One day early last year, Luiz Rodrigues gazed out at the dunes near the Fourth Street Beach. The sandy hills are cordoned off with rope and wooden fencing, a sanctuary for many amid the bustle of South Beach. Inside, sea oats swayed in the wind. Fuchsia bayhop flowers blossomed. But…
A little over two years ago, Douglas Park, a ten-acre green area just north of Coral Gables closed after city officials found elevated levels of arsenic, lead, barium, and other hazardous materials in the soil. And then, nothing happened. Month after month, the park sat dormant and overgrown. A cadre of…
If you’re living in South Florida, by now you’ve probably come around to the idea of climate change and realized that, like it or not, sea levels are rising. But solutions to the problem are pricey, and there’s no clear consensus for how we’re all going to pay for the…
“Ninth Street and A1A Boulevard.” Richard Whitecloud relays his oceanfront location to the emergency dispatcher. “The fatalities just keep racking up in this intersection,” he mutters. “Dammit, man. Intersection of death!” Whitecloud, six feet one with long, curly hair kept back in a ponytail, bends down to inspect a corpse:…
Everyone agrees on this: Florida’s waterways are facing an unprecedented emergency. Toxic algae blooms have choked waterways across the state, closing beaches and rivers to tourists and residents. Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency in two counties. There’s less agreement about who’s at fault. Scott’s blamed the…
You love the Everglades, right? Of course you do. We all live in Florida, and we all love the Everglades. It’s a river of grass. A unique ecosystem not duplicated anywhere else in the entire world. A true state treasure. Would you like to help the Everglades Nationa Park? Of…
For Miami condo developers there’s no such thing as too many balconies too high up in the air. Unfortunately, when the weather gets rough and the winds starts to gust, all those high-rise balconies can prove dangerous. Especially when patio furniture isn’t properly secured. On Saturday, the inclement weather apparently…
Florida’s coral reefs are already in big trouble. Scientists around the globe have noted serious problems for the delicate but vital ecosystems, especially from “bleaching,” a process that occurs when high heat and sunshine causes devastating effects. But that’s not the only threat reefs in Florida face. A Florida Keys study…
Yesterday, three Florida International University students set out in a small center-console, Mako-style boat to collect water samples in Whitewater Bay, a huge expanse of water on the southwestern edge of Everglades National Park. They never made it back. Last evening, the U.S. Coast Guard got a call that the…
Getting onto the beach in the tiny Miami-Dade town of Golden Beach is, in and of itself, no easy feat. There’s no public access onto the sand, and anyone driving into town has to enter through a gate that snaps their picture. But say, for argument’s sake, you find yourself…
For paddle sport enthusiasts like Sunny McLean, Miami should be a paradise — surrounded by water, blessed with year-round warm weather. But paradoxically, finding a safe place for sports like dragon boat racing and kayaking in the 305 is really difficult. In fact, the waters off Virginia Key are some…
Two years ago, Miami Beach banned all styrofoam from its city. Banning the notoriously polluting material wasn’t particularly controversial, with most local businesses telling reporters they didn’t mind making the change to more compostable materials. Well, Florida being Florida, the state legislature found this simple eco-friendly move abhorrent. Earlier this…
America is still fiercely arguing today about whether the Cincinnati Zoo should have shot and killed Harambe, a 17-year-old male gorilla, after a three-year-old boy slipped past a fence and tumbled into his enclosure on May 29. Zookeepers say it was the only way to save the boy from the 400-pound…
This past October, Florida held its first bear hunting season in more than 20 years. Though the mini-season was scheduled to last a week, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission called it off after just two days. Hunters took 302 bears in the short time, just short of the…
Fishing guide Mike Conner putters his skiff across the Indian River Lagoon near Stuart, about a two-hour drive north of Miami. He used to bring clients from all over the United States here to stalk delicious pompano, yard-long snook, and the Holy Grail of inshore fishing: sea trout longer than…
Hurricane Season doesn’t officially start for more than a week, but apparently Mother Nature is itching to get a head start. A system of tropical concern is already developing out in the Atlantic, and it has the possibility to develop into a Tropical Storm that could target Florida. If it…
Mention sea-level rise and most people conjure up images of coastal flooding, where water swells at the periphery and spills over seawalls into the city. But in South Florida, that’s not necessarily the way it’s going to go down. Because the entire state sits atop porous limestone, water is literally…
At this point there can’t be many strange, threatening reptiles from across the globe that haven’t somehow popped up in the Florida wild. We already have instances of giant snakes like Burmese pythons and meat-eating lizards like Nile monitors. Now scientists have confirmed that Nile crocodiles are also in the state. Back in 2009,…
So Miami Beach’s stormwater pumps shoot water from the city’s streets and street drains into Biscayne Bay to combat flooding. You know what’s in the water it pumps directly into the Bay from the streets? Unsurprisingly, some not so clean stuff. A new study of flood waters found incredibly high…
The closest you might get to a mastodon in modern day Florida is during a visit to the Dinosaur World theme park in Orlando, but it turns out that 14,550 years ago, people were visiting Florida to get close to real-life mastodons. In fact, newly uncovered evidence in northern Florida…
Here’s what the discussion around climate change desperately needs: serious international, national and state-level cooperation aimed at curbing man’s contribution and planning for the possible effects. Here’s what the discussion around climate change certainly doesn’t need: another article that basically boils down to “Miami is a dumb city and its going…
As the City of Miami Beach continues to roll out an unprecedented array of sea-level rise solutions, a top Miami engineer is worried that city officials have overlooked one key factor: Back-up generators. In the case of a major storm or hurricane, the electricity that powers the city’s expansive pump…
