Move over, pythons: 40 more species could be invading Florida
Bush Brothers Provision Co. has no beef with West Palm Beach, but after nearly 100 years of doing business in the city, the meat supplier is out of room at its longtime North Dixie Highway headquarters.
Later this year, the 99-year-old company will move its operations to a new, larger facility in the Royal Palm Beach Logistics Building at 1131 N. State Road 7.
The expansion is a long time coming, said Doug Bush, company vice president. Bush Brothers has needed more space for about the past 20 years, but the company’s explosive growth since the coronavirus pandemic made the decision to move and expand necessary.
“The rush of people moving down here has been great for us,” Bush said.
When its build-out in Royal Palm Beach is completed in the fall, Bush Brothers expects to hire up to another 25 employees, adding to its existing roster of 65 workers. The space will
Florida has at least 40 more invasive species to worry about, according to a recent study published in Ecosphere.
The state is already known for an infestation of Burmese pythons along with many other interlopers such as spectacled caimans, monk parakeets and the occasional anaconda.
Now, the study says, Florida has to be vigilant about these likely invaders: the alewife, zebra mussel, crab-eating macaque and red swamp crayfish. An alewife is a sleek, silvery species of herring that grows to about 15 inches.
A team of experts, led by University of Florida scientists, evaluated species with features that make them adept at invasion. The team members gave each of 460 species a score based on their likelihoods of arriving and becoming established and their potential impacts on the ecology, the economy and human