Manatees May Be Taken Off Endangered Species List

Ask any Floridians a Family Feud-style query of “Name things we should protect,” and they’ll instinctually shout back at you “Manatees.” Along with Florida panthers, those plump little sea cows are practically synonymous with endangered species in the state. We’re brought up from a young age with a general sense…

Miami Beach Is Banning Styrofoam

Miami Beach would like to be known less for odd chemicals in its residents’ bodies and more for banning littering its streets, parks, and beaches with things made from odd chemicals. Following bans on plastic straws and Styrofoam containers on the beach, the city commission seems set to extend the…

Florida’s Tornadoes Are the Deadliest in the Country

Compared to the miles-wide F5 monsters that roar across the Kansas and Nebraska plains, Florida’s tornadoes are usually quaint little dust devils that pop up momentarily and never get the space to grow into city-destroying catastrophes. Yet it’s the Sunshine State’s mini-twisters that are the deadliest in the nation, according…

A Wildfire Is Smothering Miami-Dade With Smoke This Morning

Don’t worry: It’s just not the raging hangover from those seven rum and Cokes you pounded while sweating through the Heat’s win last night. Your eyes are not fogged over with Monday-morning regret. Miami really has disappeared under a cloud of noxious smoke. A huge wildfire in Broward County is…

Florida Hurricane Expert: 75 Percent Chance State Gets Hit This Year

It’s been nine years since the double-whammy of Katrina and Wilma walloped Miami, and the Magic City has coasted through every hurricane season since without a scratch. Most weather experts have predicted more of the same this year, with another strong El Niño system tamping down tropical storms. But one…

Raising the Speed Limit to 75 Is Ludicrous; Lower It to 55

My God! Rick Scott did something right. Florida’s governor announced yesterday he will veto a bill, approved by the state Senate and House, that would raise the speed limit on much oft the state’s highway system. Though law enforcement mostly supported the plan — Scott proposed the veto after attending…

Miami’s Ten Best Hidden Parks

It’s Earth Day, which at the very least means you should figure out some time to be outside and be one with nature today. Miami, of course, is the only major city sandwiched between two national parks (Everglades to the west, Biscayne to the east), but there’s plenty of green…

Baby Baboon Born at Jungle Island

Isis, a four year-old baboon at Jungle Island, is experiencing her first joys of motherhood after giving birth to a newborn baby yesterday. Which means obviously that she already wants to share the baby photos with you. See also: Tiny Florida Panther Kitten Rescued from Abandonment Is Adorable…

Someone Is Feeding All of Gould’s Friendly Raccoons to Pythons

The raccoons of Cauley Square will nibble on your shoe laces, crawl over your feet and brush up against your legs. They are wild but not rabid. They are cuddly but also conniving. Emboldened by decades of free reign, these intelligent creatures have turned treacherous. And they are legion. That’s…

Federal Agency: Bermuda Triangle Is Officially Not Supernatural

Miami is bizarre enough of a place already that sometimes we forget it’s one of three corners of the Bermuda Triangle, the purportedly supernatural stretch of the Atlantic Ocean where, according to myth, ships go missing under mysterious circumstances. Well, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency has released a statement…