A 27-year-old Sarasota man is headed to Alaska from Key West's Southernmost Point on an 8,000-mile solo cycling journey. He’s raising money and awareness for hospice care.

J.W. Frye thought of the journey he calls "One Bike, One Cause" after his mother received hospice care in Pennsylvania before losing her battle with brain cancer. He hopes to end his ride in about six months at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

“The six month time frame of this ride is very significant because it reflects the amount of time of diagnosis that people are coming in to hospice with and I would love to show just how much life can be lived and how many people can be affected and how much change you can wrought in the world in 6 months time,” said Frye.

Frye plans to visit hospices along the way while raising awareness for a national bill being drafted to provide free grief counseling for bereaved children. Follow his journey at www.onebikeonecause.org.

A recent poll reveals Floridians are much less concerned about education than issues such as job creation and insurance rates. Those findings come as no surprise to at least one expert. Valarie Edwards has more.

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The annual Sunshine State Survey commissioned by Leadership Florida, covered topics such as immigration, fiscal soundness and education.

More than half of the 1,200 people polled identified job creation and the economy as the most pressing issues facing the state. And, although education reform remains high on Governor Scott’s agenda, not many residents agree. Primary education reform scored a distant second in the survey, conducted by the Nielsen Company.

Those findings don’t surprise Dr. Susan A. MacManus, Political Science professor at the University of South Florida.

“Loud and clear, when you’re worried about a home and a job, a lot of other things, while you might care about them, are just not as pressing.”

This year marks year four of the annual Sunshine State Survey which lawmakers and stakeholders will use to determine and shape public policy.

You can view the survey in its entirety at leadership florida.org.

Secretary of the Department of the Interior Ken Salazar was in Southwest Florida on Friday for the groundbreaking of the second phase of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Picayune Strand restoration project. As WGCU’s John Davis reports, the effort is part of the largest ecosystem restoration initiative in the world.

When it comes to treating terminal illness, palliative care is often seen as the end of the fight. It focuses on quality of life rather than cure and is usually integrated in a patient’s final days or weeks in the form of hospice. But some question its traditional role in health care. A recent study shows that palliative care can not only help people live better, but also longer. As WGCU’s Farah Dosani reports, those in the field call for changing the way we view and use this so-called “end-of-life” care.

Bouts of freezing weather in December decimated crops, causing about 200 million dollars in economic losses to Southwest Florida’s agriculture. As temperatures increased, that kind of news fell from the headlines, but life for many in the town of Immokalee has become a daily struggle to survive. WGCU’s John Davis found farmworkers living in the woods because they say they can no longer live off the work they’re getting.

There’s a celebration Saturday at the Lake Trafford Marina in Immokalee marking the completion of the Lake Trafford dredging project which removed 6 million cubic yards of muck from the lake’s bottom.

The project restored the health of Southwest Florida’s largest fresh water lake.
The project was spurred by a major fish kill in 1996. The fish kill was caused by a buildup of muck on the lake’s bottom – a by-product of treatments for hydrilla and other exotic aquatic plants. Eventually green algae covered the lake’s surface, shutting down photosynthesis and depleting oxygen levels.

Action taken by the Lake Trafford Restoration Task Force led to more than 15 million dollars in funding from the state to clean-up the 15 thousand acre lake by removing the muck.
Ski Oleski and his late wife Anne, owners of the Lake Trafford Marina, were major players in the task force –a coalition of government, non-profit and community members.

The muck was piped to nearby former agriculture land now owned by the South Florida Water Management District. Water Managers have not yet determined what to do with the property.
Lake Trafford has been restocked with bass with hopes it will once again be a major bass fishing destination.

-Valerie Alker

A new exhibit which chronicles the wartime escape of the husband and wife team who brought Curious George to life comes to the Holocaust Museum and Education Center of SW Florida in Naples Thursday, February 3, and runs through March 10. 2011.Valarie Edwards Reports.

Members of the conservation organization 1000 Friends of Florida will hear a presentation Wednesday on the feasibility of building wind turbines in the Everglades Agricultural Area. WGCU’s Valerie Alker has more.