By Michael Moline | Editor in Chief
“[I]f you’re bringing a rifle out and you’re shooting near a dwelling where families are living, illegally poaching at night, you need to be charged with a third-degree felony. If you’re in close proximity to people, you need to be looking at more than five years behind bars, for sure.” — Attorney General James Uthmeier
Charges announced Monday included poaching of protected sea turtles. (Via Sea Turtle Conservancy)
The arrests followed an investigation that began in 2022, when a party to the alleged scheme approached an undercover officer, the AG said. 10 individuals face charges involving poaching of reef fish including grouper, redfish, and snapper, plus protected sea turtles, including hatchlings. The suspects are from an area stretching from Florida’s Big Bend to Tampa Bay and the haul allegedly ran to approximately 23,000 pounds of fish, shrimp, and turtles worth more than $150,000 worth.
The Republican compares his “Florida’s Coastal Corridor” to Florida’s Wildlife Corridor. “Where the Wildlife Corridor connects inland habitats from the north to the south, the Coastal Corridor links and protects our coastal waterways along the Gulf of America and the Atlantic Ocean. It connects them to inland watersheds that feed them,” Donalds said, using Donald Trump’s name for the Gulf of Mexico. The proposal won’t entail a bunch of regulations. “Instead, it brings our existing agencies and existing programs and existing authorities under one coordinated, operational plan,” he said.
The panel hopes to arrive at an agenda for the Legislature by the end of this month. The topic is applied behavior analysis (ABA) services, also used for ADHD, traumatic brain injuries, and intellectual and developmental disabilities. Florida spends a lot on these services but it’s not clear how efficacious they are. One idea floated would be to license providers and hinge their renewals on their results.
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