Environment

One trailer park resident's reaction to the destruction of his home was recounted in an Oct. 19 story by WGCU environmental writer Tom Bayles. He won a second place award from the Public Media Journalists Association for the article.

The world-famous ghost orchid is blooming at Audubon Florida’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. Endangered Species Act protections for the family of flowers delayed

The population of mosquitos is growing along with Florida's population of people and brings diseases like dengue fever and malaria. Climate change is sending non-native, invasive mosquito species to North America – specifically Florida.

A group of Republican state lawmakers met at the Riverside Community Center in Fort Myers to discuss millions of dollars earmarked to clean up the Caloosahatchee River while the Florida Department of Health was issuing an advisory for a significant blue-green algae outbreak that had formed in the water behind them.

Just don't swim in it. The seawater lapping ashore on Seagate Beach and Keewaydin Island in Collier County is brown, but it’s not an immediate cause for alarm. It’s a bloom of Trichodesmium, a special kind of tiny plant that provides nitrogen to parts of the ocean that don't have enough nutrients. After it decays, however, marine scientists think it is a precursor to red tide

Water laden with blue-green algae is being released from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River to lower the lake level going into the heart of hurricane season in September. That often coincides with blue-green algae blooms upriver like this one at the Davis Boat Ramp, which is the topic of an ongoing Florida Department of Health alert.

Red tide throughout Southwest Florida has waned

Several community groups in Venice are asking the state for permission to install dozens of floating reefs underneath people’s docks to provide fish habitat and help clean coastal seawater.

A unique classroom is literally growing beneath the waves off the coast of Florida. In the Gulf of Mexico, seven and a half miles due west of Bonita Beach and 30 feet below the surface grows Kimberly's Reef, an artificial reef complex created by The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University. WGCU is producing a documentary about the reef and the planned scientific research around it. In the meantime, WGCU’s Pam James will keep folks informed of progress on the reef and the documentary with the occasional "Dispatch from Kimberly’s Reef." Here is the first.