I wrote up a whole long post with links to articles and pictures and stuff and I have no idea what happened to it.
I was born and raised in South Florida and even worked in the everglades for a summer when I turned 18 so I might have some input you might find interesting.
One detail: The department of Water Management is a very well funded part of the FL hierarchy. They are pretty much the biggest land owner in the state because the state keeps acquiring wetlands in attempts to restore them to a more natural state after the major projects of the 30's 40's and 50's wrecked a lot of the natural water flow in the state. With this in mind, it's possible that a person dealing with the everglades and such might end up bumping into some officials from that department.
Florida has a huge problem with tropical pets that got out into the wild and are flourishing. Some examples:
- There are an estimated 100k Monk Parakeets (aka quakers), and I've seen them in colonies of about a dozen nested in the palm trees on the coastline and elsewhere.
- The canals and ponds are loaded with 5' long iguanas that swim around and eat the vegetation. I caught one a couple summers ago while fishing with my cousin and brought it home to tease Mrs. Serack
- telling her how we had a new pet. She didn't appreciate the joke too much.
Recently the popular aquarium
Algae eaters have become very popular in the waterways. These armored fishies commonly grow over 18" in the wild and are wrecking the ecosystem along with many other fish that have gotten free from their owner's tanks.[/li]
[li]Huge Pythons have become such a problem that this summer the state has even started issuing
licenses for hunters to kill them. There have been interesting things happening with the
Gators and Pythons fighting for dominance of the food chain.[/li]
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On top of all this, there are some interesting characters living out in the swamp and other rural areas of the state. I remember an article about some guy that owned a significant tract of land out there for over 40 years and refused to sell his land to the state for a crucial water project because he was happy living in his tin shack and didn't want to live anywhere else even after the offered like 2.2 million for it.