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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Sanibel residents interested in protecting the island’s environment and helping shape city government have a chance to get involved this month. -
A team of University of Florida scientists is working on a million-dollar solution to one of South Florida's most urgent environmental problems: saltwater intrusion and flooding driven by sea level rise. -
Hundreds of square miles of Florida’s largest lake is again blanketed in toxic, blue-green algae. -
This year’s loggerhead nesting season on Sanibel and Captiva islands continues in full swing. With several more weeks left, if another hundred or so nests are dug, the record from three years ago will fall. -
Schools are hoping children will enjoy learning a different type of online activity by taking part in fishing clubs when classrooms reopen -
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has determined gopher tortoises are more at risk of extinction than ever before. The U.S. government does not agree. At the same time the nature union declared the gopher tortoises’ status more dire, the Trump Administration removed habitat protections for endangered species. -
Don’t Step On a Bee Day, observed every July 10, has grown from an unofficial reminder to wear shoes outside to avoid bee stings into full habitat protection messaging. -
The developer of a large and controversial residential subdivision in southeastern Lee County abandoned a plan this week to build a road through the middle of Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary -
The Center for Biological Diversity has sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, accusing the agency of failing to protect the queen conch. The marine snail is also protected statewide -
The main challenge of Clean Beaches Week is to remind people heading to the shore how easy it is to leave no trace they were there. Organizers point to picking up every bit of trash used, mess made, and recycling created.
