Will Indian River County let RSG of Vero Beach build Ridge Top neighborhood atop 600 gopher tortoise burrows in Wabasso?

Florida gopher tortoises are a threatened species and 365 others depend on their burrows. Florida development boom is leaving little room for the native land tortoises.

State officials are investigating after numerous recent gopher tortoise deaths at a popular beach destination.

The right-of-way (ROW) manager with Cooperative Energy, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, points toward a half-moon-shaped hole in the ground about 15 ft away. A flash of a figure just disappeared into the ...

This makes protecting gopher tortoises and their burrows vital not just for the survival of the species, but for the survival of Florida’s fragile ecosystem as a whole.

What surprised you about this story? The sheer number of species that rely on a gopher tortoise burrow for survival, roughly 365, and the diversity of creatures sharing the burrow is astounding.

Beavers, a keystone species, shape ecosystem and benefit wildlife. Dams store and release water to control downstream flooding. Beaver wetlands filter water, trap silt, and remove toxins.

A groundbreaking study of 7000-year-old exposed coral reef fossils reveals how human fishing has transformed Caribbean reef food webs: as sharks declined by 75% and fish preferred by humans became ...

Several species of giant tortoise are currently under threat and some have already gone extinct. Goliath first came to the US in 1929, and was eventually brought to Zoo Miami in 1981.