ERIC STAATS

When Marco Islander Bob Karas’ morning bicycle ride takes him past the nesting pair of bald eagles, he always makes a point of looking for them.

Marco Island residents say swale parking has always been a popular alternative when the county's South Marco beach parking lot overflows on holiday weekends, but this winter's busy tourist season and word of mouth have taken the island's beach parking ...

A federal judge is making new ripples in a long-running legal dispute over Florida's rules for putting water bodies on its list of cleanup targets.

Parts of the Chevrolet Suburban were flung all over the front yard and littered the street when former Collier County sheriff's Capt. Tom Storrar pulled up to the home in an affluent North Naples neighborhood.

Southwest Florida should not drop its guard, Collier County Emergency Management Director Dan Summers said. “It only takes one storm to really rock your world,” Summers said.

Starting in 2004, glitzy affairs were the main events in a massive fraud by Ginn Development Co. and its affiliates that tricked thousands of wealthy buyers into snapping up lots and golf memberships at over-heated prices, artificially driving up values ...

Florida Forest Service ranger Jean Bernard Tarrete had the python by the tail, walking in circles to keep a step ahead of the huge snake's attacking head.

“They don’t make checks big enough to represent the significance of this grant to our organization,” YMCA of the Palms CEO Brandon Dowdy told the crowd beneath a big white event tent at the Old Collier Golf Club.

Telling Carol Peabody that she had squandered her chances for a lighter sentence, a judge sent her to prison for eight years Friday for embezzling more than $250,000 from a former employer.

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Collier County's rural growth plan has been reviewed, re-reviewed and then reviewed some more but the Conservancy of Southwest Florida wants one more review -- and will pay for it.

The report puts Lee and Collier counties in the Top 10 most vulnerable counties based on numbers of people living less than 4 feet above high tide. Collier is ninth; Lee is fifth.

Rescue crews captured, treated and released an injured dolphin nicknamed Seymour near Marco Island this afternoon, capping a months-long tracking effort.

A controversial eight-slip boat dock proposed near Gordon Pass has one less obstacle in its way after opponents dropped a legal challenge Friday.

Burmese pythons are eating their way through the Everglades, leaving a dramatic decline in mammal populations in their slithering wake in just a decade, according to a study published today.

Florida fishermen are now pushing a new grassroots effort to lift a net mesh size restriction, and Collier County is on its leading edge.

“If we invest in nature, nature will invest in us,” said Cousteau, 44, an ocean explorer, activist and documentary filmmaker in Southwest Florida speaking to the annual meeting of the Conservancy of Southwes

Crews plan to set prescribed burns at several spots in the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in coming days, resource managers say.

The line stretched down the hallway and almost out the door at the Golden Gate Community Center soon after the doors opened for the county's flood map meeting tonight.

A government spokeswoman would not say how many people were involved in the inspection, how long it took or what the inspectors discussed with rig operators. “The language (in the statement) should not be

Federal budget cuts and sea level rise have the National Park Service rethinking its plans to redevelop the popular visitor center in Everglades City, some 20 years after Congress promised to build a new one and name it for Everglades ...

A Collier County advisory board is expected today to postpone for a third time a vote on a controversial rock mine west of Immokalee.

The National Weather Service has issued a freeze watch for Collier and Lee counties and a hard freeze watch for Glades and Hendry counties for Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

A North Naples neighborhood's push for more formal navigational markers in Clam Bay could be up to a judge now that the neighborhood has lost a round with a state agency.

Naples has set a goal of certifying 25 green businesses as the city enters the homestretch of a year-long community outreach program to teach residents and business owners how to save energy, water and money.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has given opponents of a proposed bathroom and concession building at Vanderbilt Beach more time file a legal challenge to the project.

Lately, Ted Below says he hasn't been counting as high along one of the 20-mile routes he takes every other week through one of Southwest Florida's most important bird nesting and roosting sites.

A red tide has been identified in Collier County but may stay offshore, Collier County pollution monitors reported this week.

A half-dozen similar deadly attacks on cats in the neighborhood have pet owners on guard and frustrated, Moorings Property Owners Association President Albert Katz said. “We’ve got them,” Katz said. “They’re

With a wary eye on Cuba’s plans to drill for oil 90 miles from Key West, Florida lawmakers have filed bills in Congress to hold foreign oil drillers liable for damages should there be a repeat disaster.

With an oil drilling rig on its way to Cuban waters from Singapore, U.S. officials are trying to piece together a strategy for what to do should a spill from the exploratory well threaten the Florida coastline.

Collier County’s top water manager stood on the bank of a canal of rushing water west of Airport-Pulling Road at the headwaters of the Gordon River to reassure soggy Estates residents miles upstream that the

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has teamed up with Florida State University for the past two years on a sawfish abundance study and tag-and-track project that is slowly piecing together the mysterious lives of the first marine fish to ...

The way to get to the Gulf of Mexico for an estimated one-third of Marco Island's boaters, the inlet for Collier Creek has narrowed as sand has filled it in, making an already tricky navigation spot downright dangerous, boaters say.

Hurricane Rina is cranking up in the same spot in the Caribbean within a week of the day in 2005 that Southwest Florida’s last big hurricane season strike sprang to life. This time around, muddled steering

Collier Clerk of Courts Dwight Brock said he has completed his review and determined he would pay the invoice, if the county extended the contract, as long as the county would take steps to stop the practice of issuing work ...

Accused killer Jeffery Moretz wants his red, two-door Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder back, but a Collier County judge told him no today.

“I want to work with you in the worst way,” Coletta told Florida Wildlife Federation field representative Nancy Payton, who was representing interchange opponents in the debate. Payton said environmental groups are willing to discuss mitigation but not if the ...

A conservation group filed a lawsuit in federal court in Fort Myers today seeking to get more of the Big Cypress National Preserve designated as wilderness.

The Obama administration spent months reviewing whether National Parks Conservation Association regional director John Adornato and Defenders of Wildlife Florida director Laurie Macdonald ran afoul of a White House policy forbidding registered federal lobbyists from serving on federal advisory boards.

Florida environmental regulators got a grilling Tuesday from anxious local government officials and clean water advocates about proposed new water quality standards for estuaries.

The much-needed rain has turned into unwanted flooding in the Naples and Marco Island areas.

A Collier County plan to shore up public access to the beach could end up sunk this week. County commissioners are set to vote Tuesday on whether to require beachfront property owners who have sand added to their beach with ...

The district’s Governing Board met briefly in a special session to vote unanimously to approve a $576 million budget for fiscal 2011-12, including a $128 million property tax cut and $26 million from the state Legislature for Everglades restoration. Governing ...

John Zeliff has caught hundreds of barracuda, but last week one of the razor-toothed fish bit back on the Naples native.

“I find it disappointing,” said Elizabeth Griffin Wilson, Oceana’s senior manager for marine wildlife. “I think it’s a missed opportunity.” Scientists said the Northwest Atlantic population, with an estimated 60,000 mature adults, did not meet the thresholds for endangered status ...

Loggerhead sea turtles that nest in Southwest Florida will not be added to the U.S. list of endangered species, according to a decision announced today.

The Park Service is in the early stages of considering three alternatives as it moves to set rules for part of the preserve known as the Addition Lands, about 147,000 acres north of Interstate 75. The land was part of ...

The office, tucked away in a corner of the Patriot Square shopping center on U.S. 41 East, is among seven Gulf Coast claims offices closing Sept. 1 in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — about a quarter of the 27 ...

A new proposal for managing hunting in the Big Cypress National Preserve has sportsmen pushing back against the National Park Service. The proposal would review hunting regulations in the eastern Collier County preserve at least annually under a new decision-making ...