Mark Vengroff, 61, has emerged as one of the most active affordable housing developers and landlords on Florida’s Suncoast.

When it comes to tackling invasive species in South Florida, it's not just about spotting and removing. A group of University of Florida researchers is using telemetry trackers to find and understand the habits of the elusive and invasive Burmese python.

The county's Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) has survived budget cuts, changing politics and the scorn of developers. But now environmental advocates worry its storied tenure might finally be coming to an end under plans to reorganize a department already handicapped by staff shortages and strip it of environmental permitting authority.

The revised plan reduces the size and intensity of the project that circulated last fall and restructures the redevelopment into a single phase instead of two.