Rising Tide group rises from the Florida Keys

Florida can sometimes be a lonely place for eco-radicals like us here at the Earth First! Journal. So we were overjoyed this week when we received a note from a new direct action group in one of the most ecologically precarious regions of the US—the Florida Keys.

The Keys, known mostly as tourist destination, have also long been a battleground against the forces of greed and industry (since the days of industrialist Henry Flagler’s railroad).

While Key West has long boasted of the Conch Republic (motto: “We seceded Where Others Failed”), which has celebrated a mock  independence movement every April since ’82, we hope to see Rising Tide bring a new, slightly more ambitious revolutionary sentiment in the region. 

Mutant Mosquitoes in the Keys?

 

British biotechnology company Oxitec has plans to release genetically engineered mosquitoes in Key West, Florida.

These mutant insects are bred in the lab to transmit a gene during the reproductive process that kills their offspring. Controversial experimental releases of 3 million GM mosquitoes produced by Oxitec have already taken place in three countries – the Cayman Islands (a British Overseas Territory which has no biosafety law) in 2009 and 2010,  Malaysia in December 2010,  and in Brazil in 2011. According to Oxitec, future experimental releases are planned in other countries, including Panama, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States (Florida Keys), and are also being discussed in the Philippines, Costa Rica and Trinidad & Tobago. However, Vietnam has stated that it does not intend to release GM mosquitoes and plans in the US have been delayed pending a regulatory assessment.