Today marks the start of the 2022 hurricane season here in the Sunshine State. The experts are predicting an 'above-average' season, which doesn't end until December 1st. Historically, most of the worst storms have happened in June, July and August, the hot summer months. In the recent past, severe storms have moved to later in the season, stretching into September and October. With all that is happening with our changing climate, these storms have grown more intense and unpredictable, so even experts looking to predict the future are not more than educated guesses. With that said, let's hope that by the time we start our season in October, the worst of it will be over. In other news, we have yet to finalize our February event, so we will wait another month to announce that decision. Typically the February event takes place in the Southwest Florida Management District. We hope our readers will enjoy this issue. You will find several interesting articles, including a dissenting view on the story we published last month on speculation that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker may still be with us. There is also a great story on the 'Annihilation of Florida'. This is a must-read. Another story of interest tells the downside of so many people beginning their journey into paddling: a rise in accidents and fatal incidents. Finally, we hear from Don Yackel, a recent inductee into the Paddle Florida Hall of Fame. His story is a common one among the myriad stories of how and why people love to paddle.

I have always had an affinity for boats and the water.  I like to think that it’s because I was born under the water sign: Aquarius.  I spent my younger years messing around in powerboats, then switched to sail, and finally, at age fifty, gave up all those complicated and expensive vessels for a kayak. 

In my kayak, I’m closer to the water and the things in and around it and can experience nature up close.  I can easily move my boat around the state and country to explore new places in ways I never can from a car or a larger watercraft.  That’s one of the reasons I like Paddle Florida so much.  Paddle Florida gets me into parts of the state I might never know about or experience on my own. 

I have paddled dozens of trips with this organization over the past eleven years.  Among my favorites are the Suwannee and Ochlockonee Rivers.  These and other trips have become the heart of stories included in my two books, The Idling Bulldozer, and The Seventy Thousand Dollar Outhouse.

A record 37.9 million participants engaged in paddlesports like kayaking, canoeing and stand-up paddleboarding during the pandemic according to the latest data (2020) from the Outdoor Foundation. This pandemic surge brought an estimated 2.5 million new paddlers to American waterways. However, it increased accidents to 331 and fatalities to 202—also a record—accounting for more than 26% of all boating fatalities that same year.

Water Sports Foundation (WSF) Executive Director Jim Emmons said boating in general is still one of the safest forms of recreation, but data from 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, indicates most paddlesports deaths occurred due to lack of safety training and experience.

“We know from analyzing U.S. Coast Guard data that in 2020, nearly three-quarters (74.6 percent) of people who died in paddling accidents had less than 100 hours experience in the activity,” Emmons said, “And over one-third (38.8 percent) had less than 10 hours experience.” [Read more…]

You can tell many stories about Florida, but one of the most tragic and with the worst long-term consequences is this: since development in Florida began in earnest in the 20th century, state leaders and developers have chosen a cruel, unsustainable legacy involving the nonstop slaughter of wildlife and the destruction of habitat, eliminating some of the most unique flora and fauna in the world.

In his 1944 book That Vanishing Eden: A Naturalist’s Florida, Thomas Barbour bemoaned the environmental damage caused by development to the Miami area and wrote, “Florida…must cease to be purely a region to be exploited and flung aside, having been sucked dry, or a recreation area visited by people who…feel no sense of responsibility and have no desire to aid and improve the land.”

Even then, a dark vision of Florida’s future was clear. Most of this harm has been inflicted in the service of unlimited and poorly planned growth, sparked by greed and short-term profit. This murder of the natural world has accelerated in the last decade to depths unheard of. The process has been deliberate, often systemic, and conducted from on-high to down-low, with special interests flooding the state with dark money, given to both state and local politicians in support of projects that bear no relationship to best management of natural resources. These projects typically reinforce income inequality and divert attention and money away from traditionally disadvantaged communities. [Read more…]

Photo credit: Current Affairs

We recently published a story about North American birding’s Holy Grail, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. The last confirmed sighting of this large, loud bird was in 1944. Confined to the swampy forests of America’s Deep South, the bird disappeared because of intense hunting and habitat loss.

Since the last sighting, it has become perhaps the most iconic “lost” species in the United States. Professionals and amateurs alike have searched for it. Like Bigfoot, there have been sightings but no real evidence.

Recently, the bird has been back in the news. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared it extinct in 2021, only for a team of birders to claim that they had rediscovered the species: “Our findings, and the inferences drawn from them, suggest an increasingly hopeful future for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.”

They are publishing a paper, and several media outlets, including us, picked up the story of their find. The only problem? They almost certainly haven’t found their bird. The three-year study, using microphones, drone cameras, camera traps, and volunteers has only managed to come up with a couple of photos so bad that they are impossible to identify further than, “Yep, that is probably a species of woodpecker.” [Read more…]

Photo credit: Hub Pages

How To: 6 Tips for Overcoming Fear while Sea Kayaking
By Kayak Hipster

As kayakers we're often exposed to intimidating situations out on the water. These are 6 things I like to do to handle and overcome fear.

Click here for video.