Charles LeBuff launched his writing career in 1951 with the publication of a note in a herpetological journal. Later, in the 50s he published papers on Florida snakes and crocodilians. He started a federal career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at its Red Tide Field Investigation Laboratory in Naples, Florida, in 1956. In 1958 Charles transferred to Sanibel Island after accepting the number two position on what then was known as the Sanibel National Wildlife Refuge. He and his family would remain on Sanibel Island for 47 years. During his time on that barrier island he completed a 32-year career as a wildlife technician with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, retiring in 1990. During Charles' federal tenure he and his wife and two children lived at the Sanibel Lighthouse for nearly 22 years. During that time it was headquarters for the refuge (renamed J. N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge in 1967).
In 1961, Charles was elected president of the Sanibel-Captiva Audubon Society and in 1967 he was a founding board member of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. He is the last surviving member of that founder group. In 1968, as an avocation, he formed a loggerhead sea turtle conservation organization known as Caretta Research, Inc., and headed that group until 1992. Charles received the first sea turtle permit issued by the State of Florida in 1972, STP-001, and he held it for 40 years. In the decades of the 70s and 80s he published many works on the biology and conservation of sea turtles. By the mid-70s the Sanibel-based organization included most all of the sea turtle nesting beaches along the Florida Gulf coast. Today's successful sea turtle conservation efforts on the beaches of Southwest Florida evolved from Charles LeBuff's pioneering work.
He was elected as a charter member of the first Sanibel City Council and served as a councilman from 1974 to 1980. Charles began writing seriously after his 1990 retirement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That same year his book, The Loggerhead Turtle in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, was published. This is now out-of-print, but has been replaced by an updated eBook and paper edition, The Sea Turtles of Southwest Florida. The most successful of his early commercial books is his historical autobiography, Sanybel Light (a revised edition is available as both an eBook and a paper edition). Amphibians and Reptiles of Sanibel and Captiva Islands, Florida, a book he coauthored...
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