Tom Bayles
WGCU Environmental ReporterTom Bayles is WGCU's Senior Environmental Reporter and a 25-year veteran journalist in Florida. Before his tenure at WGCU Public Media, he worked for The New York Times Co. in Sarasota, the Associated Press in Miami and Tallahassee, and the Tampa Bay Times in Clearwater. He earned a master's in journalism and a bachelor's in education, both from the University of South Florida. The proud father of three sons, Bayles spends his free time fishing along the Southwest Florida coast in his 20-foot Aquasport with his Whippet pup, Spencer.
Bayles’ top awards include the Gold Medal for Public Service for Investigative Reporting from the Florida Society of News Editors, the Waldo Proffitt Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism in Florida, and being named the Sunshine State’s top environmental journalist by the Florida Press Club and FSNE. Bayles has been nominated four times for a Pulitzer Prize.
Email: tbayles@wgcu.org
-
Least terns and black skimmers have faced especially challenging conditions at several Sanibel colonies, where repeated plundering by coyotes have reduced nesting success and caused birds to shift to the causeway and islands around it. -
Despite news that the last detainee is gone from the immigration detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz, the environmental groups that sued to shut it down gathered online Wednesday to make it known that they are nowhere near done. -
If you’ve ever gone to the beach to light off fireworks on the Fourth of July, you maybe responsible for the death of a baby bird. -
Nesting season began a little over six weeks ago, and this week marks NOAA’s official Sea Turtle Week. The most recent Southwest Florida numbers available are from, roughly, the end of the first week of June, and they are about the same as this time last year. -
A person finds the baby alone, assumes the worst, and scoops it up. State wildlife officials say most of those rescues were mistakes. However, many of the baby creatures that flood the region's animal hospitals every spring were never in trouble. -
Afternoon showers have been popping up throughout Southwest Florida since the year began, but more so since the summer rainy season started May 15 in places like Collier County where 4.5 inches have fallen in less than three weeks. That’s inspired the watering restrictions and outdoor burn bans to an end in some communities, while others are leaving them in place for now. -
Audubon Florida wants poets from Southwest Florida and the rest of the state to write haikus celebrating both vulture species ahead of International Vulture Awareness Day on the first Saturday of September each year -
It’s tough to overstate the importance of mangrove forests along Florida’s Gulf Coast, where they shield homes and lives from hurricane storm surge, especially a repaired portion like part of what is now the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. -
By mid-April the seaweed, which looks a lot like a watery sweet potato casserole with the brown, crusty topping, had spread across the entire Caribbean Sea, with substantial amounts pushing into the Gulf. Huge amounts washed up along many Caribbean shorelines in what USF researchers call “beaching events” in the bulletins issued at the end of every month. -
Memorial Day Weekend kicks off National Safe Boating Week, an annual reminder to people nationwide that many boating crashes and deaths are preventable. Wear a life jacket at all times.
