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
-
Nearly 300 Burmese pythons were removed from the Florida Everglades during the annual Florida Python Challenge. -
The free event will feature experts from business, academia, and government with practical information and ideas on increasing nature’s ability to rebound from extreme changes in Southwest Florida. -
A Naples firm wants to turn a vehicle proving ground built in the Florida Everglades into an “iconic” luxury-car lovers exclusive community. Conservation organizations strongly oppose the idea. -
Florida’s Rural and Family Lands Protection Program is protecting more than 9,100 acres in the Peace River Valley. -
Sanibel residents interested in protecting the island’s environment and helping shape city government have a chance to get involved this month. -
A team of University of Florida scientists is working on a million-dollar solution to one of South Florida's most urgent environmental problems: saltwater intrusion and flooding driven by sea level rise. -
Hundreds of square miles of Florida’s largest lake is again blanketed in toxic, blue-green algae. -
This year’s loggerhead nesting season on Sanibel and Captiva islands continues in full swing. With several more weeks left, if another hundred or so nests are dug, the record from three years ago will fall. -
Schools are hoping children will enjoy learning a different type of online activity by taking part in fishing clubs when classrooms reopen -
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has determined gopher tortoises are more at risk of extinction than ever before. The U.S. government does not agree. At the same time the nature union declared the gopher tortoises’ status more dire, the Trump Administration removed habitat protections for endangered species.
