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Live from the Conservancy of SWFL

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An Asian short-clawed otter juggles rocks

Earth Day is this coming Sunday. To celebrate, Gulf Coast Live is on the road at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

The Conservancy comes up frequently on the show. Every time there’s an environmental legislative issue, an announcement about panther sightings or even a story about tracking pythons in the Everglades, the Conservancy almost always has an expert in the field.

But, this place is more than just a think tank kind of resource. It’s also a destination.

Today, some of the Conservancy's world-renowned scientists and researchers join the show to talk a little bit about the important work they do every day next to the Naples Zoo and to talk a little bit about otters who you may have seen across social media in recent years, otters who juggle rocks.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
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