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During Vice President Joe Biden's campaign event at the Everglades, he referred to the national park as the 'Ever-gators.' "Back in '28 when it was built, they didn't realize that they effectivly created a dam through half of the Ever-gators - through half of the Everglades - cutting off the water supply that these wetlands depend upon," Biden said. Biden told the crowd that his Secret Service agent would "shoot the alligator" if he ended up in a wrestling match with one.

Burmese pythons have virtually wiped out raccoons, marsh rabbits, opossums and other once-common mammals in the southern region of Everglades National Park, according to a nine-year study that shows the snakes' devastating impact on the park's wildlife. The loss of so many significant species from part of the park is certain to have significant repercussions throughout the food web, said Michael Dorcas, lead author of the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For the first time, scientists have put numbers to the toll Burmese pythons have had on native wildlife in the Everglades. But one word can sum it up: carnage. In the decade since the giant constrictors started showing up in significant numbers, mammals once among the most common in Everglades National Park have declined dramatically, according to a study published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.The study, based on night field surveys conducted over 10 years, found three animals had all but disappeared. Opossum sightings fell 98.9 percent. Raccoons — once so abundant park managers warned...

Record freezes and a fearsome drought have failed to kill off the Burmese pythons that have colonized the Everglades. Six of the non-native, constricting snakes were found last week in sections of the Everglades in which they had not turned up before, including an area north of Alligator Alley, according to the South Florida Water Management District. This further dashed hopes by scientists that the past winter's cold weather could kill off the snakes, which are native to the warmer climate of southern Asia.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rallied Everglades restoration workers Friday at a groundbreaking ceremony for a piece of the massive effort in rural Collier County. The ceremony deep in the Picayune Strand State Forest between U.S. 41 and Interstate 75 marked the start of work on a $79 million pump station along the Faka Union Canal. The pump is the largest of three that are part of a plan to return natural water flows to 55,000 acres of the forest where developers once planned a huge subdivision. The restoration also will tear out 260 miles of roads and plug 48 miles...

In May 2008, archaeologists began the tedious task of exhuming the remains of Native Americans at a remote site south of Lake Okeechobee and reburying them at another remote site, to make way for a man-made wetland needed to restore the Everglades. [snip] But the more the archaeologists dug, the more they found. After nearly two years, the tribes learned that what they'd been told were some teeth and bones turned out to be partial remains of 56 men, women and children moved from an ancient burial ground so significant that it would have been eligible for listing on the...

With all the deadly panthers, pythons and gators roaming the Everglades, most people might not think of making a career out of splashing through the swamp. Ed Woods is not most people. Woods and his crew are the stars of a new National Geographic show called "Swamp Men," which premieres on Nat Geo Wild tonight at 10 p.m. The Swamp Men lead their Billie Swamp Safari tours through Big Cypress Swamp, deep in the Everglades on Seminole Indian tribe ground. Their mission: "patrol the land, relocate animals from dangerous situations and rescue animals in need." The animals, about 1,600 in...

At Everglades National Park, managers struggle to control vultures' appetites for the rubber and plastic on visitors' vehicles.Behind her counter in the gift shop at Anhinga Trail, the first and most popular tourist stop in Everglades National Park, Linda Hyde keeps a secret weapon against forbidding creatures that spent much of the winter lurking in the parking lot and preying on random visitors and staffers. Not pythons, gators, panthers or even infamously blood-thirsty mosquitoes. Vultures. Some of the big black birds, known primarily for dining on the dead and decaying, also have developed an appetite for something unusual: car parts....

Time to put those snake-stalking skills to work. State wildlife officials have created a special python hunting season to try to stop the spread of the nonnative snakes throughout the Everglades and the hunting begins today. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says anyone with a hunting license who pays a $26 permit fee can kill the reptiles from today to April 17 on state-managed lands around the Everglades in South Florida. The season is open for Burmese and Indian pythons, African rock pythons, green anacondas and Nile monitor lizards. Thousands of the nonnative Burmese pythons are believed to...

Thousands of 10-foot pythons roam the Florida Everglades, menacing man and beast alike. Catharine Skipp prepares to join the historic hunting expedition designed to stamp them out. There are giant beasts stalking South Florida. Seriously: Burmese Pythons that can grow as long as a Winnebago and have been known to swallow German shepherds who take a wrong turn. There are an estimated 30,000 of them, slithering through Miami and surrounding counties. The reptiles wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. They can also kill people. Just last year, an 8½-foot family pet Burmese escaped its cage and strangled a 2-year-old girl...

Vultures circled over Everglades National Park's Anhinga Trail, where thousands of dead non-native fish floated in the marshes. About half the Burmese pythons found in the park in the past few weeks were dead. Dead iguanas have dropped from trees onto patios across South Florida. And in western Miami-Dade County, three African rock pythons — powerful constrictors that can kill people — have turned up dead. Although South Florida's warm, moist climate has nurtured a vast range of non-native plants and animals, a cold snap last month reminded these unwanted guests they're not in Burma or Ecuador anymore. Temperatures that...

The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes make a home and breed in the fragile wetlands, officials said on Thursday. Wildlife biologists say the troublesome invaders -- dumped in the Everglades by pet owners who no longer want them -- have become a pest and pose a significant threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat. "They eat things that we care about," said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist, as he showed a captured, 15-foot (4.6-meter) Burmese python to U.S. Interior...

LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. — In a deal that environmental groups said would be the largest ecological restoration in the country’s history, a plan for the state to buy the nation’s largest producer of cane sugar was announced Tuesday by the governor and officials of U.S. Sugar Corporation. The intention is to restore the Everglades by restoring the water flow from Lake Okeechobee, in the heart of the state, south to Florida Bay. That flow had been interrupted by commercial farming and the Everglades have suffered as a result. Under term of the tentative deal, U.S. Sugar would continue farming and processing...

[snip] Florida will buy every bit of land now owned by the nation's largest sugar company and use it to restore the River of Grass. Although many details of the $1.75-billion deal still must be worked out before it closes in November, the bottom line is this: U.S. Sugar will continue farming its land — 187,000 acres, three times the size of Orlando — for six more years, then shut everything down and hand it over to the state. [snip] Company executives called the decision to sell bittersweet, since it will end more than 70 years of farming there. U.S....

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson is returning to Florida for a four-day trip and he wants to make something clear: He doesn't want oil drilling in the Everglades. "It's a national treasure and it's not to be messed with and I can't imagine anybody doing so," Thompson said during a phone interview Thursday. After a meeting with Gov. Charlie Crist last month, he was asked about whether he would support drilling in the Everglades. He responded, in part, "I'm not going to start out by taking this, that or the other off the table." That remark prompted Crist to later...

The damage wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005 spelled the end of the venerable Flamingo Lodge at Everglades National Park. Now as park officials consider options for a replacement, they have to factor in more than just the dangers of inundation from a storm surge. On the northern edge of Florida Bay, Flamingo, and other vast tracts of the 1.5-million-acre park, are threatened by global warming-induced sea level rise, officials say. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this year estimated that oceans will rise between 7 inches and 23 inches over the course of this century...

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK -- Wildlife managers in Everglades National Park typically spend hours trying to catch nonnative Burmese pythons that have invaded the swamp. On Monday, they set one free. Using a radio transmitter implanted in the 10-foot snake, biologists hope to track its movements and find other snakes for removal.

June 14, 2006 -- With hurricane season underway, and alligators on the rampage, and sharks looking for lunch, does Florida really need Burmese pythons? No way, says wildlife ecologist Frank Mazzotti of the University of Florida in Gainesville. But these non-native snakes have found a home in Everglades National Park, and their numbers are growing dramatically. Although elusive by nature, these giant snakes have been seen doing battle with alligators, climbing trees fast enough to catch nesting chicks and swallowing animals as large as wood storks.

Again, mature topic, recommended for sophomoric viewers only. :-) See for example this thread first. Which side will the DUmmies come down on? All Dems agree on saving the environment, but given the number of gender feminists, and sandal-clad, effeminate Euroweenies in the party, the purported side effects of pesticides might be too good to pass up! I just read a frightening report that pesticides can make men, ..."short". Enviros are mad but fem'nists are glad Politics, strange bedfellows, I retort!

<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Florida's newest problem is roughly the circumference of a telephone pole. It has no toes. It snacks on rabbits. It's the Burmese python. And in South Florida, the problem is growing in number and in feet.</p> <p>Click on Any Deal and Check Them Out Today! *Fares listed may not include all taxes, charges and government fees. More information. © 2006 Travelzoo Inc.</p>

Florida's newest problem is roughly the circumference of a telephone pole. It has no toes. It snacks on rabbits. It's the Burmese python. And in South Florida, the problem is growing in number and in feet. "Last year, we caught 95 pythons," said Skip Snow, a biologist with Florida Everglades National Park. That's not counting the 13-footer that exploded after trying to eat an alligator, or two others that got loose and ate a Siamese cat and a turkey. To keep the problem from sliding further out of control, state Rep. Ralph Poppell, R-Titusville, wants to add Burmese pythons to...

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Florida (Reuters) - The man leading efforts to eradicate giant Burmese python snakes from Everglades National Park sounds almost fearful, and certainly not optimistic, when he talks about the chances of wiping out an invasive species he calls "the enemy." That is partly because Skip Snow, a 54-year-old veteran wildlife biologist with the U.S. National Park Service, says he doesn't know how many of the slithery monsters are in the swampy Florida park. "It could be literally thousands," Snow told Reuters. "It could be a number I don't want to know. It could be scary." It's scary...

CLEWISTON -- Prehistoric bones believed to belong to ancient sloths have been discovered by construction crews working on the massive Everglades restoration project. The bones were found April 1 by workers with the South Florida Water Management District constructing a 2,000-acre storm water treatment area about 50 miles northwest of Miami, district spokesman Roberto Fabricio said Monday. The plant-eating animals the size of elephants became extinct at least 4,000 years ago. Scientists from the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville planned to begin excavating the site and collecting the bones on Tuesday. ``It's always possible that something new or...

Surviving the Everglades BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Nov. 10, 1996.) If you're looking to get away from civilization and experience the serenity that comes from being out in nature's wilderness beauty and having the vast majority of the blood sucked out of your body, then you should rent a houseboat in the Everglades. I did this recently with my son, Rob. We rented our houseboat at a place called Flamingo, in Everglades National Park, waaaaay down on the bottom of Florida. At that point, Florida has totally stopped pretending to be a...

FORT LAUDERDALE — A company owned by a United Arab Emirates investment firm is seeking to renew its license to provide services to ships docking at Port Everglades. County commissioners will decide Tuesday whether to renew the license for ISS Marine Service Inc., the steamship agent at Port Everglades for at least five years. Controlling interest in ISS Marine Service’s parent company, Inchcape Shipping Services, was purchased in January by Istithmar PJSC, an investment firm based in Dubai, the capital of United Arab Emirates. Port Director Phil Allen said ISS Marine Service has three employees who mainly complete paperwork but...

A 13-foot Burmese python is headed to the Florida Everglades, except this one's every move will now be tracked. To better understand the presence of pythons in the Everglades, scientists at Davidson College in North Carolina inserted a tracking device inside the animal. Everglades Park research technicians will follow the snake's movement and study how the reptile adapts to its new environment. Pythons, elusive creatures which are difficult to find and capture, are rapidly becoming the new predators of the swamp. Just last year, a 13-foot python was found with a six-foot alligator halfway down its body. So far, scientists...

NAPLES, Fla. - A homesteader leaving his Everglades land after years of fighting the state's claim on it is moving to a bigger, nicer house, but he mourns what he's lost. "I will never see the turkeys run up and down the road again," said Jesse Hardy, 70. "I will never see my deer feed in my yard again. ... I will never be able to freely do what I wanted to do." Hardy's land was the last of 19,000 parcels purchased by the state over the past two decades to help return the Everglades to its natural state. Most...

From Jabba the Hutt to Jebbe the Nutt By Jan Michael Jacobson November 1, 2005 From Hollywood's Jabba the Hutt to Florida's Jebbe the Nutt, Florida just keeps on tripping down the Yellow Brick Road towards some crazy enviro-land of Oz. The latest press release from Tallahassee breathlessly tells how Jebbe the Nutt is going to spend umpteen million dollars of our tax money "saving" the Everglades. As they used to say, "Well, gag me with a socialist." And look who appears. Colleen Castile, who heads the Department Of Environmental Protection, breathlessly describes the latest crisis de jure, from which...

As near as I can tell looking at a map, Freeper gladesguru's homestead was right in the path of Wilma. He lives near Ochopee, does anyone have damage reports from that area?

MIAMI — Once again, a python has been done in by its dinner. After one python exploded after trying to eat an alligator, a 10-foot African rock python was apparently trapped by the turkey it ate at a nursery. The snake couldn’t slither back through a fence to digest the bird. Nursery owner Felix Azquz, 77, noticed one turkey was missing early Monday. Then he saw the bulging snake. “It scared me,� Azquz said. “I ran outside to call the police.� The snake will be taken to a zoo, said Capt. Al Cruz of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue antivenin unit....

WEST PALM BEACH - A man who fought for years to keep his swampy home and rock mine business in the rural Everglades settled for $4.95 million with the state, which plans to restore the former wetlands area. The deal, approved Wednesday by a Collier County circuit judge, gives Jesse Hardy until Nov. 30 to get off the 160 acres. The former Navy SEAL lives in a clapboard house he built, hidden down a maze of dusty dirt roads about 40 miles east of Naples. The property has no electricity or other utilities, but Hardy dug a 60-foot well for...

EAST OF NAPLES, TURN LEFT AT THE BUCKET - Once, the land under Jesse Hardy's feet was an underwater reef, and nobody owned it and nobody wanted it. Then it became more or less solid, part of South Florida. To the east, the Everglades grew drier and drier. To the west, a town called Naples crept closer and closer. In the 1970s, developers peddling paradise dug canals, built roads and carved the swamp into squares of empty promises. Too remote to be developed, it stayed pretty much abandoned, except for Hardy. Looking for an escape from Miami, he bought a...

Jesse Hardy, the disabled vet who has battled government to stay on his Everglades-area land, has charged 13 officials in six state and federal agencies with multiple violations of law in a 43-page complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court. Officials of the Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the South Florida Water Management District are named in the complaint. The complaint alleges “ongoing violations of federal law and the United States Constitution” during the eight years the agencies have been developing the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan...

MIAMI - Along with their destructive force, hurricanes can have beneficial effects as part of the rhythm of nature. Storms that erode beaches, uproot trees and flatten wildlife habitats may also refresh waterways, revive dry areas and bulk up barrier islands with redistributed sand. "What we see is the damage it does to our structures, but it can actually renew areas," said Karen Westphal, a coastal scientist at Louisiana State University's School of the Coast and Environment. Hurricane Frances could help the Everglades, which is already undergoing a $8.4 billion environmental restoration. "Hurricanes are a vital part of the natural...

The Everglades Agricultural Area encompasses more than a half-million acres of farmland south of Lake Okeechobee. Before being transformed into farmland, the land was part of the Everglades' vast watery network. The farming operations' water use and polluted runoff have been a major threat to the Everglades. But now, as the state and federal government undertake an $8 billion project to revive the Everglades, local governments seem eager to pave over this land. Among the projects proposed for the agricultural area is the Scripps Research Institute, the biomedical firm that the state spent $300 million to bring to Palm Beach...

State, Hardy reach tentative agreement on land buy By MICHAEL PELTIER, mpeltier1234@comcast.net May 26, 2004 TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Jeb Bush and his Cabinet offered landowner Jesse Hardy a carrot Tuesday while wielding a stick in continuing efforts to uproot him from 160 acres that stand in the middle of local Everglades restoration plans. After months of negotiations and deferrals, the Cabinet voted on a plan agreed to by Hardy's attorneys that would give him until Aug. 31 to give up his parcel in exchange for an acceptable tract north of his current Southern Golden Gate Estates homestead. If an agreement...

Abandoned Burmese pythons endangering Everglades By David Fleshler Staff Writer Posted May 13 2004 As Mike Mercier walked along a boardwalk at Everglades National Park, he heard a series of loud splashes. His wife shouted for him to look, and he saw a stunning sight: a huge snake wrapped around an adult alligator. The alligator rolled over and grabbed the snake in its mouth. As Mercier ran down the boardwalk to keep up, the alligator swam off with the snake in its jaws. His photographs confirmed what he thought he saw: a Burmese python, a native of Southeast Asia and...

Yesterday, President Bush traveled to Florida to continue his emphasis on the environment. He joined brother Jeb on a trip to the Rookery Bay National Estuary near Naples and participated in clearing brush that is not native to the Everglades area.He later attended two fund raisers in Miami and Coral Gables, Florida, and Laura visited a reading lab at Snowden School in Memphis, Tennessee. Enjoy your trip to Sanity Island on the Daily Dose!

From Jesse Hardy's web site: Jesse Hardy -- Just Trying to Save his Land April 13th -- Jesse Hardy had his case deferred for two weeks. Check back here for updates!!!!!! April 13, 2004 UPDATE: Jesse listened to the Cabinet meeting over the web, at his webmaster's home this morning. Jesse wants to thank the many people who wrote their letters, made phone calls and worked so hard to help him keep his land. Jeb Bush appeared to be interested in the points that were brought up in the favor of Jesse keeping his property, and so the item is...

By GINA HOLLAND Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court, sidestepping a major decision on the government's power to regulate clean water, told a Florida court Tuesday to reconsider a pollution dispute involving the Everglades. The ruling extends a six-year fight between the 500-member Miccosukee Indian tribe and a water district the Indians accuse of illegally dumping pollutants into Florida's Everglades. The South Florida Water Management District's pump west of Fort Lauderdale dumps as much as 423,000 gallons a minute of polluted runoff from suburban lawns, farms and industrial yards into the Everglades, including 189,000 acres the state...

Bush budget gives Oregon extra for forests, fish The plan includes more money for thinning woodlands in the state viewed as pivotal in the 2004 election 01/29/04JIM BARNETT WASHINGTON -- With the November election looming and Oregon likely to factor as a swing state, the Bush administration is touting plans in its 2005 budget to boost spending on environmental programs it once sought to limit. The White House will release its full $2.3 trillion budget Monday. But as has been the practice in previous administrations, officials have offered the public a glimpse of proposals that might yield maximum political...

Supreme Court will hear a pump-station dispute, with implications for biggest US environmental restoration project. By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor EVERGLADES HOLIDAY PARK, FLA. – A four-foot alligator basks in the bright sunshine on the steep bank of a canal, as five plump cormorants leisurely digest their lunch while perched on a string of orange floats. Aside from the steady din of a nearby flood-control pump and the man-made configuration of the waterway, the scene appears a slice of idyllic Florida. monitortalk Weigh in on issues of the day in our forums. E-mail this...

It was a triumph of arrogance. We can see that now, 75 years after the fact. The notion of road builders cutting, blasting, shoveling, dredging and damming their way across the free-flowing width of the Everglades was simply unfettered by environmental concerns that now seem so obvious. The Tamiami Trail was also a triumph of labor. Brutal labor. Performed in dismal conditions, amid cypress jungles, mangrove swamps, chest-deep water and flesh-cutting sawgrass. But workers were a cheap currency -- currency freely spent in the far isolation of a Florida swamp. Men like Doc Johnson and Ray Crews were lured out...

FLORIDA DONATES LAND FOR EXPANSION OF EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK - In another milestone for restoration of America’s Everglades, Florida today donated the last parcel of state-owned property needed to complete the massive expansion of Everglades National Park launched by President George H. W. Bush in 1989. A total of 42,000 acres of state land was donated to the federal government to accomplish plans to grow the park by 109,000 acres – a move necessary to restore the natural flow, habitat and wildlife of the famed River of Grass. “More than fifty years ago, Florida donated land to...

A helicopter carried Gov. Jeb Bush into the heart of the western Everglades on Thursday to officially break ground on the first project in the $8 billion Everglades restoration plan about seven years ahead of schedule. “This is going to be an incredible project,” Bush said of the Southern Golden Gate Estates Hydrologic Restoration as some 250 people gathered. Thursday’s groundbreaking sets in motion Phase I of the project, which fills miles of canals, tears out roads and eradicates exotic plant species to reverse decades of drainage and return the land to the Everglades. While many projects benefiting the Everglades...

<p>Don’t tell me that so-called “environmentalists” are “for” the environment. The ongoing controversy over the cleanup of the Florida Everglades is further evidence that eco-activists are more interested in uncontested political power and dominating business interests than in workable environmental protection.</p>

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

The cost of turning America green In an Aug. 17 editorial, the New York Times chastised President Bush for not pushing the $8 billion Everglades Restoration Program. The editorial stated that "despite opposition from the sugar barons and the developers, Congress stipulated that restoration was to be the plan's overriding purpose, and that nature, not commerce, would have first claim on the water." An op-ed by Louis Uchitelle, in the same edition, began this way: "Manufacturing is slowly disappearing in the United States." Uchitelle went on to report that more than half the manufactured goods purchased by Americans are imported,...

<p>Collier County commissioners Tuesday will consider approving a crucial part to the overall mammoth $4 billion state and federal Everglades Restoration project.</p> <p>The county’s part in helping restore water levels and water flow through what is known as the River of Grass, which takes up most of Florida south of Lake Okeechobee, centers on what is called South Golden Gate Estates.</p>

-----Original Message----- From: Governor Jeb Bush To: elist.myflorida.com Date: Monday, May 19, 2003 8:48 PM Subject: Message from Governor Bush regarding the Everglades and additional information The Everglades bill recently passed by the House and Senate is strong legislation built upon good policy. It reinforces our commitment to restore water quality in the Everglades by providing a strategic plan to achieve this goal. Our intention has always been to complete this work at the earliest possible date. I am convinced this bill does not deter us from this goal, and I will sign the legislation. The Everglades Protection Area consists...