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“So basically given a free pass by the United States government to our great shame, and they have lived here for the past year and a half.”

“They were invited to the White House, they were at the Milken conference with Paolo Zampolli, Trump’s special envoy for special projects, and they were swatting all over the world,” Burleigh said.

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While Watt is a regular attendee of commission meetings, others who had their records pulled are not.

“Assessing credible threats to the people who attend our meetings and work in our facilities is a legitimate and lawful function of law enforcement, and we take every threat seriously,” the agency said in a statement separate from Knowles’ comments to the Times.

In a statement, the agency defended its use of the state database to pull information on outspoken activists, saying the inquiries were “conducted for public safety purposes” for recurring commission meetings.

. A year later, a separate staffer sought his addresses. One day, in January 2025, staff accessed 16 records. The records show who searched Watt’s records, when and why, with a field for the agency to track the purpose of every inquiry. All of the searches list “criminal investigation” as a reason.

founder of Speak Up Wekiva, and Ryan Worthington, host of the The Florida Excursionist conservation podcast. The records detail a sustained pattern of inquiries into Watt. In February 2024, for example, a wildlife staff crime analyst sought information about his vehicles

State staffers appear to have pulled Watt’s data more than any other environmental activist in the records: 34 times between June 2023 and February 2025. That’s according to a running tally from the group of activists who were searched, with inquiries into other critics including Chuck O’Neal, a

“I am a real thorn in their ass, sure. But I have never, ever threatened anybody.” The searches have raised questions about free speech, a potential abuse of law enforcement tools and where the line exists between investigating credible threats and surveilling outspoken environmental critics.

He has yet to receive a response. Watt spends his retirement poring over state records about chemical spraying. He then brings his findings into the public square. It’s basically his full-time job: “I’m tenacious — and I know it," he said in an interview.

The Times has submitted records requests to determine whether past investigations occurred.

Watt isn’t under criminal investigation, Shannon Knowles, a spokesperson for the wildlife agency, confirmed to the Times. Neither are other activists who had their information accessed, she has told other media outlets.

Law enforcement uses the database to retrieve driver information, but the system also includes signatures, Social Security numbers and medical data. The information is sensitive, so public access is regulated by the federal Driver Privacy Protection Act.

That’s according to public records gathered by a coalition of affected activists and shared with the Tampa Bay Times, which has independently verified Watt’s records with the Florida Department of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles.

He is one of more than 20 people, mostly environmental activists and the agency’s loudest critics, whose information has been pulled from the Driver and Vehicle Information Database in recent years under the label of a criminal investigation.

It wouldn’t be the last time, either. Since that October 2023 commission meeting, records show, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has pulled Watt’s data 30 more times. The 72-year old isn’t alone.

It wasn’t the first time the wildlife agency accessed Watt’s personal data: Staff had pulled his vehicle information three months earlier.

What Watt didn’t know at the time was, just 14 days earlier, an agency staffer had pulled his personal records from a state database used by police when investigating suspects. The reason given for the search? “Criminal investigation.”

“In spite of all my pleading over the years, nothing changes,” Watt told the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at its Oct. 5, 2023, meeting in Jensen Beach.