Word: airboats
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This is the everglades that they put in brochures. Summer rains have raised the waters, and lily pads blooming in the searing sun give the sprawling wetlands a Monet mood. But as his airboat glides through the saw grass 30 miles west of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) commissioner Ron Bergeron is looking for the worst invasive menace to threaten the River of Grass since sugarcane and the Army Corps of Engineers. "They like to sneak onto islands like this one," says Bergeron, 65, a self-described "glades cracker" who has spent almost as much...
Bergeron is a smart gladesman. He pulls up to the tree-covered hummock, and almost as soon as herpetologists Shawn Heflick and Greg Graziani hop off the airboat armed with snake hooks, they find a 10-foot Burmese python slithering through the mud. Graziani swoops down and grabs the angry serpent's tail while Heflick goes for the other end. After a brief struggle, during which Heflick gets his hand bloodied by a sharp snake tooth, they pull the python's head, with its camouflage-like design, into their clutches. "It was trying to cool off deep down there...
...meantime, Crist, whose endorsement helped McCain easily win last January's Florida primary, is selling the Arizona Senator to Floridians as "a man who cares deeply about the environment" despite the drilling flap. Earlier this month, for example, he took McCain on an airboat ride through the Everglades after environmentalists raised the issue of McCain having voted against a federal water bill last year that included $2 billion for Everglades restoration. (McCain says he objected to other pork provisions in the measure, not the Everglades funding...
...fell asleep at 3 a.m., but were roused at dawn when Wilma arrived with more than 100 m.p.h. winds. Since Wilma came ashore on Florida's west coast, many had hoped it would weaken before it hit the east; instead it sped across the Everglades like a high-power airboat. At Pedroz's building, the storm shattered sliding glass doors, tossed furniture and blew down walls. After the assault, much of the 26-floor building's fa?ade looked as if it were bombed. "We thought the building was going to break in two," said a shaken Pedroz...
Florida was supposed to be a day at the beach for Republicans this year. With Jeb Bush firmly enthroned as one of the nation's most popular Governors, his brother George W.'s presidential campaign would glide through the state like an airboat on the Everglades. And a Republican-controlled legislature--the first ever in the old Confederacy--would escort G.O.P. Congressman Bill McCollum into retiring Republican Senator Connie Mack's seat. Endorsing McCollum last month, Mack rapturously hailed "the good news for all Florida Republicans...