Latest news with #Floridapanther
USA Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
New aerial footage captures ‘Alligator Alcatraz' from above
New aerial footage is showing another view of the high-security immigration detention center in Florida's Everglades coined "Alligator Alcatraz." Under Gov. Ron DeSantis' directive, the facility opened on an airstrip earlier this month for thousands of undocumented immigrants while also serving as a "transitional shelter for migrants." The tent city was set up at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport located around 45 miles west of Miami and is only accessible through a two-lane highway, Reuters reported. Video shows the facility filled with rows of white tents, RVs and portable buildings all surrounded by a vast wetland. Officials have described the center as "escape-proof" due to its terrain. The Everglades is home to alligators, crocodiles, various snakes and the Florida panther, according the National Park Service. Florida's Division of Emergency Management oversees the site in coordination with federal agencies including ICE, Reuters reported. The state estimates the facility would cost more than $450 million annually to operate. See new angle of Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' facility Trump says its 'might be as good as the real Alcatraz' After touring the facility on July 1, President Donald Trump praised Florida officials for picking the isolated wilderness spot, adding "I think it's great government what we've done." "They did this in less than a week," Trump said, according to Reuters. "You look at it and it's incredible. … It might be as good as the real Alcatraz. Well, that's a spooky one, too. That's a tough site." Trump added that the center is "not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon" and that "the only way out is really deportation." The new facility comes as immigration advocates continue to express concerns over capacity at state and national detention centers amid Trump Administration's increased pace of immigrant apprehensions and removals from the United States. Critics have condemned the new detention facility for holding people without a criminal record and for conditions inside. The New York Times reported earlier this month that only about 60% of the detainees have criminal convictions and that 900 men are sleeping in tents. Others have voiced concerns over the facility's impact over the Everglade's itself, home to 36 threatened or endangered species, according to the National Park Service. Contributing: Fernando Cervantes Jr., USA TODAY and Antonio Fins, Palm Beach Post
Mint
28-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Swamps, protests, and politics: The battle over Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention center
Hundreds of protesters, including Native American tribes, environmentalists, and immigration advocates, lined Florida's Tamiami Trail highway on Saturday, June 28, to decry the rapid construction of the "Alligator Alcatraz" migrant detention center in the Everglades. Dump trucks hauling materials rumbled past demonstrators waving signs like "No Detention on Stolen Land," while passing cars honked in solidarity. The facility, spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis under emergency powers, repurposes the Miami-Dade-owned Dade-Collier Training Airport into a compound with tents and trailers for up to 5,000 detainees, slated to open by early July. DeSantis touts it as critical to supporting Trump's mass-deportation agenda, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirming partial FEMA funding. 'Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there's a lot of alligators,' DeSantis said Wednesday. 'No one's going anywhere.' Yet the site sits within Big Cypress National Preserve, home to 15 Miccosukee and Seminole villages, burial grounds, and endangered species like the Florida panther. For Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee activist, the project dishonors ancestral lands: "It's very taboo for us to incarcerate. We don't have a jail on our reservation". 'The Everglades is a vast, interconnected system of waterways and wetlands, and what happens in one area can have damaging impacts downstream," Friends of the Everglades executive director Eve Samples said, according to a Reuters report. 'So it's really important that we have a clear sense of any wetland impacts happening in the site,' Eve continued. Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit on June 27, demanding an immediate halt to construction until a full ecological review is completed. The Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Everglades—founded in 1969 to block a jetport on this same site—warn that the facility threatens wetlands that taxpayers have spent billions to restore. The 39-square-mile site is 96% wetlands, and runoff from sewage, fuel, and construction could poison interconnected waterways supplying drinking water to 8 million Floridians. Critics also highlight brutal conditions: Summer heat indices exceed 100°F, hurricanes loom, and detainees would face swarms of mosquitoes and alligators, DeSantis joked, which would deter escapes. "It's inhumane," said protester Jamie DeRoin. 'I got bombarded by mosquitoes just coming out here'. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava called the rush "devastating," noting the state bypassed environmental safeguards and community input. With locked gates now blocking public access, Jessica Namath of Floridians for Public Lands added that noise and light pollution are already disrupting the 'international dark sky area'. The project's $450 million annual cost, partially funded by FEMA, faces scrutiny as litigation mounts. Attorneys argue the state violated the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act by skipping mandatory reviews. A hearing is urgently sought to pause construction before detainees arrive next week, but DeSantis' office vows to fight, insisting the "preexisting airport" causes 'zero impact'.
Miami Herald
27-06-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
Environmentalists sue to block Alligator Alcatraz from opening in the Everglades
Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit against federal, state and Miami-Dade County officials on Friday over the immigration detention center under construction in the Everglades known as 'Alligator Alcatraz,' they said. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity announced that they filed the suit in federal court because the plan for the detention center did not go through the appropriate environmental review or public comment period. 'The site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species. This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,' said Eve Samples, Executive Director of Friends of the Everglades, in a statement. This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.
Fast Company
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
Why changing the Endangered Species Act's definition of ‘harm' would undo key protections
It wouldn't make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat. But that's exactly what the Trump administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm. For 50 years, the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat. Most species on the brink of extinction are on the list because there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats have been paved over, burned or transformed. Habitat protection is essential for their survival. As an ecologist and a law professor, we have spent our entire careers working to understand the law and science of helping imperiled species thrive. We recognize that the rule change the Trump administration quietly proposed could green-light the destruction of protected species' habitats, making it nearly impossible to protect those endangered species. The public, which has long supported the Endangered Species Act, has until May 19, 2025, to comment on the proposal. The legal gambit The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, bans the ' take' of 'any endangered species of fish or wildlife,' which includes harming protected species. Since 1975, regulations have defined 'harm ' to include habitat destruction that kills or injures wildlife. Developers and logging interests challenged that definition in 1995 in a Supreme Court case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon. However, the court ruled that the definition was reasonable and allowed federal agencies to continue using it. In short, the law says 'take' includes harm, and under the existing regulatory definition, harm includes indirect harm through habitat destruction. The Trump administration is seeking to change that definition of 'harm' in a way that leaves out habitat modification. This narrowed definition would undo the most significant protections granted by the Endangered Species Act. Why habitat protection matters Habitat protection is the single most important factor in the recovery of endangered species in the United States – far more consequential than curbing direct killing alone. A 2019 study examining the reasons species were listed as endangered between 1975 and 2017 found that only 17% were primarily threatened by direct killing, such as hunting or poaching. That 17% includes iconic species such as the red wolf, American crocodile, Florida panther and grizzly bear. In contrast, a staggering 81% were listed because of habitat loss and degradation. The Chinook salmon, island fox, southwestern willow flycatcher, desert tortoise and likely extinct ivory-billed woodpecker are just a few examples. Globally, a 2022 study found that habitat loss threatened more species than all other causes combined. As natural landscapes are converted to agriculture or taken over by urban sprawl, logging operations and oil and gas exploration, ecosystems become fragmented and the space that species need to survive and reproduce disappears. Currently, more than 107 million acres of land in the U.S. are designated as critical habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed species. Industries and developers have called for changes to the rules for years, arguing it has been weaponized to stop development. However, research shows species worldwide are facing an unprecedented threat from human activities that destroy natural habitat. Under the proposed change, development could be accelerated in endangered species' habitats. Gutting the Endangered Species Act The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act. It is also fundamentally incompatible with the purpose Congress wrote into the act: 'to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved [and] to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.' It contradicts the Supreme Court precedent, and it would destroy the act's habitat protections. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has argued that the recent 'de-extinction' of dire wolves by changing 14 genes in the gray wolf genome means that America need not worry about species protection because technology ' can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.' But altering an existing species to look like an extinct one is both wildly expensive and a paltry substitute for protecting existing species. The administration has also refused to conduct the required analysis of the environmental impact that changing the definition could have. That means the American people won't even know the significance of this change to threatened and endangered species until it's too late, though if approved it will certainly end up in court. The ESA is saving species Surveys have found the Endangered Species Act is popular with the public, including Republicans. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of protected species from extinction since it was created, not just from bullets but also from bulldozers. This regulatory rollback seeks to undermine the law's greatest strength: protecting the habitats species need to survive. Congress knew the importance of habitat when it passed the law, and it wrote a definition of 'take' that allows the agencies to protect it.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How redefining just one word could strip the Endangered Species Act's ability to protect vital habitat
It wouldn't make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat. But that's exactly what the Trump administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted. For 50 years, the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat. Most species on the brink of extinction are on the list because there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats have been paved over, burned or transformed. Habitat protection is essential for their survival. As an ecologist and a law professor, we have spent our entire careers working to understand the law and science of helping imperiled species thrive. We recognize that the rule change the Trump administration quietly proposed could green-light the destruction of protected species' habitats, making it nearly impossible to protect those endangered species. The public, which has long supported the Endangered Species Act, has until May 19, 2025, to comment on the proposal. The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, bans the 'take' of 'any endangered species of fish or wildlife,' which includes harming protected species. Since 1975, regulations have defined 'harm' to include habitat destruction that kills or injures wildlife. Developers and logging interests challenged that definition in 1995 in a Supreme Court case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon. However, the court ruled that the definition was reasonable and allowed federal agencies to continue using it. In short, the law says 'take' includes harm, and under the existing regulatory definition, harm includes indirect harm through habitat destruction. The Trump administration is seeking to change that definition of 'harm' in a way that leaves out habitat modification. This narrowed definition would undo the most significant protections granted by the Endangered Species Act. Habitat protection is the single most important factor in the recovery of endangered species in the United States – far more consequential than curbing direct killing alone. A 2019 study examining the reasons species were listed as endangered between 1975 and 2017 found that only 17% were primarily threatened by direct killing, such as hunting or poaching. That 17% includes iconic species such as the red wolf, American crocodile, Florida panther and grizzly bear. In contrast, a staggering 81% were listed because of habitat loss and degradation. The Chinook salmon, island fox, southwestern willow flycatcher, desert tortoise and likely extinct ivory-billed woodpecker are just a few examples. Globally, a 2022 study found that habitat loss threatened more species than all other causes combined. As natural landscapes are converted to agriculture or taken over by urban sprawl, logging operations and oil and gas exploration, ecosystems become fragmented and the space that species need to survive and reproduce disappears. Currently, more than 107 million acres of land in the U.S. are designated as critical habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed species. Industries and developers have called for changes to the rules for years, arguing it has been weaponized to stop development. However, research shows species worldwide are facing an unprecedented threat from human activities that destroy natural habitat. Under the proposed change, development could be accelerated in endangered species' habitats. The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act. It is also fundamentally incompatible with the purpose Congress wrote into the act: 'to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved [and] to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.' It contradicts the Supreme Court precedent, and it would destroy the act's habitat protections. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has argued that the recent 'de-extinction' of dire wolves by changing 14 genes in the gray wolf genome means that America need not worry about species protection because technology 'can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.' But altering an existing species to look like an extinct one is both wildly expensive and a paltry substitute for protecting existing species. The administration has also refused to conduct the required analysis of the environmental impact that changing the definition could have. That means the American people won't even know the significance of this change to threatened and endangered species until it's too late, though if approved it will certainly end up in court. Surveys have found the Endangered Species Act is popular with the public, including Republicans. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of protected species from extinction since it was created, not just from bullets but also from bulldozers. This regulatory rollback seeks to undermine the law's greatest strength: protecting the habitats species need to survive. Congress knew the importance of habitat when it passed the law, and it wrote a definition of 'take' that allows the agencies to protect it. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Mariah Meek, Michigan State University and Karrigan Börk, University of California, Davis Read more: Trump is stripping protections from marine protected areas – why that's a problem for fishing's future, and for whales, corals and other ocean life Butterflies declined by 22% in just 2 decades across the US – there are ways you can help save them Humans are killing helpful insects in hundreds of ways − simple steps can reduce the harm Mariah Meek has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and several state agencies. In addition to being a professor, she is also the Director of Research for The Wilderness Society. Karrigan Börk receives grant funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and several California state agencies. He is on the Advisory Board of Water Audit California, an organization that works to protect California's public trust resources.
