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This caecilian was found in the Tamiami Canal.Scientists are working to determine whether theSouth American native is a lone escaped pet orFlorida’s latest exotic threat.

The discovery was a shocking experience – inmore ways than one.

When state biologists making a routine sur-vey zapped the Tamiami Canal in Miami-Dade County,up floated a caecilian. (Scientists use electricity tolearn what waterbodies hold: A quick jolt stuns sub-merged wildlife so they can be counted at the surfacebefore they revive.)

A rare South American amphibian never before

The caecilian that turned up in the canal in 2019 was about 2 feet long, though in their native South America,caecilians have been known to grow to 5 feet. PHOTOS SPECIAL TO THE NEWS-PRESS

ANOTHER EXOTICMysterious amphibianssurface in Tamiami CanalAmy Bennett Williams Fort Myers News-Press

USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA

See EXOTIC, Page 10A

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The NCH Healthcare System in Collier County isrequiring all employees to be vaccinated againstCOVID-19 by Sept. 16, becoming the first hospitalsystem in Southwest Florida to mandate the vac-cine.

The policy announcement Friday by the non-profit hospital is a change from plans unveiled July21 requiring only new employees, contractors and

volunteers to be vacci-nated starting mid-August.

The across-the-board vaccine require-ment for the system’sroughly 4,500 employ-ees was made after thepolicy was endorsedby the medical staffexecutive committeein an effort to keep em-ployees healthy, NCHsaid in a news release.

Roughly 57% ofNCH’s workforce is vaccinated already althoughthe number may be higher because some employ-ees may not have reported getting the shots else-where, according to Renee Thigpen, chief human

Hospitalsystem to requirevaccineNCH Healthcare System,Collier’s largest, to requirevaccine for employees

Liz Freeman Naples Daily News

USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA

The across-the-boardvaccine requirement forthe system’s roughly4,500 employees wasmade after the policywas endorsed by themedical staff executivecommittee in an effortto keep employeeshealthy, NCH said in anews release.

See VACCINE, Page 9A

When Mia LaFont, 13, spoke at her late father’s fu-neral service, she not only mourned Manuel “Manny”LaFont – one of the Champlain Towers South buildingcollapse victims – but also her childhood home.

Unit No. 801 represents so much to Mia, her youngerbrother, Santi, 10, and dozens of other friends and fam-ily members who spent time in the condominium.

It’s where Manny, 54, would drink wine on the bal-cony with his brother, Rey Perez.

It’s where he and his ex-wife, Adriana LaFont,shared a home with their children.

When they separated, it’s where Manny continued

to co-parent, playing host to the parents’ drop-offs andpick-ups. Adriana had just picked up the kids fromChamplain Towers hours before the tower’s collapseon June 24.

“If you ask me what I feel when you name Cham-plain, what I can tell you is I have all these beautifulmemories,” Adriana told USA TODAY Florida.

“It was always a great feeling going there. It was thefirst place I was living when I came to the United Statesfrom Colombia. My kids were born and raised there.The stories I have of happiness, I would not have thetime enough to tell them all.”

The unit hosted countless birthday parties and cel-

In No. 801, the LaFonts rejoiced. Then the tower fellManny LaFont’s condo at Champlain Towers South was site of smiles,celebrations, heart-to-heart talks and songfests – and finally sorrow

SURFSIDE VICTIMS

Emily Bloch Florida Times-Union

USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA

The LaFont family and friends spending time in theChamplain Towers South condo Unit 801.PROVIDED BY ADRIANA LAFONTSee LAFONTS, Page 9A

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seen outside captivity in the U.S. letalone Florida, caecilians (pronouncedSicilians) normally inhabit the Orinocobasin, a huge watershed that includesmuch of Venezuela and eastern Colom-bia.

The one that turned up in the canalin 2019 was about two feet long, thoughsome grow to about fi�ve feet, andstumped the researchers who found it.They kept it in a tank, where it survivedfor a while, but it didn’t eat and eventu-ally died.

Meanwhile, an email query reachedUniversity of Florida scientist ColemanSheehy III, who manages the Museumof Natural History's herpetology col-lection. He quickly IDed it as a memberof the Caecilian genus, a branch of thegroup that also contains frogs, toadsand salamanders, but its species re-mained a mystery.

“It was right before the pandemic,”Sheehy recalls. “Everything stalled, soit sat in a freezer for a long time beforeit could be transported up here toGainesville.” Once it arrived, Sheehytook a tissue sample to sequence thecritter’s DNA.

Turns out it was Typhlonectes na-tans, known as the Rio Cauca caecilian.Occasionally sold as pets (Sheehy sus-pects that’s where the Tamiami Canalspecimen originated), captive-bredCaecilians generally sell for between$300 to $1,000. In the wild, however,the shallow water-dwelling creaturesare almost never seen.

In the wild, they’re known to prey onsmall fi�sh or invertebrates and scav-enge dead things. “I don’t see them asbeing overly picky," Sheehy said. "Inthe pet trade people seem to be able tofeed them all kinds of things.”

They’re decidedly odd creatures. Of-ten mistakenly called "rubber eels,"even the normally reserved Universityof Florida publicity apparatus de-scribed them as “weird, noodle-shapedamphibians.” Though they possesslungs, they also breathe through theirslick, elephant-colored skin and givebirth to live babies instead of layingeggs. In some Caecilian varieties,mothers feed their young with theslimy secretions coating their bodies,says Sheehy. The babies “are scrapingoff� the mucus and eating that,” he said.

As wild things go, they're visuallyimpaired (Caecilians means “blindones”) but a pair of sensory tentaclesbetween their eyes and nostrils may

help them fi�nd food. Caecilian scientists are an even rar-

er breed, Sheehy says. “The number ofresearchers even working on them isexceedingly small.”

That’s because Caecilians are “abso-lutely the least known of the major am-phibian groups,” he said. “They’re typi-cally really diffi�cult to access becausethey’re really diffi�cult to fi�nd … It’s kindof like a joke among biologists: Ceaci-lians aren’t something you can go outlooking for – you fi�nd them when youfi�nd them.”

Renowned Florida herpetologistChris Lechowicz, who’s been trompingaround wild Southwest Florida fornearly two decades as the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation’swildlife and habitat management pro-gram director, hasn’t come across onein the wild.

Even Sheehy, who’s searched forthem in many parts of the world, hasnever found one. “You just don’t,” hesaid. “Most of them live their wholelives hidden (so) you can’t base a careerstudying things that you can’t fi�nd.”

All of which makes it hard to knowwhether they’ll be fruitful and multiplyin south Florida and if so, if they’ll be-come a problem the way Burmese py-thons have become in the Everglades,where their voracity has put a seriousdent in wildlife populations.

“Almost nothing is known aboutCaecilians in their natural habitat,”Sheehy said, let alone whether southFlorida would be hospitable. But he hasgotten credible reports of others, whichis why he’s mounting an investigation.

“I’m going down to South Florida in

the next couple of weeks to investigateand confi�rm and see if I can fi�nd moreand if I do, where are they, and howwidespread are they?”

The specimen came from about amile south of the Miami airport, butSheehy says they’ve been spotted inother parts of the canal “far from wherethis initial specimen came from.” Fromits Miami beginnings, the TamiamiTrail stretches to Tampa through Col-lier and Lee counties. Along most of itssouthern length is the freshwater canalcreated a century ago as humansdredged out soil and limestone for theelevated roadbed.

“At this point, we really don’t knowenough to say whether caecilians areestablished in the C-4 Canal,” Sheehysaid. “That’s what we want to fi�nd out:what the impacts might be of an inva-sive species in our native waters. Weneed to know that and know howthey’re impacting the environment.”

If they are here, he points out, thenews might not be all bad.

“It could be anything between a neg-ative impact, to neutral, where they’rereally not doing much either harmful orbenefi�cial, or it could be benefi�cial.They could not really be doing a wholelot to harm anything, but maybethey’re a great food source for some-thing else ...

“Positive impacts sometimes hap-pens with introduced species,” like Eu-ropean honeybees and earthworms,which have become critically impor-tant to food production."

Bottom line: “We need to know whatit is so we can get ahead of it and miti-gate any issues."

Exotic

This legless amphibian (think frogs and salamanders) called a caecilian wasfound in the Tamiami Canal. Whether the South American native is a loneescaped pet or the state’s latest exotic threat remains to be seen, butscientists are on the case. PHOTOS: SPECIAL TO THE NEWS-PRESS

BERLIN – China and India have misseda United Nations deadline to submit freshplans for cutting their greenhouse gasemissions in time for the global body to in-clude their pledges in a report for govern-ments at this year’s global climate sum-mit, offi�cials said Saturday.

The world’s two most populous coun-tries are among dozens that failed to pro-vide an update on their targets for curbingthe release of planet-warming gases to theU.N. climate change agency by July 31.

China is the country with the world’shighest emissions, while India is third.The United States, which submitted itsnew target in April, is the second-biggestglobal emitter.

U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosawelcomed that 110 signatories of the Unit-ed Nations Framework Convention on Cli-mate Change had met the cut-off� date,which was extended from the end of 2020due to the pandemic. But she said it was“far from satisfactory” that only 58% hadsubmitted their new targets in time.

Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria and82 other nations also failed to update theirnationally determined contributions(NDCs) in time to include them in a reportEspinosa’s offi�ce is preparing for the U.N.climate change conference in November.

“Recent extreme heat waves, droughtsand fl�oods across the globe are a direwarning that much more needs to bedone, and much more quickly, to changeour current pathway,” said Espinosa.“This can only be achieved through moreambitious NDCs.”

Under the 2015 Paris climate accord,countries set their own emissions reduc-tion goals but are required to be transpar-ent about them and jointly raise their tar-gets over time to ensure that global warm-ing remains at agreed acceptable levels.

China did announce last year that itaims for its emissions of carbon dioxide –the main greenhouse gas – to peak before2030, and to achieve carbon neutralitybefore 2060. The target has yet to be for-mally included in its submission to theU.N., however, meaning it can’t yet becounted toward the global eff�ort.

China, Indiamiss UNemissionsdeadline Frank Jordans ASSOCIATED PRESS