Inside the Last Chance Saloon, black armbands are worn in El Presidente's memory. Mourners don T-shirts denouncing the state: "Environmentally Protected, My Ass." There's even talk of a motorcycle run, to protest the killing.

Because of death threats, Todd Hardwick's house was put under police watch. Unaccustomed to the role of villain, he says he truly understands why people are upset.

It's easy to become attached to animals, even a crusty one-eyed alligator. Sadly, in these risky relationships, it's usually the reptile who winds up getting hurt.

Wildlife losing their homes as we build ours

December 12, 1996

One day late in November, travelers on U.S. 27 in western Broward County saw an unusual sight: a wild bobcat walking dazed in broad daylight along the busy highway.

Usually the cats are nocturnal, shying from human activity. They are especially unfond of speeding automobiles.

A concerned motorist reported the animal to the Wildlife Care Center in Fort Lauderdale. The center immediately sent its ambulance and volunteers.

When they arrived at the area, just north of the Dade line, they found no sign of the cat. But after a brief search they spotted it hiding in brushy cover, not far from a cleared construction site.

The animal was weak, and put up no struggle. It died in the ambulance racing back to the Wildlife Care Center.

Rescuers had a sad mystery on their hands: an adult male bobcat about 2 years old, which should have been in its physical prime. No signs of trauma—the cat hadn't been shot or struck by a car, or mauled by another animal.

A necropsy was performed by the center's veterinarian, Dr. Deb Anderson. She found no fractures, no internal injuries, no disease in the organs.

What she did find was a shockingly emaciated animal with white gums and not an ounce of body fat. The young bobcat was all skin and bones. It had starved to death.

Starved, on the edge of the Everglades. How?

They're paving the edge of the Everglades, in case you hadn't noticed. The corridor from Southwest Broward through Northwest Dade has become bulldozer heaven.

It's the final horizon before the dikes, the last open mecca in which to slap up crowded subdivisions with fanciful names such as Big Sky North and Bluegrass Lakes. Naturally, politicians are rubber-stamping these monstrosities as fast as possible.

For humans, overdevelopment means your kids are shoehorned into classrooms and you're stuck behind dump trucks every morning on I-75. For wildlife, the inconveniences are more perilous.

Unlike scrappy opossums and raccoons, bobcats don't adapt to human encroachment—they flee from it. In fact they're so reclusive that a person could spend a lifetime in Florida and never lay eyes on one.

The cats aren't listed as endangered, but they've been pushed so far away that they're rarely encountered. Of 12,000 animals brought to the wildlife center this year, only four were bobcats.

And only one arrived dead of starvation a few days before Thanksgiving, another small casualty of "progress."

Like the much larger panther, bobcats are fiercely territorial. If a young male wanders into an older cat's range, the younger animal is attacked and sometimes killed.

Imagine what happens when one of them suddenly loses its home to machines; when the woods where it hunts small mammals and dens its kittens are flattened to moonscape.

The cat can't run east because east got paved. Can't go west because it's mostly water. Can't go north or south without battling other bobcats for a sparse, shrinking habitat.

Dr. Anderson believes the male found along U.S. 27 chose to hang tough, refusing to abandon his home range. He spent his final days running on magnificent guts and desperation, hunting himself to exhaustion in a barren future suburb of Miramar or Pembroke Pines.

Soon, on the same ground that cat and its ancestors once roamed, there will be a new condo clubhouse or outlet shops, or perhaps a multiplex cinema.

And the parking lots will fill with avid newcomers who won't know about the small wild tracks that got buried under all that greed.

'97 is already a mean season for wildlife

May 25, 1997

A few days ago, a man in Key Largo took half a raw chicken and stuck it on a big triple-barbed hook. The hook was attached to a heavy nylon rope, which was reinforced with a steel cable leader.

The man lobbed the hooked chicken into a canal and began to wait. This is exactly how a poacher would do it—"a classic set-hook for crocodilians," said reptile expert Todd Hardwick, who later was called to the scene.

Before long, something swam along and ate the man's bait. It was a male North American crocodile measuring 9 feet, 10 inches and weighing about 350 pounds.

The animal was one of a pair that lived in the waterway, not far from the John Pennekamp state park. This species has been fighting back from the edge of extinction, and South Florida is the only place in the world where it lives.

More timid than alligators, these crocs are not known to attack humans. The big one that swallowed the baited chicken had long ago been tagged by a biologist named Paul Moler, who works for the state. Moler has spent years trying to save Florida's crocodiles.

This one was No. 050358. Moler had marked it after it emerged from the nest on Aug. 9, 1982, at the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in North Key Largo.

Its life ended only a few miles away, under a dock, where it thrashed to death on the end of a rope. Its insides were torn to shreds.

Somebody in the neighborhood spotted the carcass and called authorities, because killing crocodiles is highly illegal. Nobody has been arrested yet.

A man interviewed by wildlife officers said he was innocently fishing when the croc grabbed his bait. Wow! Fishing with a chicken on a steel cable—they must grow some damn big snappers in that canal.

It continues to be a brutal season for Florida wildlife, with jerks running amok. In March, a 10-ton Minke whale died near Big Pine Key after being shot five times by unknown persons.

Who knows why anyone would take target practice on such a harmless and elegant creature, but you can bet on a pathetic combination of boredom and stupidity. Bullets from two separate guns were removed from the dead whale.

Then, from the purely vicious to the purely greedy:

Five young sports from Hialeah were arrested two weeks ago in Biscayne National Park. They carried no fishing licenses, but had a boatload of illegal booty, including undersize and out-of-season lobster, 458 queen conchs and the remains of a rare loggerhead turtle.

The goons who butchered the turtle could get 12 to 18 months in a federal prison. A park ranger found the animal's flippers while searching the boat.

Days later, several men were busted for illegal spearfishing around Dinner Key and Government Cut.You know you've found paradise when you can poach lobsters within wading distance of the Miami skyline.

Some judges go easy on wildlife violators, and others are as tough as the law allows. Unfortunately, the maximum fines are too low and the maximum jail sentences are too light for the crime, which is nothing short of robbery.

A few neighbors on that canal in Key Largo said they were glad the croc was gone. They said they feel safer now.

That's almost understandable—it was a large, scary-looking critter. The fact it hadn't hurt anyone didn't matter. Fear is fear.

Still, some folks would like their kids one day to see a loggerhead turtle in the Atlantic, or even a wild crocodile in Florida Bay.

That No. 050358 held on for almost 15 years is a small miracle of nature, considering all the numbskulls and bandits it had to elude.