A remote camera captured an image of a Florida black bear on the J.N ‘Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Monday.

A refuge biologist says the bear looks to be about a year and a half old and about 50 pounds. It was at a 100-acre freshwater satellite parcel known as the Bailey Tract.

She says the bear poses NO immediate threat but people should keep all food and garbage secured and stored inside.

Black bears are native to Florida and are protected a under state and federal laws.

Bears are most active at night and eat almost anything, including grass, insects, small mammals and dead things. The refuge asks folks to report any sightings.

Lead Biologist Tara Wertz: (239) 472-1100 x231.

Three Southwest Florida women will be travelling to Guatemala this week to teach women, families and teachers about reproductive health and human trafficking.  

The program is called The GRACE project – or Guatemalan Rural Adult and Children’s Education. It’s run by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Myers and sponsored by the Zonta Club of Sanibel-Captiva.

The women include Dr. Genelle Grant and Marta - the main characters in WGCU’s one-hour radio documentary, Lucia’s Letter, which won a prestigious Peabody Award this year.  The documentary is based on a composite letter Grant wrote that tells about the lives of Marta and several other local Mayan women who were smuggled into Southwest Florida many years ago by a coyote.

Their parents paid big money to send them, but the girls paid the price when the journey turned disastrous. Now Grant and Marta use the letter, originally on CD, to educate Mayan women about the importance of investing their money in going to school in Guatemala rather than using all of the family’s resources to send the girls to the United States. While in Guatemala this month, Grant says they’ll create a brochure called Union of Women or “Union Ix (eesh)” in the indigenous language.

“So Union Ix is a little girl, a little Mayan girl, and she will be talking to her cousin about Lucia’s Letter, that she heard Lucia’s Letter. And this is going to be a set of drawings like a little comic book,” said Grant. “-We’re hiring artists, young women. We’re going to be doing this brochure down there and printing it and sending it back out with these 140 teachers who come to these two workshops.”

The brochure will be in black and white so it can be copied easily and cheaply as compared to the original Lucia’s Letter which is on CD, making it hard for parents and girls in some remote villages to hear the message. The GRACE Project provides similar work-study trips to Guatemala each summer.
Meanwhile, local health and human trafficking education for Mayan and Latina women takes place starting in July at Page Field and Pine Manor Community Centers in Fort Myers.

The Collier County School Board swore in the county’s new superintendent Kamela Patton Wednesday. The board voted April 20 to hire Patton, the region administrative director for Miami-Dade Public Schools.

Patton praised the board’s budget dealings, saying when the county had additional money supplied by the federal government it foresaw the concerns down the road and saved that money for today.

“So, I think the first two cracks at the budget have been done and done very well so now it will be my turn,” she said. “It’s really a district that I think I can bring in enhancements so I’m going to bring my set of skilled eyes from the budget process to see what else might they have not necessarily have missed but I would see it from a different angle.”

She’ll earn $200,000 her first year. Her contract runs through June 30, 2014. Patton replaces Dennis Thompson who was fired in April.

Governor Rick Scott signed the Officer Andrew Widman Act into law this morning at a candlelight vigil at the Fort Myers Police Department honoring fallen police officers. It’s the first law signed out of this year’s legislative session. If the law had been in effect 2008 it may have prevented Widman from being killed in the line of duty.

The bill clarifies for the courts that people who have committed a crime, and violate the terms of their probation or house arrest can be kept in jail for up to ten days until their probation violation hearing.  (Read More...)

Former Florida Gulf Coast University President William "Bill" Merwin died Friday in Jacksonville after a lengthy illness. He was 71. 

Merwin was FGCU’s second president, selected by the Board of Regents in 1999, and retiring in 2007. 

During the years of Dr. Merwin's presidency, Florida Gulf Coast University saw growth in enrollment from 3,284 to 8,309 students; the percentage of students attending full time from 46% to 73%; the annual operating budget from $52 million to $110 million, and the number of campus buildings from 24 to 71. While he was president of FGCU, $175 million in private gifts and donations was raised for support of every University aspect from academics to students to athletics to campus buildings. President Merwin also is credited with growing student housing on campus, taking the intercollegiate athletics program from its infancy to NCAA Division I, and adding many new degree programs including engineering and music.  (Read More...)

Florida Gulf Coast University’s Women’s Basketball team advances in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament – or WNIT - hosting the University of Florida tonight at Alico Arena. The Eagles defeated Drexel 73 to 67 Friday night. WGCU’s Amy Tardif was there. 


 

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.

More Florida counties are cutting the D.A.R.E. program from classrooms. In 2001, 84% of the states’ school districts participated in the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program for elementary schools. Today, less than half of them teach the D.A.R.E. curriculum. They often blame cost and scheduling issues. But instead of leaving the students without a drug prevention program, more districts are replacing it with one of their own. WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports.

The state Department of Health reports the first confirmed case in Florida of cholera linked to the epidemic in Haiti. WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports the case involves a Collier County woman who recently visited family in Haiti.

In commemoration of the 72nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the FGCU Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Human Rights Studies welcomed one of the world’s leading Holocaust experts to campus on Monday. WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports.