Latest news with #Harrity
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's new border wall will threaten wildlife in an area where few people pass
Donald Trump is forging ahead with a new section of border wall that will threaten wildlife in a remote area where many rare animals – but very few people – roam. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has invited private sector companies to bid for contracts to erect nearly 25 miles of barrier on the US-Mexico border, across the unwalled San Rafael Valley south of Tucson, Arizona, one of the most biodiverse regions in the US. Here, vast rolling grasslands stretch across high desert, hemmed in to the east and west by rugged, isolated mountain ranges known as sky islands because they rise abruptly and spectacularly out of the arid flatness. 'This is a crucial wildlife corridor,' said Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for the Sky Island Alliance, a conservation non-profit, while driving along a dirt road towards the cottonwood tree-lined Santa Cruz River that flows towards Mexico. A nearby motion-triggered wildlife camera, one of 65 operated by the alliance just in this section of the border, where there is a lengthy gap in the barrier, captures thousands of images of wild animals, including bears, bobcats, pronghorns and mountain lions. 'Large predators and other animals move freely through this landscape,' said Harrity, as he replaced the batteries of a trail camera pointed toward the wide open-landscape that, on a map, would show the border with Mexico. Harrity assists in monitoring more than 110 cameras across a wider area for an alliance study that began in 2020 to record the effects of Trump's barrier on cross-border movements for local wildlife. 'That [movement] won't happen once the wall is complete,' he added of that stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border. That completion now looks set to become a reality. 'CBP is soliciting bids for construction of 24.7 miles of border barrier around International Boundary Monument 102 in the Sonoita Border Patrol Station area of responsibility,' a CBP spokesperson told the Guardian in an email, referring to the small stone obelisks, or monuments, that have traditionally been dotted along the international line. Outside the San Rafael valley, the stretches of border wall designed to keep people out of the US with 30ft-high steel posts spaced just four inches apart are impassable to anything larger than a jackrabbit, the speedy, long-legged hares typical of the area. Once this valley is walled, too, it will sever a critical wildlife corridor for animals migrating between Mexico and Arizona. Erick Meza, borderlands coordinator for the Sierra Club environmental advocacy group, said walling the valley would be 'catastrophic for the environment and wildlife'. On 27 April, the US House of Representatives homeland security committee unveiled its proposed budget, allocating $46.5bn to fund new chunks of barrier on the almost 2,000-mile US-Mexico border, where building a wall was a focus and highly vexed issue in the first Trump administration and is far from complete. The new push for more wall comes as unauthorized crossings by people migrating to the US through or from Mexico had been falling fast last year after Joe Biden tightened restrictions and have now reached historic lows. This was noted by CBP and trumpeted with inflammatory language by the Trump White House, even as the president spoke of 'invasion'. 'Even when numbers were the highest, people were crossing in areas that already had a border wall,' said Meza. 'San Rafael valley never saw those numbers.' Critics are furious. 'It's an expensive, unnecessary, and environmentally disastrous project,' said Harrity of the barrier, which can cost up to $30m per mile. 'If completed, this wall will sever a continent.' Successful legal challenges to federal actions on the border can be difficult, but opponents are intensively researching their options. And tall metal boundaries, which not only impede animals but, when under construction and being patrolled, cause huge damage and disruption, are not the only worry for wildlife advocates. Trump has also announced a plan to further use the military and take over vast swaths of public lands along the border. A presidential memorandum in April directed the transfer of a 60ft-wide strip of federal land running along the border in California, Arizona and New Mexico, known as the Roosevelt reservation, to US military control. That could mean new military bases and staging areas which, state actions in Texas have shown, create environmental havoc. Related: 'Why doesn't anybody care?' Texas-Mexico border devastated by anti-migrant operation Myles Traphagen, borderlands director for the Wildlands Network, is concerned that large military facilities could be constructed in the region, further enhancing the human footprint of an already militarized border. 'It's an invasion,' said Traphagen. 'An invasion of our public lands.' Mark Nevitt, an Emory University School of Law professor, said the president appeared intent on an unprecedented use of 'national security language associated with executive power, [such as] 'invasion' and 'under attack', that appears to expand the military's role in immigration enforcement'. He also fears that Pentagon funds will be funneled into more wall building on land to be designated as 'national defense areas'. Noah Schramm, border policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, called the intended step-change in militarization 'uniquely alarming' and warned that troops could be used to apprehend migrants and civilians alike for allegedly illegally entering a restricted military area In Arizona, 63% of the border has already been sealed off and the remaining open sections are critical for wildlife, with the San Rafael valley being one of the last intact expanses of Sonoran desert grasslands in the state. The area's rugged Huachuca and Patagonia mountains, part of the Sky Island range, serve as stepping stones across a harsh desert by offering a range of habitats, food sources and water for animals. 'The biodiversity here is incredible,' said Meza, of the Sierra Club. As well as bears, mountain lions and wolves there are subtropical species such as the wild pig-like javelina, and rare big cats – ocelots and jaguars, with natural ranges of hundreds of miles between countries in search of food, water and mates. 'This is at the heart of all these different ecosystems coming together,' Meza added. As Harrity of the Sky Island Alliance drove his battered red pickup through the wilderness he passed a lone pronghorn, the strange, antelope-like creature that is the fastest land mammal in the Americas. The San Rafael valley was entering year three of a severe drought, he said. 'When it rains, it can look like Scotland,' he said. In dry times like now, the valley looks more like the African savanna, with rolling hills of native grasses awash in soft yellows, oranges and rusts. 'A study in browns,' he added, bouncing along toward the only greenery visible – cottonwood trees lining the Santa Cruz River. Harrity said that as the climate crisis exacerbates drought in the south-west, wildlife in the border region will need to range farther and farther seeking food and water. In 2021 a Mexican grey wolf known as Mr Goodbar paced 23 miles along the border wall searching for a place to cross into Mexico. After days, he finally gave up and returned to the Gila wilderness area in New Mexico. 'The last thing we should be doing right now is walling off corridors and severing connectivity,' Harrity said. The Santa Cruz River is a vital animal migration corridor that meanders into Mexico and back to Arizona. 'The river will now be walled on both legs of its journey,' said Harrity. A nearby wildlife camera recently captured a video of a mountain lion carrying its prize, a dead coyote, into Mexico. The valley is almost devoid of people. And it lacks the telltale signs of migration in the borderlands: ripped clothes on bushes, discarded backpacks and empty water bottles. In five years, a camera by the river has never captured an image of a migrant crossing into the US, even though it's one of the few parts of the valley with shade and water. On a hill above the river an agent in a white and green border patrol SUV looked on. Then in New Mexico, to the east, near the small town of Columbus, Traphagen of Wildlands Network pointed from a hilltop brightened by red-flowered ocotillo plants to the longest contiguous section of border wall in the US. Eighty miles of three-story-high posts cutting through sand dunes and volcanic hills like a giant serpent, all the way to El Paso, Texas. As the spring wind picked up, the steel pillars began to reverberate and hum. 'When the wind really gets going, it sounds like Tuvan throat singers,' said Traphagen of the central Asian singers who can produce a low vocal rumble and a high whistle-like tone at the same time. Many of the Wildlands Network's trail cameras are pointed toward 'construction anomalies,' said Traphagen, where posts have been mistakenly placed five or six inches apart instead of the usual four. Those extra 2ins do not affect human crossing but can allow animals, such as javelina and coyotes, at least, to pass through. That subtle difference would also reduce the number of posts needed to build the hugely expensive border wall. 'That's probably $30m worth of steel there,' said Traphagen, pointing in passing to an abandoned construction staging area from the previous Trump administration containing thousands of steel pillars stacked like the kids' building toy Lincoln Logs. Other trail cameras are placed near open floodgates, resulting from a 2023 lawsuit requiring the border patrol to open intermittent gates in the barrier to allow larger animals to pass. 'This camera has captured over 1,000 videos, and we have never seen a person crossing through,' said Traphagen. It points along a sandy wash marked with the paw prints of rabbits, coyotes and badgers. Of the eight cameras checked during one long outing at the New Mexico border, only one had captured any evidence of migrants. But in a 2024 study by the Wildlands Network and Sky Islands Alliance, motion-activated cameras along 100 miles of walled border showed an 86% decrease in wildlife crossings and a 100% reduction for animals such as wolves, bears, pronghorns, and jaguars. 'The Trump administration would rather score cheap political points and a favorable Fox News headline than solve a problem. Instead of wasting taxpayers' dollars, undermining military readiness and jeopardizing American families' safety, Trump and [Elon] Musk should focus on actually fixing our broken immigration system,' said Martin Heinrich, US senator for New Mexico and a Democrat. 'New Mexicans who live on the border want actual solutions, like creating new legal pathways for immigration, investing in effective border security for law enforcement, and addressing the root causes of mass migration,' he added. Back in the San Rafael valley, Traphagen noted that, on top of everything, parts of the original 1955 movie of the musical Oklahoma! were filmed in this beautiful spot. 'It will be a tragedy to see a pristine grassland … turned into a military zone,' he said.
Business Mayor
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Mayor
Trump's new border wall will threaten wildlife in an area where few people pass
Donald Trump is forging ahead with a new section of border wall that will threaten wildlife in a remote area where many rare animals – but very few people – roam. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has invited private sector companies to bid for contracts to erect nearly 25 miles of barrier on the US-Mexico border, across the unwalled San Rafael Valley south of Tucson, Arizona, one of the most biodiverse regions in the US. Here, vast rolling grasslands stretch across high desert, hemmed in to the east and west by rugged, isolated mountain ranges known as sky islands because they rise abruptly and spectacularly out of the arid flatness. 'This is a crucial wildlife corridor,' said Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for the Sky Island Alliance, a conservation non-profit, while driving along a dirt road towards the cottonwood tree-lined Santa Cruz River that flows towards Mexico. A nearby motion-triggered wildlife camera, one of 65 operated by the alliance just in this section of the border, where there is a lengthy gap in the barrier, captures thousands of images of wild animals, including bears, bobcats, pronghorns and mountain lions. 'Large predators and other animals move freely through this landscape,' said Harrity, as he replaced the batteries of a trail camera pointed toward the wide open-landscape that, on a map, would show the border with Mexico. Harrity assists in monitoring more than 110 cameras across a wider area for an alliance study that began in 2020 to record the effects of Trump's barrier on cross-border movements for local wildlife. 'That [movement] won't happen once the wall is complete,' he added of that stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border. That completion now looks set to become a reality. 'CBP is soliciting bids for construction of 24.7 miles of border barrier around International Boundary Monument 102 in the Sonoita Border Patrol Station area of responsibility,' a CBP spokesperson told the Guardian in an email, referring to the small stone obelisks, or monuments, that have traditionally been dotted along the international line. A satellite map of the stretch of the Arizona/Mexico border where CBP has proposed building a new pedestrian border wall. Outside the San Rafael valley, the stretches of border wall designed to keep people out of the US with 30ft-high steel posts spaced just four inches apart are impassable to anything larger than a jackrabbit, the speedy, long-legged hares typical of the area. Once this valley is walled, too, it will sever a critical wildlife corridor for animals migrating between Mexico and Arizona. Erick Meza, borderlands coordinator for the Sierra Club environmental advocacy group, said walling the valley would be 'catastrophic for the environment and wildlife'. On 27 April, the US House of Representatives homeland security committee unveiled its proposed budget, allocating $46.5bn to fund new chunks of barrier on the almost 2,000-mile US-Mexico border, where building a wall was a focus and highly vexed issue in the first Trump administration and is far from complete. The new push for more wall comes as unauthorized crossings by people migrating to the US through or from Mexico had been falling fast last year after Joe Biden tightened restrictions and have now reached historic lows. This was noted by CBP and trumpeted with inflammatory language by the Trump White House, even as the president spoke of 'invasion'. 'Even when numbers were the highest, people were crossing in areas that already had a border wall,' said Meza. 'San Rafael valley never saw those numbers.' Critics are furious. 'It's an expensive, unnecessary, and environmentally disastrous project,' said Harrity of the barrier, which can cost up to $30m per mile. 'If completed, this wall will sever a continent.' Successful legal challenges to federal actions on the border can be difficult, but opponents are intensively researching their options. And tall metal boundaries, which not only impede animals but, when under construction and being patrolled, cause huge damage and disruption, are not the only worry for wildlife advocates. Trump has also announced a plan to further use the military and take over vast swaths of public lands along the border. A presidential memorandum in April directed the transfer of a 60ft-wide strip of federal land running along the border in California, Arizona and New Mexico, known as the Roosevelt reservation, to US military control. That could mean new military bases and staging areas which, state actions in Texas have shown, create environmental havoc. Myles Traphagen, borderlands director for the Wildlands Network, is concerned that large military facilities could be constructed in the region, further enhancing the human footprint of an already militarized border. 'It's an invasion,' said Traphagen. 'An invasion of our public lands.' Mark Nevitt, an Emory University School of Law professor, said the president appeared intent on an unprecedented use of 'national security language associated with executive power, [such as] 'invasion' and 'under attack', that appears to expand the military's role in immigration enforcement'. He also fears that Pentagon funds will be funneled into more wall building on land to be designated as 'national defense areas'. Noah Schramm, border policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, called the intended step-change in militarization 'uniquely alarming' and warned that troops could be used to apprehend migrants and civilians alike for allegedly illegally entering a restricted military area A section of unfinished border wall in 2021. Photograph: Zuma/Alamy In Arizona, 63% of the border has already been sealed off and the remaining open sections are critical for wildlife, with the San Rafael valley being one of the last intact expanses of Sonoran desert grasslands in the state. The area's rugged Huachuca and Patagonia mountains, part of the Sky Island range, serve as stepping stones across a harsh desert by offering a range of habitats, food sources and water for animals. 'The biodiversity here is incredible,' said Meza, of the Sierra Club. As well as bears, mountain lions and wolves there are subtropical species such as the wild pig-like javelina, and rare big cats – ocelots and jaguars, with natural ranges of hundreds of miles between countries in search of food, water and mates. 'This is at the heart of all these different ecosystems coming together,' Meza added. As Harrity of the Sky Island Alliance drove his battered red pickup through the wilderness he passed a lone pronghorn, the strange, antelope-like creature that is the fastest land mammal in the Americas. The San Rafael valley was entering year three of a severe drought, he said. 'When it rains, it can look like Scotland,' he said. In dry times like now, the valley looks more like the African savanna, with rolling hills of native grasses awash in soft yellows, oranges and rusts. 'A study in browns,' he added, bouncing along toward the only greenery visible – cottonwood trees lining the Santa Cruz River. Harrity said that as the climate crisis exacerbates drought in the south-west, wildlife in the border region will need to range farther and farther seeking food and water. In 2021 a Mexican grey wolf known as Mr Goodbar paced 23 miles along the border wall searching for a place to cross into Mexico. After days, he finally gave up and returned to the Gila wilderness area in New Mexico. 'The last thing we should be doing right now is walling off corridors and severing connectivity,' Harrity said. A javelina is seen on a trail cam attempting to squeeze through a portion of existing border wall in 2023. A javelina is seen on a trail cam attempting to squeeze through a portion of existing border wall in 2023. Video: Sky Island Alliance/Wildlands Network The Santa Cruz River is a vital animal migration corridor that meanders into Mexico and back to Arizona. 'The river will now be walled on both legs of its journey,' said Harrity. A nearby wildlife camera recently captured a video of a mountain lion carrying its prize, a dead coyote, into Mexico. The valley is almost devoid of people. And it lacks the telltale signs of migration in the borderlands: ripped clothes on bushes, discarded backpacks and empty water bottles. In five years, a camera by the river has never captured an image of a migrant crossing into the US, even though it's one of the few parts of the valley with shade and water. On a hill above the river an agent in a white and green border patrol SUV looked on. Then in New Mexico, to the east, near the small town of Columbus, Traphagen of Wildlands Network pointed from a hilltop brightened by red-flowered ocotillo plants to the longest contiguous section of border wall in the US. Eighty miles of three-story-high posts cutting through sand dunes and volcanic hills like a giant serpent, all the way to El Paso, Texas. As the spring wind picked up, the steel pillars began to reverberate and hum. 'When the wind really gets going, it sounds like Tuvan throat singers,' said Traphagen of the central Asian singers who can produce a low vocal rumble and a high whistle-like tone at the same time. Many of the Wildlands Network's trail cameras are pointed toward 'construction anomalies,' said Traphagen, where posts have been mistakenly placed five or six inches apart instead of the usual four. Those extra 2ins do not affect human crossing but can allow animals, such as javelina and coyotes, at least, to pass through. That subtle difference would also reduce the number of posts needed to build the hugely expensive border wall. 'That's probably $30m worth of steel there,' said Traphagen, pointing in passing to an abandoned construction staging area from the previous Trump administration containing thousands of steel pillars stacked like the kids' building toy Lincoln Logs. Other trail cameras are placed near open floodgates, resulting from a 2023 lawsuit requiring the border patrol to open intermittent gates in the barrier to allow larger animals to pass. 'This camera has captured over 1,000 videos, and we have never seen a person crossing through,' said Traphagen. It points along a sandy wash marked with the paw prints of rabbits, coyotes and badgers. Of the eight cameras checked during one long outing at the New Mexico border, only one had captured any evidence of migrants. But in a 2024 study by the Wildlands Network and Sky Islands Alliance, motion-activated cameras along 100 miles of walled border showed an 86% decrease in wildlife crossings and a 100% reduction for animals such as wolves, bears, pronghorns, and jaguars. 'The Trump administration would rather score cheap political points and a favorable Fox News headline than solve a problem. Instead of wasting taxpayers' dollars, undermining military readiness and jeopardizing American families' safety, Trump and [Elon] Musk should focus on actually fixing our broken immigration system,' said Martin Heinrich, US senator for New Mexico and a Democrat. 'New Mexicans who live on the border want actual solutions, like creating new legal pathways for immigration, investing in effective border security for law enforcement, and addressing the root causes of mass migration,' he added. Back in the San Rafael valley, Traphagen noted that, on top of everything, parts of the original 1955 movie of the musical Oklahoma! were filmed in this beautiful spot. 'It will be a tragedy to see a pristine grassland … turned into a military zone,' he said.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Reading reduces permit fee for trash receptacles and recycling containers
Reading property and business owners will pay less to store trash receptacles and recycling containers in the public right-of-way. City Council at its regular meeting Monday approved an amendment to the city code that will reduce the annual permit fee for trash receptacles and recycling containers stored within the right-of-way to $75 from $150. At council's committee of the whole meeting last week, Steve Harrity, clean city coordinator, said it was unfair to charge a $150 fee for a 96-gallon trash tote that is half, or less than half, the size of a dumpster. Permanent dumpster permits will remain at $150. Permits for temporary dumpsters also remain unchanged at $5 per day. Council also approved a code amendment Monday that adds compliance requirements and penalties for the screening of permitted dumpsters, carts, totes and receptacles visible from the public right-of-way and clarifies penalties for noncompliance. Harrity last week in a report to council said the city has had difficulty achieving compliance with the ordinance enacted in 2005 to address dumpster issues. All permanent dumpsters are required to be permitted, logged and monitored, he noted, and those in or visible from the right-of-way must be screened from view. Harrity said his staff identified 163 noncompliant sites last year and sent warning letters in English and Spanish with little success. He and his staff have begun making site visits and distributing educational material in English and Spanish to achieve greater compliance, he said. 'Currently, we're out in the field talking to folks, and that seems to be the best way to do it,' Harrity said. 'I've got a pretty good response within the past several months.' The site visits, he said, resulted in the permitting of 18 formerly noncompliant containers, the relocation of 15 and the screening of seven. 'We are starting to make good and steady progress,' he said. Harrity said the city offers screening reimbursement up to 50% of the construction costs with a maximum of $750. The Public Works Department set aside $100,000 specifically for reimbursement costs, he noted. He also said the city has a list of six local vendors who can construct the screens. Those who received notifications have until Oct. 1 to comply or they will face fines for violations, he said. Councilman O. Christopher Miller suggested color guidelines be adopted for the screens. Neutral colors would make the enclosures less noticeable, he said, while bright colors draw attention to them. 'The whole purpose of enclosing the dumpsters and the trash containers is to make them go away from the public view,' Miller said. 'So the enclosure should do the same thing. It should disappear.' Approval of the structure's design is required, but color is not specified in the ordinance, Harrity said. Council could amend the ordinance to require approval of colors, he noted.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Walling off the US-Mexico border would be 'catastrophic' to wildlife, researchers say
The wall at the United States' southern border disrupts ancient migration corridors, which researchers say threatens species like mountain lions, black bears, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, whitetail deer and mule deer, wild turkeys, desert tortoises and Mexican gray wolves. 'There are animals trying to cross as if their life depended on it,' Sierra Club researcher Erick Meza told attendees at the Society of Environmental Journalists' 34th Annual Conference in Tempe on April 25. 'Finding them dead at the feet of the wall is common.' Southern Arizona zoologists from Wildland Networks, Sky Islands Alliance and Sierra Club have been monitoring wildlife in the borderlands since 2020 to try to understand what happens when nearly 70% of the border is blocked off by a wall that's up to 30 feet tall. In 2022, cameras picked up a wolf that came out of the Gila River from the north that kept on pacing back and forth for three days along the border wall, but, unable to cross it, ended up going back where he came from and dying. But that wolf isn't the only animal severely impacted by the 760 miles of barrier separating the United States and Mexico, which almost blocks off an entire continent, those zoologists explained. 'All these species do not fit through the openings in the wall,' Harrity said. 'Jaguars won't get through either.' If the United States wants to reestablish a population of jaguars, there cannot be a wall, journalist John Washington said. The wall's design — steel bollards spaced 4 inches apart or solid panels—prevents most animals larger than a bobcat from passing. Small 8.5-by-11-inch openings have allowed some female mountain lions to squeeze through, a feat researchers call remarkable but insufficient. 'For many species, those openings are the only way through the wall,' Sky Islands Alliance zoologist Eamon Harrity said. 'But there's only 19 in the entire barrier.' At the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona, Wildlands Network zoologist Myles Traphagan observed many animals before the construction of the wall, but very few after. 'One skunk out of 1641 pictures,' he said, noting ancient watersheds were bulldozed. 'I mourn that damage, like if I had lost a loved one.' The Sierra Club in 2021 sued the Department of Homeland Security. The lawsuit secured open floodgates for two years at San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, more little wildlife openings, some funds for conservation science and habitat restoration, and engagement in environmental planning before further wall construction. However, challenges remain. The Department of Homeland Security controls wall modifications, and the Trump administration could restart construction. Researchers recently learned that the new administration wants to build across the 27.5-mile-long San Rafael Valley, considered the last network of wildlife connectivity at the southern border. The "Sky Islands," tall mountains in the Sonoran Desert where the San Rafael Valley lies, are one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. They are the northernmost range of the jaguar, and the place where many species' northernmost and southernmost extents of migration range happens, the zoologists said at the conference. 'If we block this, it's forever. We are going to lose so many species,' Harrity said. 'Driven north by warming climates, species will run into a barrier that will prevent them from reaching climate refugees.' The zoologists repeatedly described that outcome as 'catastrophic.' But until the San Rafael Valley and the 63 miles of the Tohono O'odham Nation remain unwalled, there remains some hope for wildlife. Natasha Cortinovis is a master's student at the University of Arizona, and is part of a student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic. Coverage of the Society of Environmental Journalists conference is supported by Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism, the University of Arizona and the Arizona Media Association. These stories are published open-source for other news outlets and organizations to share and republish, with credit and links to This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Researchers: Border wall expansion would be 'catastrophic' to wildlife
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Doc Ford's is much more than waterfront views, cool cocktails and Yucatan shrimp
Sure, Doc Ford's Rum Bar & Grille on Fort Myers Beach is known for its waterfront views, seafood favorites (we're looking at you Yucatan shrimp) and frozen drinks. And as much as local and visiting customers love it, the folks who work there enjoy giving back just as much. 'We love being part of the community,' said Joe Harrity, a partner with HM Restaurant Group, which owns four Doc Ford's locations, Dixie Fish Company and Bonita Fish Company (Previously known as Bonita Bill's). 'Whenever there's a volunteer event, our employees will sign up. They come in on their days off to do it. Use their own time. They just love it. That's just one of the awesome things about this staff.' Take last month's Tunaskin Beach Keepers Club's beach cleanup for example. Volunteers from Doc Ford's and Dixie Fish House spent three hours collecting trash on the beach, filling 12 garbage bags with everything from gloves, hats and shoes to footballs and Christmas decorations. Doc Ford's also donated bean dip and ceviche meals for the event's 350 participating volunteers. 'Since we're primarily waterfront properties, we want to play a role in beach cleanups and clean water programs,' Harrity said. 'We'd be remiss if we didn't get involved. It's our second year doing this and we'll continue to participate.' Captains for Clean Water is also big on Doc Ford's list. 'Folks from that organization come in fairly often,' Harrity said. 'So we support them. It's a revolving door.' You can help keep it going as well by simply ordering a cocktail. 'Our drink menu has a section with eight signature drinks tied to a charity,' he said. 'One dollar from every drink is donated. People love them.' Many of the fun and creative drinks (our favorites include the Sanibel Stoop and Babe on the Bay, both made with Wicked Dolphin mango rum) were created by Doc Ford's customers. Captains for Clean Water and Golisano Children's Hospital are the current recipients locally. Drinks from the St. Pete locations support Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital. In the news: Cape Coral, Fort Myers restaurants scramble to keep up with rising egg costs More than $133,000 has been raised for the children's hospitals since the program began in 2006. F.I.S.H. of SANCAP, Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, Track to Trail Thoroughbreds and Sanibel CARES are other causes Doc Ford's has recently supported. The annual 'Ding' Darling & Doc Ford's Tarpon Tournament — on May 9 this year — has raised $1.3 million for conservation and water-quality research at the island's J.N. 'Ding' Darling National Wildlife Refuge since 2012. 'We're just doing our part in the community,' Harrity said. 'That's what's so awesome about it. We're just supporting the people who support us. We all help each other.' Doc Ford's, 708 Fishermans Wharf, Fort Myers Beach, (239) 765-9660; 2500 Island Inn Road, Sanibel, (239) 472-8311; and on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Doc Ford's, Dixie Fish Co. more than waterfront views, fresh seafood
