Tom Bayles
WGCU Environmental ReporterTom Bayles is WGCU's Senior Environmental Reporter and a 25-year veteran journalist in Florida. Before his tenure at WGCU Public Media, he worked for The New York Times Co. in Sarasota, the Associated Press in Miami and Tallahassee, and the Tampa Bay Times in Clearwater. He earned a master's in journalism and a bachelor's in education, both from the University of South Florida. The proud father of three sons, Bayles spends his free time fishing along the Southwest Florida coast in his 20-foot Aquasport with his Whippet pup, Spencer.
Bayles’ top awards include the Gold Medal for Public Service for Investigative Reporting from the Florida Society of News Editors, the Waldo Proffitt Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism in Florida, and being named the Sunshine State’s top environmental journalist by the Florida Press Club and FSNE. Bayles has been nominated four times for a Pulitzer Prize.
Email: tbayles@wgcu.org
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Despite rains that extremely dry ground siphoned up almost as soon as it fell Thursday, Friday and Saturday, several brush fires still managed to erupt across the area. The largest is in the Big Cypress National Preserve, in an area north of I-75. -
Pre-season predictions on the number of hurricanes that will make landfall in Florida this year are certain to differ among the leading tropical storm forecasters, figures that get refined and reissued as the season unfolds. One thing that will now be a constant is the National Hurricane Center’s addition of more watches and warnings on its familiar “cone of uncertainty,” which has been used for more than two decades. It's a teardrop-shaped offering of the most educated guesses available about the direction of a hurricane over its next few days. -
Early on a Saturday in early March, amateur wildlife photographer Jo Gryniewicz captured this rare sighting of a highly endangered Florida panther at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary east of Naples. -
It was a show of protest, frustration, disaffection and concern and it was shared by thousands Saturday in various Southwest Florida sites, other parts of the state and across the United States and the world. The No Kings III event was billed as a protest rally and drew people of many different political affiliations who said they had concerns with how the current administration in Washington run by President Donald Trump was handling things. -
AccuWeather predicts a less active hurricane season this summer but warmer oceans toss in a wildcardAccuWeather is forecasting fewer tropical storms than in recent years, in large part due to wind shear arriving with an El Niño expected later in the season. At the same time, they worry that record-warm Gulf waters may fuel hurricanes strong enough to overpower that wind shear -
Such obvious environmental stories still qualify as news, though, because they remind everyone to pay attention to what’s become the everyday in Florida. It’s the same reason the twice-yearly stories about daylight savings time make the news -
Wind, tides, and storms can change its progress on any given day, but so much sand is flowing south from a recent beach renourishment on Captiva Island that the pass is expected to close up hard; beach rebuilding would barely be a thing if the most expensive real estate in Florida were not built on barrier islands -
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center is both the new gateway into Everglades National Park and the final sign that Everglades City has recovered from a devastating blow from Hurricane Irma nearly nine years ago -
Massive piles of sargassum, the size of which have not been seen before, are floating this way, right now, sure to coat the beaches of Florida’s East Coast, the Keys, and various Caribbean islands -
Every year, VoLo Foundation’s Climate Correction Conference gets somewhat glitzier, its speakers a bit more prestigious, the event a little better attended. One day of main events has become three. Longer presentations have been tightened to fit everyone onto the schedule. More chairs and more tables are brought out because the conference has grown from 200 people last year to 250 this year. The theme this year centered around the notion that the environment has already engineered answers to the climate challenges facing the planet.
