The Miami Planet | The Environment – People, Places, The World

Look out pythons, here they come

Weapons of choice: Machetes and shot guns, .22 rifles and pistols

By Joseph B. Treaster
University of Miami

DAVIE, Fla. – Justin Matthews was wearing desert sand colored camouflage pants and a beat-up straw cowboy hat. Jacob Wierzbicki had on a pair of brown leather boots lined with Kevlar that he said cost him $400 and were 100 percent snake-proof. A pair of much younger guys – one with a camouflage shirt, the other with a cammie hat – were sporting roguish-looking reflector sunglasses that might have looked menacing if the boys hadn’t still been in high school.

The four of them had paid $25 each and signed up to hunt Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades. They were going for a prize of $1,500 for the most pythons caught and another $1,000 for the longest snake, which could easily be more than 15 feet.

Of Mangroves and Climate Change

Maxwell Gailey 11.28.2012
University of Miami

Kristen Mastropole was making her way into the center of a thicket of mangroves in the Galapagos Islands. She was wearing a long sleeve field shirt and khaki pants. It was her eighth day in the mangroves and she had the scrapes and cuts and bruises to show it. “I’ve already counted 17 bruises on my legs,” she said.

Mastropole is a University of Miami student conducting the first detailed on-the-ground study of mangroves in the Galapagos. She and the university hope her work is the beginning of a long-term project that could stretch over many years.

Pythons in the Glades: Invasive, evasive

Maria Delis 4.4.2012
University of Miami

Beyond the weathered boardwalk in the Everglades, an hour’s drive west of Miami, the sawgrass and cattails looked like a field of wheat, swaying in the light breeze. Bill Colantuono headed for the shade of a pavilion, gravel crunching under his boots. He talked about snakes. “Once,” he said, “I caught a 16-foot Burmese python.”

American crocodiles scare, but co-exist

Laura de la Fe 10.10.2011
Florida International University

The American crocodile’s pre-historic appearance has long struck fear into the minds and imaginations of zoo visitors and moviegoers.

But the croc’s prominently protruding fangs look far worse than its bite and the species actually is quite docile and co-exists very well around human populations.

Tiger Shark in the waters off Grand Bahama Island. Photo by Neil Hammerschlag

Florida is shark-bite capital of world

Sergio Guarneros 10.10.2011
University of Miami

In the early evening, surfers take to the waters off the coast of Central Florida in places like Daytona and New Smyrna Beach. The skies are beautiful; the waves are good. But the waters can be treacherous. They are full…

Marlins new stadium hits a green home run

Scott Ruane 10.10.2011
University of Miami

Every baseball stadium has its own personality, an aura that reflects the spirit of its city, its players, and the fans that attend home games 81 times during the regular baseball season. Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins say that their…

Clyde Butcher: Eye for Everglades beauty

Sarah Elder 9.26.2011
University of Miami

Before the birds awake, Clyde Butcher slogs through the swamp of the Everglades. The mud pulls on his legs, he says, as if welcoming him to take root in a new home. He is a big, heavy man with a…

Spoonbill-Landed-Wings-Up_3043Ev-Nat-Pk-Jan-25-2009

Roseate spoonbill makes soaring rebound

Mel Frishman 9.20.2011

It may look like a flying umbrella or a colorful Avatar as it soars; it may look strange when it swings its spoon-like bill to create mini-whirlpools as it hunts by touch for small fish, snails and insects in muddy…

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Gone fishin’ a lifestyle for Gulf birds

Mel Frishman 9.20.2011

Under brilliant early-morning sun, colorful shore birds, often solitary, tiptoe on steady, twig-like legs through mere inches of sparkling water along the Southwest coast of Florida. This photo slide show documents a wide variety of hungry birds from Fort Myers…