March 18, 2026 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

Round Robin

– Mary Apessos: has been busy with wildlife monitoring season, sand skinks next week, some uplands proposals. Technicians are gearing up for lake treatments. There is a new Natural Areas manager and Water Resources manager starting Monday

– Mike Sowinski: uplands program proposals due in tiers May 1, ranking meeting May 8. Contact Mike or Candice for questions.

– Jenna Lester: new member to steering committee, works for Polk County. Lately has been working on ramping up the internship program at Circle B

– Steve: has been volunteering with the county and attending TAG tours

– Shannon: has been accepted as an affiliate faculty with the UF Invasion Science Institute. She is not in the faculty list yet- so far it just means more emails but may help us stay up to date on more invasive species research news. She and Polk County have gotten a grant through the Native Plant Society for a flame weeder. In areas where Rx fire is not practical, trying to replicate the effects of fire using flame weeder may be beneficial. They are still working out the experimental design for this project.

– Olivia Wetsch: Working on getting a proposal together for Uplands program, the state forest has hired a new spray tech. May have another position open in the future, TBD

– Brooke Moherek: 2 vacant positions not yet posted, lot of TAG tours. The county planted about 200,000 trees in December/January. Working on acquisition grants and has a new role with The Wildlife Society

– Andrew Black: working with new species, lot of uplands compliance visits, which has been difficult with the frost damage

– Andrew West: trying to get exotics contracts in place, not much burning done due to burn ban

– Elysia Dytrych: Ecosystem team has been hunting for lygodium, also working on Red Hill cutting down vegetation missed by fire or treating invasives. They had a workday with the Ridge Rangers for these invasives. Kevin has been spraying Cogon grass. The team has been using a battery-powered hedge trimmer for large lygodium waterfalls and loving it. Contact Elysia if you want the details for that trimmer.

Discussion about gopher tortoises being properly relocated before development

– Advice from Elysia: If you see development occurring but there’s no silt fencing or signs to show that tortoises were properly relocated, when you see earthworks you can call FWC Law Enforcement. Provide them with baseline data that you collected (photos and points) to show that they didn’t do their due diligence. They are fined based on the number of tortoises impacted so the more evidence/locations you collect, the better the case.

– Gopher tortoise locations only stay good for 6 months, it’s important to document at least every 6 months. Similar for scrub jays. Sand skinks for life – Link to report sick/injured/dead tortoises (from development, roadkill, etc.) Gopher Tortoise Sightings; http://app.myfwc.com/HSC/GopherTortoise/

Workshop Planning

– The Garden of Evil has had frost damage. If the plants aren’t recovered by the workshop, Mike (or his substitutes) will talk about differentiating between herbicide and frost damage

– Mike has giveaway items (posters, stickers, pencils) to put out at the workshop

– For the talk about frost impact on invasive reptiles: Brianna and David are still sorting out who will attend and give the talk. Andrew B/Mary will confirm.

– Mary showed the group the final workshop agenda. The drone talk is extra long because it will have a 30 minute presentation then a short walk to a field demonstration

– Mike Sowinski may be unable to attend. He has a backup speaker in case. Without Mike, issuing CEUs may be an issue. Olivia and Andrew B will try to get registered. For the Garden of Evil, Andrew and Jack Jordan can run the garden if Mike is unable to attend.

– An issue with the CEUs issued last year: at least one person’s CEUs are not showing up. They redid the entire system and other conferences have had this issue. Shannon is working on this. If anyone has an urgent need for their CEUs, have them email Shannon. She can send them evidence of their attendance last year.

– Sponsors: Helena has sponsored the entire event both days. The all-day sponsorships are marked as “Sold out” now on Eventbrite. The other sponsorships are still available but may be closed because we don’t really need any more money. 20 of the 25 out of county tickets have been sold, so we have gotten extra funding for those tickets. Shannon will add the Helena logo to the Eventbrite

– Sign-in table: Olivia will run sign-in on the 15th, Andrew Black will run it on the 16th. Olivia will be time keeper for the presentations

– Presenters and steering committee members doing tasks during the event don’t need to register. Everyone else does need to register, especially if they need CEUs.

– Current registration: Wednesday has 12 people registered (5 from member counties, 5 from other counties, 2 sponsorships). Thursday has 29 (8 member counties, 21 other counties). Currently, out of county registrations are capped at 50% but those spots are close to filling up. Shannon will plan to fully open registration after 2 weeks to give in-county members time to register. Mary will plan to email the CISMA before that cap is removed.

– Brooke will add the registration link to the website.

Survey for contractors:

– We’ve been kicking around this idea for a while. We could add contractor-specific questions to the workshop survey, but this would limit its reach only to workshop attendees. Another option would be to launch/advertise the survey at the workshop but share it beyond that as well. James Boggs may be a good resource from working in the industry. We may set up a meeting in April to create the survey.

FISC flipbook update:

– We are working on the manuscript for the flipbook. Once the manuscript is complete, we’ll send it to the UF bookstore for design. We pulled up the manuscript to show the formatting and what’s been done so far. Shannon can make the manuscript available for steering committee members particularly interested in seeing it. Email Shannon if you want the link. Shannon will probably send a link later on when the manuscript is complete to get help with fact checking.

– We may ask around the steering committee for photos of particular species traits that we aren’t able to find photos of. Please respond (yes or no) if you are asked about photos.

Exciting new books!

– The Florida Chapter of The Wildlife Society just published their Running with the Dogs book with stories from biologists around the state. https://a.co/d/02LSlWuk – The Florida Meadow Manual is another new book on Florida ecosystems: The Florida Meadow Manual