Tom Bayles

3 weeks ago | news.wgcu.org | Tom Bayles

Underneath the 52-square-mile surface area of Sarasota Bay’s expansive range are seagrass meadows currently increasing in size, in health, and in biodiversity despite a population boom that started a hundred years ago and has yet to slow. Decades of efforts to restore the bay’s deteriorating water quality met with fits and starts, but mostly failure.

3 weeks ago | news.wgcu.org | Tom Bayles

Calusa Waterkeeper met at the Broadway Palm Dinner Theater Thursday to raise funds, discuss the state of the Caloosahatchee River, and learn more about the group’s mission during a lunch that doubled as an earth-science lesson in Southwest Florida’s environmental challenges. The waterkeeper sounds singular, but it refers to a passionate group of people dedicated to an environmental cause – in this case, the Caloosahatchee River and the 1,000 square miles around it.

3 weeks ago | news.wgcu.org | Tom Bayles

For nearly four months, the spillway in Moore Haven that allows water from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River has been wide open to lower lake levels before the rainy season. The water gushes out at billions of gallons a day, looking like class three rapids. That’s about to come to an end. Col. Brandon Bowman, who is in charge of the Army Corps of Engineers operations in Florida, called for the releases to stop Saturday.

4 weeks ago | news.wgcu.org | Tom Bayles

State panther biologists are hoping the sometimes cruel fate of nature does not repeat itself this year after they checked on a trio of kittens born to a mother who lost last year’s litter to a hungry black bear. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologists posted pictures of the kittens on Instagram after a veterinary visit, which is a common practice when baby panthers reach their one-month-old milestone.

4 weeks ago | news.wgcu.org | Tom Bayles

A brush fire frightened residents in the Wilshire Lakes neighborhood in Naples on Wednesday, and Sarasota County joined the growing list of Southwest Florida municipalities banning outdoor burning, as drought holds tight in the region and a major index measuring the wildfire threat spikes. Swamps are burning, drought is worsening, and forecasters are predicting above-average temperatures for the next month as the threat of wildfire continues to menace the southern half of Florida.