similar conclusion: The plan, as written, is "self-designed to allow problems to occur" and should do more to prevent attacks before they happen. Wildlife officers and officials have been using a draft of the plan since February 2005. In that time, panthers have attacked goats in Golden Gate Estates, carried off a Chihuahua in Immokalee, eaten cats and hogs in Copeland and swiped a turkey from a petting zoo in Ochopee. "We understand the situation; we have the priority of people No. 1 and safety," said C ...

Visits from the stork
Chad Gillis /Naples Daily News /Oct 28
They deliver babies, hock pickles on TV commercials and are credited with making a pillow for baby Jesus as he lay in a manger filled with straw.From Roman mythology and Biblical stories to cartoons and Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales, storks are deeply rooted in Western history, possibly more than any other bird. Many cultures consider the sighting of a stork to be a good omen, a sign of fertility and prosperity. If that’s true, practically everyone in Southwest Florida should buy a lottery ticket because they’re here now, by the thousands, soaring over remote swamps and feeding in roadside ditches. Most have flown hundreds of miles from other states in the Southeast to roost, feed and nest in places like Corkscrew Swamp, home to the largest breeding colony of storks in the country. North America’s only stork, wood storks are tall, lanky birds with long, gray ...

Builder offering affordable perk in test of county's growth plan
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Oct 9
The nation's largest builder of luxury homes plans to reach beyond Collier County's urban boundary with a golf course community, setting up a major test of the county's newly beefed-up growth plan. Toll Brothers is asking for three growth plan amendments, the most sought for a single project in recent memory. "I think it's a pretty good indication they're trying to fit something in where it doesn't belong," said Brad Cornell of the Collier Audubon Society, one ofseveral environmental advocates lining up against the proposal. To sweeten the deal, the company is offering to peg 100 homes toward affordable housing. The development, as proposed, would straddle the county's urban barrier, which runs parallel to Collier Boulevard one mile east of the highway. The boundary was created in a landmark 2002 growth plan. Toll Brothers' obstacles don't end with the county's gro ...

Barbecue kicks off public hearings on Big Cypress plans
IM Stackel /Naples Daily News /Oct 29
There's good community planning, bad planning and no planning whatsoever. But folks who turned out for a barbecue announcing the proposed new town of Big Cypress were optimistic that Collier Enterprises would aim for close to perfection. The event Saturday at the Collier County Fairgrounds was the start of a 25- to 30-year planning process for the county's rural lands. It attracted about 200 locals and visitors. "A lot of people have asked 'Why are you doing this?' " said Tom Flood, CEO of Collier Enterprises, referring to the barbecue and live entertainment offered up to the community. "Given the scale (of this plan), we'll never get it right if we can't sit down with everyone around here." He wants everyone to attend, especially teenagers and residents in their 20s, who intend to remain in Collier for the next several decades. "We want to plan for the l ...

Public gets its say on planned town
Christina Cepero /News Press /Oct 28
Neighbors of a proposed community of up to 25,000 homes in eastern Collier County will have a chance, beginning this afternoon, to help shape thedevelopment. Collier Enterprises wants to develop — over the next three decades — atown off Oil Well Road, six villages and two hamlets interconnected bytrails to make up the project called Big Cypress. Today’s session for public input will start at 4 p.m. at the Collier County Fairgrounds. Additional sessions are scheduled at other locations. “The whole point of these outreach sessions is to hear more from the neighbors about what their ideas are, what their opinions are, so that we can start putting together some more specific ideas,” said Dolly Roberts, of Collier Enterprises. The Naples-based company owns about 22,000 acres — 8,000 would be developed and 14,000 preserved — in the Rural Lands Stewardship Program, a special taxi ...

Ave Maria taking shape
Patty Bryant /News Zap /Oct 2006
The Ave Maria Oratory is the centerpiece of the Piazza and is flanked by commercial and residential sites for a walking Town Core. Three additional commercial centers will provide all the amenities needed by residents and university students.Immokalee Bulletin/Patty BrantFor months Immokalee residents, and all of southwest Florida, have been curious about Ave Maria, the Catholic town and cathedralAt completion the town will be home to some 11,000 residents in three communities n a family neighborhood, a village area and a retirement area. Each area will include its own amenities. The town will provide everything from golf courses to a family waterpark as well as commercial and professional sites. Ave Maria, the brainchild of Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza, in partnership with Barron Collier Companies, is beginning to take shape. Just a few weeks ago the huge cross was pl ...

Meeting planned tonight on living among panthers
staff /Naples Daily News /Nov 16
Panther experts will offer advice to residents tonight on how to protect themselves and their properties from Florida panthers. A successful breeding program, combined with a shrinking habitat, have driven the endangered Florida panther into communities along Collier County’s urbanfringe. Panthers have attacked livestock or pets in at least six incidents this year, although there are no reports of a Florida panther ever having attacked a human. Golden Gate Estates, particularly the isolated portion just north of Interstate 75, is most at risk, officials said. The sprawling community also sits within a few hours’ walk of the panther refuge and Big Cypress National Preserve, two of the species’ last large chunks of habitat. Panthers once roamed across the Southeast U.S. Their numbers had dwindled to a few dozen before scientists introduced eight female Texas co ...

Preservation of our national parks is a priority we cannot ignore
Bob Youngerman /Citizen Times /Nov 16
In addition, the Park Service is faced with a number of problems, many of which are man-made while others are due to the whims of nature. Traffic plagues parks from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Grand Canyon. Gridlock is the order of the day in peak summer months causing considerable stress on the parks’ eco-systems. One response is to close off stretches of a park to private vehicles, and requiring visitors to ride on clean, quiet propane-powered buses. This has worked particularly well in Utah’s Zion National Park. Off-road vehicles (ORVs) have gouged 23,000 miles of tracks across south Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve. New regulations now limit ORVs to 400 miles of designated trails. Everglades National Park staff estimate that boats have damaged 10,000 acres of seagrass beds that provide crucial habitat for wildlife. Urban sprawl plagues parks from ...

Local forum attempts to find peaceful co-existence between panthers, people
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Nov 17
Golden Gate Estates residents asked pointed questions Thursday night at a forum designed to educate them about how to live peacefully with Florida panthers.About 50 people listened as panther experts described the plight of the endangered cats and offered tips on how to protect themselves and their properties. Some accused officials of not doing enough to thwart aggressive panthers in a year in which there have been six encounters in Collier County. “It’s my property, not the panther’s property,” said Mildred Mercado of Golden Gate Estates. “I paid for it. They didn’t pay for it.” One of the written questions that was read aloud referred to the Florida panther as a “government-sponsored lethal animal.” The sudden rise in panther encounters is due to the growth in both panther and human populations, said Darrell Land, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildli ...

Brushes with Florida big cats on rise
Byron Stout /News Press /Nov 16
An encounter with panthers last spring by 22-year hunting guide Mark Clemons and his client, John Woods, may be the most alarming of all incidents documented by the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Clemons and Woods were hunting turkeys on the McDaniel Ranch in HendryCounty when they found themselves encircled by four menacing panthers. Increasing encounters between endangered Florida panthers and people living in rural areas are posing enough concern to wildlife officials to hold a town hall meeting at 7 tonight on how to live safely with the big cats. Although attacks by closely related cougars have occurred in California, no attacks on humans by Florida panthers are known. But since January, there have been six confirmed incidents of of panthers preying on pets and livestock. Those cases involved three panthers, the FWC reported. In 2004, the ...

Down and dirty
Jennifer Brannock /Naples Daily News /Nov 19
Even though she had already spent two hours standing thigh-deep in water, 11-year-old Carter Gerard was skeptical about her group’s next assignment. Rolling up her sleeves, she looked questioningly at her group-mates. “Anyone else wanna do it?” she asked. “I will!” classmate Kathleen Sorbara quickly volunteered. Without a moment’s hesitation, Kathleen, a ballerina who performs at the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, plunged her polished fingernailsinto the water, and it disappeared into the black soil. Immediately, the 11-year-old appeared to regret her spontaneity. Kathleen’s face soured as she hesitated to bring the sloppy soil to the surface.“Be a man!” Carter cheered her friend on. With a grunt, Kathleen lifted the muck from the crystal clear swamp water, and the once girlie-girls, all reservations forgotten, grabbed at the gooey sample of earth. ...

Bush, Cabinet seek to change designation of Big Cypress
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Nov 19
Nothing was more controversial in Collier County in 1973 than Florida’s efforts to enact environmental protection rules across hundreds of thousands of the county’s most remote acres. Decades later, state growth regulators who are considering wiping the Big Cypress Area of Critical State Concern off the map have a fight on their hands to keep the rules in place. In a report Friday to Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet, state Department of Community Affairs Secretary Thaddeus Cohen recommended starting the process of dropping the Area of Critical State Concern and leaving the job of environmental protection to the county’s landmark 2002 growth plan. The idea could come up for a Cabinet vote as early as Dec. 5. ...

Seminoles offering slots in remote Big Cypress tent as challenge to Florida
Jon Burstein and David Fleshler /Sun Sentinel /Nov 22
About 20 miles north of Alligator Alley, up a two-lane road that winds past grazing cows, stands the Seminole Tribe's newest casino.Housed in an air-conditioned white tent, it offers 63 slot machines and little else. Three vending machines stand in a corner. The restrooms are in a portable unit out back. At 5:30 p.m. on a Friday, there are no customers, just a manager and two employees. The remote Big Cypress Casino, which isn't listed on the tribe's Web site with the other casinos, is one of the main reasons the Seminoles and Gov. Jeb Bush in April broke off negotiations over a gambling compact. A compact, an agreement governing tribal casinos, would mean bigger profits for the Seminoles, with a share going to the state government. It would allow the tribe to install Las Vegas-style slots at its casinos, in place of bingo-style machines, which typically offer lowe ...

ATV protest planned for Everglades event
staff /Naples Daily News /Nov 27
Top state environmental officials will be greeted by protesters Wednesday at an event marking a milestone in an Everglades restoration project in eastern Collier County. A group of outdoor enthusiasts plans to protest the South Florida Water Management District's failure to meet an Oct. 1, 2005, deadline to find 640 acres of land suitable for an off-roading park. Collier County commissionershave threatened to sue the district and the state's top environmental agencyunless the sides can come to an agreement soon. "We don't want to get rowdy. We want to respect their event. But we want to let them know that we are to be reckoned with," said protest organizer Dennis Bolanos, a 37-year-old Fort Myers resident and avid all-terrain vehicle rider. He estimated that five protesters will be on hand, but there would be more if the event weren't being held during a weekday.Di ...

County wants state protections for Big Cypress preserved
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Nov 29
Collier County’s support Tuesday for a set of environmental protection rulesacross much of the county’s most remote areas raised new questions about howlong the rules will stay on the state’s books.County commissioners voted 4-0 Tuesday to oppose dropping the state’s Big Cypress Area of Critical State Concern designation. Commissioner Frank Halas was absent. The vote did not shut the door completely to removing the designation at some future point, and the state’s Area of Critical State Concern Administrator Clark Turner said after the vote that he would raise the issue with Gov.-elect Charlie Crist after his administration takes office. Tuesday’s vote capped two weeks of uncertainty that started when the state Department of Community Affairs declared the job of protecting the 830,000 acres within the area’s boundaries complete and proposed that Gov. Jeb Bush and the Ca ...

Project will have to wait 10 years
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Nov 28
A wildlife underpass aimed at preventing vehicles from colliding with Florida panthers on U.S. 41 East at the Turner River bridge won't be built for at least a decade, a state transportation official said. The delay isn't sitting well with the wildlife advocacy group that called for the underpass. Seven panther strikes have occurred near the bridge since 1984, six of them since 1996. "It seems like a long time to us because panthers are getting killed there now," said Elizabeth Fleming, the Florida representative of Defenders of Wildlife."But it would probably take that long anyway if they said they were going tobuild that bridge now." Defenders applied for a $4 million Florida Department of Transportation grant in June to fund the underpass's construction. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the protection of endangered species, agreed to spo ...

Florida panthers threatened as development overtakes habitat
Brian Skoloff /AP /Nov 29
FLORIDA PANTHER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Fla. - Biologist LarryRichardson waxes philosophical about the Florida panther, equating its protection to the overall need to maintain nature in one of the fastest growing states in the nation. Among the most endangered species on the planet, the Florida panther may soon become a novelty seen only in captivity. The big cats once roamed by the thousands throughout the Southeastern U.S., but asdevelopment encroaches on their only remaining habitat in southwest Florida, extinction may be certain. It's the last of the puma population east of the Mississippi River. "The way we're building, we're going to push the panthers out. They're going to lose. My big concern is the panther will become a zoo relic," said Richardson, ...

Cost for Collier portion of Everglades restoration drops by nearly $50M
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Nov 30
Skyrocketing construction costs and a federal flood-control directive in thewake of Hurricane Katrina have inflated the projected cost of the state’s Everglades campaign from $1.5 billion to nearly $2 billion. But the lone Collier County project in the state’s fast-track plan has bucked that trend. The projected price tag for the Southern Golden Gate Estates restoration project has dropped from $362 million to $313 million due to an engineering review aimed at cutting costs. Carol Wehle, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, said Wednesday the Everglades campaign is facing the same pressures everyonefaces in the construction industry. “Any government, be it a city, county or state, is dealing with the rise in construction costs. I imagine every government is asking itself what they need to have versus what they want to have,” said Weh ...

Everglades gets back to nature
Joel Moroney /News Press /Nov 30
The scars of development are healing in the Everglades south of Alligator Alley, where thousands of motorists pass the unseen effort in the vastwetlands that stretch to the Gulf of Mexico.Backhoes churn amid flocks of birds while miles of blacktop and canalsslowly disappear. The land is returning to its roots, salvaged from damage caused by developers of what in the 1960s was to become South Golden Gate Estates. State officials met at Picayune Strand State Forest on Wednesday to mark the second anniversary of the first Acceler8 project, a 30-year, $11 billion effort to restore the Everglades. "It's already bringing back the sheetflow and bringing back the plants," said David Anderson, of Audubon of Florida. "It not only works, but it's working faster than the people involved could have hoped."Several hundred people are working to remove 290 miles of roads; plug 48 ...

Land is more important than ATVs
Opinion /News Press /Dec 1
Rescuing great chunks of the Everglades from human misuse is one of the epic environmental stories in U.S. history, and despite grave problems in its conception and execution, it still stands a fair chance of succeeding.But use and misuse are different, and sorting them out continues to be a problem in the Everglades.For example, all-terrain vehicles or ATVs, are hard to fit in when you're trying to restore Eden, but sometimes their users have a fair claim onsome place to recreate. This week, state officials gathered at the Picayune Strand State Forest southeast of Naples to mark the anniversary of one of the first big projects in the mammoth Everglades restoration scheme. In Picayune Strand, the idea is essentially to rip out and reverse the effects of one of those huge subdivisions carved out of the Florida wilderness in the 1950s and 1960s, like Cape Coral. ...

County wants state protections for Big Cypress preserved
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Nov 22
Collier County’s support Tuesday for a set of environmental protection rulesacross much of the county’s most remote areas raised new questions about howlong the rules will stay on the state’s books.County commissioners voted 4-0 Tuesday to oppose dropping the state’s Big Cypress Area of Critical State Concern designation. Commissioner Frank Halas was absent. The vote did not shut the door completely to removing the designation at some future point, and the state’s Area of Critical State Concern Administrator Clark Turner said after the vote that he would raise the issue with Gov.-elect Charlie Crist after his administration takes office. Tuesday’s vote capped two weeks of uncertainty that started when the state Department of Community Affairs declared the job of protecting the 830,000 acres within the area’s boundaries complete and proposed that Gov. Jeb Bush and the Ca ...

State's oil wells drying up
James Thorner /St Pete Times /Nov 30
Back in World War II, the federal government dangled cash rewards to encourage landowners to drill for oil to power America’s military machine. South Florida’s Collier family responded and in 1943 tapped the state’s first reservoir of smelly, molasses-like petroleum on the edge of Big Cypress National Preserve. The South Florida oil fields, combined with larger discoveries of black gold in the Florida Panhandle, represent the state’s little-heralded oil industry the past 63 years.But if this year’s production is any indication, the quantity of oil pumped from Florida has plunged about 20 percent. It’s an industry fading at a most inopportune time. ...

Project to restore natural water flow taking shape
staff /Sun Herald /Dec 3
Facing uncertainty at almost every turn, scientists and regulators at the South Florida Water Management District embarked two years ago on a solo mission. What was supposed to be a burden borne by the state and federal government, now would be theirs alone: reclaiming the world's largest subdivision in the name of restoring the fabled Everglades. Since then, crews have carted away half of the 160 structures that once dotted Southern Golden Gate Estates, nearly completed the filling of a seven-mile canal and begun removing more than 260 miles of roads. "It's so cool to see it happen," said project manager Janet Starnes, seated in the front seat of a helicopter hovering about 400 feet above the rapidly changing terrain. Despite the absence of federal involvement, Starnes and other state officials said Wednesday the one-of-a-kind restoration project is moving forward at an encouraging ...

Seminoles to buy Hard Rock International
Dec 7 /Orlando Sentinel /The Seminole Tr
Plc to buy its subsidiary, Orlando-based Hard Rock International Inc., for nearly $1 billion. The $965 million deal is expected to close in early March 2007. Corporate headquarters for the company will remain in Orlando. The Seminoles expect to fund the purchase price from a combination of debt issued by a new Hard Rock operating company and equity funding from the tribe's gaming division.The Seminole Tribe of Florida currently owns and operates two Seminole Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos in Tampa and Hollywood, Fla., under terms of a license agreement with Hard Rock International. Hard Rock operates 124 Hard Rock Cafes in 45 countries and owns what is believed to be the world's largest collection of authentic music memorabilia. ...

Couple wants state to buy their forest property
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Dec 9
Life in the middle of Picayune Strand State Forest is at times peaceful and aggravating, depending on the season and whether the overbearing cop from the agriculture department is on the beat. But after 24 years, Wayne Wood and his wife, Jackie, who joined him for the last 13 of those years, want out.Wood, a construction worker specializing in remodeling homes, was named senior pastor at Immokalee Ministries in April and wants to be closer to his flock.There’s just one problem with that. The state Department of Environmental Protection, the owner of the surrounding forest, refuses to buy the couple’s home and the 5 acres around it. They can’t sell to anyone else, they say, because the state won’t assure them in writing that the ecological restoration project next door won’t flood them out. The couple’s story offers a strange twist in the state’s 20-year effort ...

Everglades Blvd./I-75 exchange OK'd - but not for everyone
staff /Naples Daily News /Dec 11
A temporary interchange at Everglades Boulevard and Interstate 75 could open as early as next summer to expedite the construction of an Everglades restoration project. Sorry, Golden Gate Estates residents. This ramp isn't for you. The South Florida Water Management District plans to apply for permits earlynext year to construct a paved link between the interstate and Southern Golden Gate Estates. The interchange will allow construction vehicles to reach the 55,000-acre failed subdivision quicker once the pump stations are ready to be built, said Janet Starnes, a project manager with the water management district. Crews are tearing out miles of roads and canals to bring back nature in the area between I-75 and U.S. 41 East. The pump stations will siphon water out of three canals and spread it across the land, creating a shallow, ecologically friendly flow of water, exp ...

Panther boundaries tightened
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Dec 18
New roads, homes and mines are now eligible to move into an area the size ofRhode Island across South Florida without encountering federal regulations used to protect Florida panthers.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service redrew the panther's habitat boundary earlier this month after developers and Collier County leaders complained that the old line was outdated. The tightened boundary reflects leaps forward in science and provides a more accurate picture of where panthers live, said Paul Souza, head of Fish and Wildlife's office in Vero Beach. "We did our best to capture where panthers are found," Souza said. "It's not an artifact of what existed 20 years ago; it's what actually exists." But some panther advocates question why Fish and Wildlife would shrink the "consultation area" at a time when the agency's own reports indicate the bigcats need more space. The new border ...

Florida's Black Bears Are On A Deadly Path
Neil Johnson /Tampa Bay /Dec 23
TAMPA - Bear No. 14 was a 120-pound male, 2 years old and just weaned from his mother's protection when he tried to cross State Road 40 in the Ocala National Forest. He didn't make it. The bear, tagged and collared as part of a four-year study that ended in 2003, died in 1999, one of scores killed on Florida highways each year. It's a trend line that has crept steadily upward.Holiday drivers this weekend will be traveling during the end of the most dangerous time for bears, which are moving over large areas to forage before winter.Researchers say the number of bears killed in the Ocala National Forest, 100 miles northeast of Tampa, probably is sustainable because it has the greatest concentration of the animals. Births can offset deaths in the 389,000-acre region of pines, palms and hardwoods. But even a few deaths raise the risk that bears will disappear from other areas they c ...

As muck is dredged away, Lake Trafford shows signs of life again
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Dec 24
Frothy, oil-black water spews from a pipe into a cattail-choked pond that water managers call a containment disposal facility.This is the final destination for 1 million cubic yards of muck a contractor is dredging from the outer rim of Lake Trafford near Immokalee — the last leg of a $15.1 million restoration project.A mile away, what once was an environmental disaster now is showing signs ofcoming back to life. Roseate spoonbills, snowy egrets and wood storks line Lake Trafford's shore.Alligators sunbathe on makeshift beds. The first young bass to have been spotted in years are growing in number and size.After a six-month delay, a contractor began siphoning away the nutrient-richsludge around the edge of the lake on Dec. 1. In about six months, the largest natural freshwater lake south of Lake Okeechobee will be muck-free for the first time in decades."I wish my wife was al ...

Virile panther 'doing fine' at new home
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Dec 25
He is the Florida panther that almost single-handedly (single-pawedly?) kept his species from disappearing by fathering at least 30 kittens over five years. No wonder he earned the nickname "Don Juan." Now, more than 10 months after his capture and removal from the wilderness in eastern Collier County, the big cat is "doing fine" and "in good health," his caretakers say. The 11-year-old panther resides in a small enclosure surrounded by a chain-link fence in an area out of public view at Tampa Bay Busch Gardens. The enclosure is connected to a larger, concrete-covered area where the cat likes to roam at night. "He's doing fine. There's really no change. He's in good health," said AimeeJeansonne Becka, a Busch Gardens spokeswoman. Although panthers and other cougar subspecies tend to acclimate well to captivity, biologists worried whether Don Juan would adjust to his n ...

Panther making East Naples his new home
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Dec 28
Bobcats. Gopher tortoises. Bald eagles. Deer. Wild hogs. Raccoons. Brian Holley is fond of ticking off the medley of wildlife found in the woods around Naples Botanical Garden at the south end of Bayshore Drive. His list just got longer. Since late November, an orphaned male Florida panther has taken up residence in the yawning wilderness south of U.S. 41 East between Naples Bay and Collier Boulevard, state biologists say. “In some ways, I’m kind of excited about it,” said Holley, the botanical garden’s executive director. “It’s nice to have nature that close to us.” Such excursions into town are rare for the shy, elusive cats. But the behavior of FP147, as the panther is known, underscores the need to spare as much unpaved land as possible for the endangered cats, a federal biologist said. “We aren’t going to stop development in town, and these panthers aren’t ...