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An annual collection of packaged food items carried out this weekend by the men and women who normally just deliver the mail, may be the only way to help plug holes developing in the social assistance safety net.Saturday was the national Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive and letter carriers across the U.S. were gathered non-perishables to be distributed to those in need.

The concrete pour for the Little Pine Island Bridge is now tentatively scheduled for Friday, March 28, at 2 a.m. When work resumes, crews will pour more then 300 yards of concrete for the deck slab, requiring approximately five hours to complete.

Lightning comes in different varieties, the most common kinds don't reach the ground, called intra-cloud and cloud-to-cloud. Cloud to ground lightning actually only makes up about 10-20% of strikes. About 1% is ground to cloud. Then one of the outlier forms of lightning stretches for miles (sometimes dozens of miles) horizontally and can resemble a spider web, and that’s why it’s called spider lightning. We learn about ongoing research at Florida Gulf Coast University into this form of lightning with the instructor who is leading it and a student who helped her work with the data.

There was an effort to get an amendment to Florida's constitution onto the 2024 ballot that would have assured citizens a right to clean water but its organizers fell short of the required signatures. But FloridaRightToCleanWater.org is not giving up, and has already launched an effort to get a similar amendment onto the ballot for the 2026 election. If passed, the new proposed amendment titled “Right to Clean and Healthy Waters” would create a fundamental right to clean and healthy waters in Florida. And it would allow citizens to sue state agencies for equitable relief when an agency, by action or inaction, allows harm or threat of harm to Florida waters. We learn more about the amendment and what exactly it would do, and the issues it aims to address when it comes to regulatory agencies not doing enough to protect the environment.

When it comes to the ways global climate change impacts the world’s oceans things like melting ice caps and glaciers, and what’s called thermal expansion — that’s when water takes up more volume as its temperature goes up — are probably what first come to mind. Or how increased water temperatures impact sea life, like recent, widespread coral bleaching events off Florida’s coast and around the world. Or even how changes in temperature and salinity can alter ocean currents, which are crucial for regulating global climate and weather patterns. But, an overlooked aspect of this story is how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the acidity — or the pH level — of the world’s oceans.

Doug MacGregor has been an editorial cartoonist for more than 40 years. He got his professional start at the Norwich Bulletin in eastern Connecticut in 1980. He moved to Florida in 1988 and drew cartoons for the News Press in Fort Myers until 2011. Doug created five cartoons every week, year in and year out, for nearly a quarter century. He has donated a large collection of his original drawings (mostly pertaining to the local environment) to Florida Gulf Coast University’s “Archives & Special Collections” at the school’s Wilson G. Bradshaw Library and students have completed the process of digitizing them and the team at the Archives helps students use Doug’s work in their studies.

When it comes to the ways global climate change impacts the world’s oceans things like melting ice caps and glaciers, and what’s called thermal expansion — that’s when water takes up more volume as its temperature goes up — are probably what first come to mind. Or how increased water temperatures impact sea life, like recent, widespread coral bleaching events off Florida’s coast and around the world. Or even how changes in temperature and salinity can alter ocean currents, which are crucial for regulating global climate and weather patterns. But, an overlooked aspect of this story is how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the acidity — or the pH level — of the world’s oceans.

We meet the new Collier County Waterkeeper, Ray Bearfield. Bearfield is a former fishing guide and educator at Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, who first came to Naples in the mid-1970s as an editor of The Naples Daily News. He has written extensively about Southwest Florida for the Coastal Conservation Association, Florida Sportsman magazine, The Miami Herald and other publications.

According to the latest available data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate at which kids in the U.S. are being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder has risen to one in 36 children. That’s up from 1 in 44 in 2018, and 1 in 101 in 2015. The increasing rate has driven a growing demand for education, therapy and other services for neurodivergent kids and their families — and for their entire support networks.

We catch up with former FGCU president, Dr. Martin, to have him reflect on his time at FGCU and what’s on his horizon going forward.