Two business owners on St. Pete Beach are facing charges after wildlife officers say they tried to make an entire flock of protected shorebirds pack up and leave — not with noise, not with nets, but with roughly 1,500 mothballs scattered across the sand.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the mothballs showed up near a beachfront hotel property and the bar next door back in April, right around the time shorebirds were settling in for nesting season. According to Tampa Bay 28, the timing and placement made it pretty clear this wasn’t an accident.
Two men have since been arrested: 47-year-old Robert Monroe, who owns the beachfront plaza property, and his 52-year-old neighbor, who owns Chris’s Beachside Bar next door. Both are facing charges of commercial littering and attempted take of a state-listed species by harassment…