White-tailed deer are an integral part of Myakka’s ecosystems. But by the 1930s, unregulated hunting practically eliminated deer from Sarasota County. In fact, when Myakka River State Park was established in 1941, to protect the Myakka River valley from development, many species of wildlife, including deer, had been hunted to near extinction. To restore deer, […]
Tag: american alligator
‘Don’t let your cat outside’: Q&A with author Peter Christie
The statistics capturing the effects that pets have on wildlife are mind-boggling. Cats in the United States alone kill at least 1.3 billion birds and up to 22.3 billion small mammals a year, according to a 2013 study in the journal Nature Communications. Cats and dogs “are now the most abundant carnivores on the planet,” […]
Florida Opened a Fake Alligator Farm to Catch Poachers
ARCADIA, FLORIDA – On a moonless night in mid-October, Wayne Nichols, 42, lit a cigarette and climbed up to the captain’s seat of a splatter-painted skiff. He eased the boat into the middle of a nameless canal somewhere between Sebring and Lake Placid, in south-central Florida. His clients, Pat Hopkins, 66, and her son Melvin […]
Python hunters to tackle Florida’s unwelcome intruder
Bill Booth struggles to recall the last time he saw a raccoon, a fox or a rabbit on one of his frequent hunting excursions deep into the swamps of the Florida Everglades. An outdoorsman all his life, he knows as well as anyone how the native wildlife once abundant across the vast wilderness has been […]
Human activity ‘driving half of world’s crocodile species to extinction’
As many as half of the world’s 27 species of crocodilian face being wiped out due to human activity, although the most feared variety, the saltwater crocodile, faces a brighter future, according to a new book by a veteran crocodile researcher. Land use changes, pollution, culling and feral animal invasions mean that many crocodile species […]
Crocodiles, Alligators Hunt in Groups, Scientist Says
Studying predatory behavior by crocodiles, alligators and caimans in the wild is notoriously difficult because they are ambush hunters, have slow metabolisms and eat much less frequently than warm-blooded animals. In addition, they are mostly nocturnal and often hunt in murky, overgrown waters of remote tropical rivers and swamps. Accidental observations of their hunting behavior […]
POLL: Should it be legal to hunt alligators?
Two record-setting heavyweight alligators were killed by hunters in Mississippi this weekend, just three days into the start of the official gator hunting season. One animal, a male, was 13-feet and 6.5-inches (4.13 meters) long and weighed 727 pounds (330 kilograms). “When we finally got an arrow in him, it took us another two hours […]
Pelican Portrait plus
Daughter Chrissy home for a visit took some nice photos round about SW Florida. The portrait of a Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) is my favorite. Brown Pelican link Here’s a Cooter Turtle basking in the sun along a small creek along the Myakka River near Sarasota. Cooters are confusing to ID, but I think this […]