{"id":36472,"date":"2015-07-29T21:13:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T01:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=36472"},"modified":"2015-07-29T21:13:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T01:13:59","slug":"saw-palmetto-berry-pickers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2015\/07\/saw-palmetto-berry-pickers\/","title":{"rendered":"Saw Palmetto
Berry Pickers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Cindy S. Reilley<\/p>\n

\"\"At this time in Florida, the law allows Saw Palmetto berries\/seeds to be picked on vacant lots owned or not.<\/p>\n

You cannot have an officer remove them unless you have the owners name and number AND permission to have people removed from their property. However the pickers don\u2019t have to have\u00a0permission to be on the land.<\/p>\n

Pickers do not have set territory for each group out there. There are many groups and each day you have a different group picking in the already picked over lots. They are not required to speak English, wear a badge showing who they are, be registered\/licensed by the state, have a background check or be held responsible for damages due to film and photos not allowed in court and an officer MUST see them. By the time the law arrives the picker is long gone.<\/p>\n

There are concerns of sex offenders, released convicts and illnesses like TB throughout the communities in Lehigh Acres, Fla.<\/p>\n

The wildlife habitat is damaged, hurting the Black bear by causing an insufficient amount of food as the black bear eats these. Not having them to eat will cause the Black bear to go to human homes in search of food. The Scrub Jays live only in Florida and make their nest in these saw palmettos they hide their food around them. Pickers disrupt the nesting and finding of stored foods. The gopher turtles are sometimes taken, killed and or homes destroyed by the walking on the openings.<\/p>\n

I propose to have this stopped all together but at the very least have regulations imposed. I am willing to help make an outline of what the regulations and restrictions should be. We certainly at the very least need to make it where the pickers must be the one responsible in getting permission from the land owners to be on the property and not the residents needing permission to protect the land surrounding them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Cindy S. Reilley At this time in Florida, the law allows Saw Palmetto berries\/seeds to be picked on vacant lots owned or not. You cannot have an officer… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}