JEREMY COX

By definition, an estuary, such as Rookery Bay, is not quite a sea and not quite a river. But for the past 15 months, Rookery Bay has been a sea. The usual mixture of salt water and fresh water has ...

Rookery Bay has become a poster child for the federal government’s stalled campaign to restore South Florida’s ecosystem. South Belle Meade and Rookery Bay’s main tributary, Henderson Creek, were among the 68 restoration projects Congress included in the Comprehensive Everglades ...

Clarissa Langston was returning from her parents’ home Sunday night when she noticed something sitting in the grassy median on Pine Ridge Road. She and her husband turned their truck around and pulled onto the median between Collier and Logan ...

15 dead panthers. With so many cars and so many miles of asphalt, law enforcement officers are facing a near impossible task of slowing down the number of vehicle-related deaths for the species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in January 2006 that the top priority of its campaign to rescue the Florida panther from extinction was to “maintain” and “expand” its turf in southern Florida. Before the end of the year, ...

Its snarling image adorns countless sports team jerseys, refrigerator magnets and license plates. But its pop cultural prevalence belies a painful truth: The Florida panther stands as close to disappearing as any living thing on the planet. In this three-part ...

Behind the glittering oratory, manicured lawns and piously titled boulevards at Ave Maria lies a decade-long struggle between developers and conservationists over Collier County’s dwindling open space. It began in 1997, when the state Department of Community Affairs declared that ...

A detailed proposal that could go before Collier commissioners as early as their Sept. 11 meeting suggests seven measures to be included in a fertilizer ordinance. One calls for prohibiting the use of nitrogen and phosphorus, two key ingredients in ...

Many burrowing owls were too busy trying to survive an 18-month drought to bear a new crop of owls this year on Marco Island, their primary nesting area in Collier County.

Many burrowing owls were too busy trying to survive an 18-month drought to bear a new crop of owls this year on Marco Island, their primary nesting area in Collier County.

Rescuers were called to save a manatee found severely injured today in Collier County waters by a marine patrol officer on duty to enforce waterway laws on the Fourth of July. The rescue effort was delayed for hours because of ...

Could boaters be loving Mother Nature to death? That question is at the heart of a fierce debate going on now in bait shacks, public meetings and online discussion forums across southern Florida. The reason for the asking: a historic ...

Nature has unleashed not one, but two types of ick-inducing algae along Collier County’s shore, local environmental officials said Monday.

A typical residence that doesn’t use finished water for lawn watering will consume about 180,000 gallons a year. But the profusion of megamansions in the Port Royal neighborhood are anything but typical. Nine of the tony neighborhood’s residences appear on ...

Groundwater levels plummeted to historic lows in the past few weeks at several locations across Collier County, a reflection of the depths to which the drought-stricken region has sunk. Tropical Storm Barry’s arrival last week heralded the long-awaited return of ...

Boaters and anglers demanded evidence during a contentious public workshop Wednesday night to back the National Park Service’s claims that boat propellers are scarring sea grass and the bottom of Florida Bay.

If you subscribe to the theory that global warming is injecting hurricanes with the meteorological equivalent of steroids, as a growing body of scientists do, then you especially aren’t looking forward to hurricane season. The June-through-November season, which begins Friday, ...

For many boaters, the remote waters just beyond the southern lip of the Everglades may become a lot more remote soon.

Three weeks after lightning ignited five fires in the Big Cypress National Preserve, two of the fires are still raging and more than 49,000 acres have been blackened. The drought-stoked flames have produced the largest blaze in 26 years in ...

Get ready to spend the summer glued to the Weather Channel. Hurricane forecasters predicted Tuesday that 13 to 17 named storms will spin to life this season, with seven to 10 of those storms intensifying into hurricanes. The National Oceanic ...

Panther attacks have become so commonplace in eastern Collier County that an environmental group is launching a campaign to provide homeowners with covered pens to protect their animals.

So far, Southwest Florida’s 16-month drought has produced wilted crops, city-sized wildfires, parched canals and some of the toughest lawn-watering restrictions in history. Could a brutal mosquito season be next?

An environmental group worries that an action taken by the County Commission last month will prompt a return to the old way of dealing with wetlands in the Estates

County workers have tilled the sand along miles of beaches. Residents of beachfront homes and condominiums have been warned against shining lights toward the sea. Environmental specialists, armed with devices that resemble novelty-sized meat thermometers, have tested the density of ...

For nearly two decades, the Addition Lands of Big Cypress National Preserve have been a ship without a rudder. That is, the 147,000 acres lacked a general management plan, a blueprint that the National Park Service uses to negotiate the ...

So this is how nature reacts when it’s pushed too far. When real estate scammers carved up 55,000 acres of cypress forest and swamp in the 1960s, they left behind more than just useless contracts and crushed dreams. They gave ...

Behind the wheel of his county-issued white pickup, Ray Addison stalks the serpentine streets of Boca Palms. Around every corner in the North Naples gated community, the same scene unfolds: improbably green yards reaching to the horizon. The lawn in ...

The last few weeks across Southwest Florida have seen a disconcerting surge in alligators turning up in unexpected places. A 6-footer wandered onto a tennis court at Florida Gulf Coast University. One went for a swim in a partially screened-in ...

A clearer picture is emerging of how climate change will alter Southwest Florida’s low-lying landscape and upend the lives of creatures from mosquitoes to humans. Two new reports — a U.N. panel’s report released Friday outlining the expected impacts of ...

With the state mired in one of its driest durations on record, Collier County remains the only county south of Lake Okeechobee that hasn’t had tougher conservation measures thrust upon it. Residents can thank the fact that their water supply ...

Scene: Two children are standing in the woods, a boy peering skyward though a pair of binoculars and a girl pointing in the same direction.

It sounds like a case from “Unsolved Mysteries.” Across the country, honey bees are disappearing by the thousands. When scientists do find their bodies, tissue tests often show an unusually high amount of bacteria, viruses and fungi — but none ...

For the first time since Hurricane Wilma wrecked Everglades City Hall, town employees returned to work Tuesday at the newly refurbished landmark. It was as close to business as usual as such a momentous day could be. Lisa Marteeny, the ...

Guided by a strong west wind, tons of foul-smelling red drift algae plopped onto Naples beach over the weekend, triggering a massive - and pricey - cleanup effort.

A Collier County proposal to turn a failed condominium complex into a boating haven in Everglades City is drawing opposition from the town’s mayor and residents. Collier County commissioners voted unanimously this past week to pursue buying the 52-acre property ...

Barry Berger doesn’t need a thermometer to tell him how cold it is. He can tell just by watching a manatee pop out of the water for a gulp of air. If mud rolls off the sea cow’s face, it’s ...

Authorities have charged a North Carolina man in connection with a rash of stone crab trap thefts in the Ten Thousand Islands after Hurricane Wilma upended the industry in 2005.

Red tide, the fish-killing, lung-irritating, beach-ruining phenomenon, will be the focus of a groundbreaking workshop today south of Naples. Check back to naplesnews.com for updates throughout the day.

A bikini-clad woman walks a Florida panther on a leash down Naples beach, in a promotional photograph taken in the 1960s. Four decades later, a panther appears to be trying to replicate that scene, sans woman and leash. The young ...

All-terrain vehicle enthusiasts will have a place to ride in Collier County, possibly as early as April, after Collier County commissioners and South Florida Water Management District officials today settled a long-festering dispute.

Meteorologists believe the most likely cause for the quaking some residents in western Collier and Lee counties reported this morning was a sonic boom from aircraft flying off Florida’s west coast. Reports from Marco Island to Cape Coral of a ...

One of the eagles at the center of a property rights dispute in North Naples has died.

East Naples residents have a new neighbor: a 20-month-old male Florida panther. The panther has been roaming the area east of Naples Bay, west of Collier Boulevard and south of U.S. 41 East since late November, state biologists say. The ...

Imagine that the fate of your species rests on your ability to successfully mate in the next two weeks. If you miss that window of opportunity, you still can produce young ones. But it will take ideal conditions and extraordinary ...

Naples Daily News-owned Web sites were named finalists in six of nine categories in the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge Awards.

Oil-black water spewed today from a pipe into a cattail-choked pond that water managers call a containment disposal site. This is the final destination for 1 million cubic yards of muck that a contractor is dredging from along the shore ...

A rare bird found in the Everglades is in danger of being wiped out in certain parts of the national park, according to a federal survey released today.

Sure, it’s Black Friday, the day when malls and department stores bulge with sales and shoppers, heralding the commencement of gift-hunting season. But what if the day makes you feel like the hunted instead of the hunter?

BUUHWEEERRR! BUHWEEERR! A leaf blower. So much for tranquility this August morning on the last pristine reach of the Gordon River. The distant cacophony drowns out the hum of cicadas, not unlike the way concrete has crowded out nature elsewhere ...

Perhaps the wettest spot in Southwest Florida: Gator Hook Strand in Big Cypress National Preserve.