Florida Master Naturalist Program Offers Opportunity to Understand Local Ecosystems up Close
Kayaking through a crystal blue spring, hiking among longleaf pines and discovering gopher tortoise burrows, gliding past alligators by boat in Mobile Bay, private tours of the EPA lab on Pensacola Beach, and meeting hundreds of fascinating, like-minded people—these...
Reducing Health Advisories in Our Coastal Waters; Part 2 Septic Conversion
In Part 1 of Reducing Health Advisories, we discussed how owners of septic systems could develop a management plan to reduce such health advisories. In Part 2 we look at another option for septic system owners – converting to the local sewer system. You...
Reducing Health Advisories in Our Coastal Waters; Part 1 Septic Maintenance
Health advisories are issued by state and local health departments when levels of fecal bacteria become too high for the public to safely enter the water. Sewage can be a source of these fecal bacteria. They can harbor pathogenic organisms that can cause...
FWC’s New Ruling for Recreational Crab Traps
At their December 2021 meeting, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) passed two rulings designed to enhance the conservation of diamondback terrapins, a small estuarine turtle. As of March 1, 2022, no one can possess a diamondback terrapin...
Barrier Island Wildlife in the Florida Panhandle; Part 9 Humans
Humans… No one species has altered the land, sea, and sky – as well as decreased the overall biodiversity of the planet in such as short time as has Homo sapien. Since we have arrived on this planet we have slowly dispersed across all continents, oceans,...
Deer Food Plot Management
That’s not how they do it in Iowa! Exclusion Cage in food plot with normal deer feeding. When we talk about white-tailed deer management, we often look to the states that have monster deer like Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio. Those states grow 200 plus inch bucks. ...
Private Well and Septic System Webinars and Well Water Screening
Are you a Florida homeowner connected to a private well and/or septic system? Do you know want to learn more about your water and wastewater management systems at home? If so, please join the UF/IFAS Central and Northwest Florida water resources regional specialized...
World Wetlands Day
World Wetlands Day is celebrated each year on February 2nd to raise awareness about wetlands. Nearly 90% of the world’s wetlands have been degraded since the 1700s, with 35% degraded or lost since 1970, and we are losing wetlands three times faster than forests. Yet,...
Barrier Island Wildlife in the Florida Panhandle; Part 8 Invasive Species
The definition of an invasive species used by the University of Florida IFAS has three parts. It is not native to the area.Was brought to the area by humans; either intentionally or accidentally.Is causing an environmental or economic problem, or somehow lower...
Ghost Forests
As the name implies, they are haunting—long stretches of standing, dead trees with exposed roots. These “ghost forests” are an unsettling scene in unsettling times for the environment. While coastal erosion is a fact of life—incoming waves, hurricanes, longshore drift...