Ron Cunningham

A more rational public policy would demand that people who build on a shoreline assume more responsibility for the risks.

When a Florida beach town is wiped out, the political and economic pressure to redevelop is relentless.

I wrote this piece for the Gainesville Sun. When UF President Stephen C. O’Connell wanted to build a cross-campus highway that would loop Lake Alice, he said the lake “had very little ecology left” worth saving. Hundreds of faculty, staff and other…

What’s running hot and what’s running cold in Florida? Hot: Florida’s climate catastrophes. Not: The DeSantis Presidential campaign. Florida’s seas aren’t quite boiling – yet – but they are approaching hot tub temperatures. That’s bad news for coral…

Editor’s note: Since the Sun, um, phased out opinion content, we (by which I mean me) here at Free GNV have decided to fill in…if not the opinion void, at least some of the cracks. So from time to time I will be posting other views about important…

During my 30 years as editorial page editor of the Gainesville Sun I had a habit of calling myself a fighter of lost causes. And there’s no question I lost more than I won. But while breezing through Google the other day I came across an item that…

Back when I was director of Bike Florida, my all-time favorite tour was along the Forgotten Coast….from Port St. Joe to Tallahassee. On our first day in Port St. Joe we always did an out-and-back to nearby Mexico Beach. Because it was a classic…

It’s only about a half hour’s drive from the cabin we are staying in on Otty Lake, Ontario, to Smith Falls. We dropped by for lunch at a delightful cafe called The Vault (apparently it’s a former bank), and spent some time walking through a smal

Here’s my latest column as recently published in The Sun. The last time I was in Phoenix I noticed that the artificial lawn business was booming. Apparently someone figured out that pouring water into desert ground just to have green lawns was the…

Here’s Hogtown Creek doing its job: Moving a lot of water out of town really, really fast after a wet GNV week. If the creek hadn’t been here before we were, we would have had to invent it. And that sort of thing never turns out well. They call ‘em…

Here’s my story about Jack Davis and his new book: “The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird,” recently published in The Sun. If Jack E. Davis had his way, there would be a monument to the American Bald Eagle on U.S. 441, right in…

Albertus Vogt, aka “The Duke of Dunnellon,” was quite the flamboyant Floridian for the 1880s. He made his money in phosphate mining and he liked to flaunt it. A favorite amusement was dropping gold coins into Silver Springs. He liked the way the…

These days it doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to figure out that the human experiment has gone very, very, very wrong. These three seemingly unrelated headlines from the Sunday New York Times seem to all but scream out “We’re…

Special to The Sun Go ahead, make me care about seashells. I don’t take long walks on the beach with my eyes glued to the sand. Shell shops bore me. And lips that touch oysters will never touch mine. So when I set out to review Cynthia Barnett’s…

Special to The Sun Where to begin when you set out to write the epic story of a marine species that has survived a half-billion-year test of time, was held sacred by ancient people who dwelled in the high Andes, helped finance the African slave trade…

Where to begin when you set out to write the epic story of a marine species that has survived a half billion year test of time, was held sacred by ancient people who dwelled in the high Andes, helped finance the African slave trade and is an…

Here’s my review of Cynthia Barnett’s new book, “The Sound Of The Sea: Seashells And The Fate Of The Ocean,” as published in The Sun on Sunday. Go ahead, make me care about seashells. I don’t take long walks on the beach with my eyes glued to the…

Over the years I’ve cycled through St. Augustine’s Davis Shores neighborhood countless times. It is a convenient way to get from Old Town to Anastasia State Park (my favorite place to camp in all of Florida) without having to navigate traffic-choked…

On Christmas break in 1974 Dave Smith and I took a road trip to Washington, D.C., and on into Pennsylvania. Dave was editor of the Independent Florida Alligator and I was his managing editor. And these were momentous times indeed for two young…

By Ron Cunningham / Special to the Star-Banner “My words was straight, but my intentions was as crooked as the Ocklawaha River.” — from “The Yearling,” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. What moves more slowly than the water in the Rodman Reservoir? The…