May 20, 2026 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

Heartland CISMA Steering Committee Meeting
May 20, 2026

Round Robin

• Mary: Been busy with wildlife monitoring and preparing/submitting uplands proposals for FWC uplands program. Polk County submitted one large and one small project. The county has three technician positions open; interviews are happening now.
• Olivia: Submitted a proposal for the FWC uplands invasives program. Last year’s proposal was originally not funded, but is now getting funded and will be happening soon. There is currently openings for a forester and a spray tech. The applications just closed; interviews should be happening soon. The state forest has a land management review June 2.
• Shannon: The workshop survey went out on Monday. There is a public report link to see the report as it comes in.[OW1.1] The password is HeartlandCISMA. If you talk to people who attended, please encourage them to take the survey. Extension has added invasive species as a priority in the Natural Resources initiatives. This will hopefully mean a more concerted effort from IFAS to support invasive species work throughout the state. Along with Libby Abney at Seven Wetlands, Shannon is chair for the City Nature Challenge next year. The Heartland CISMA iNaturalist project has reached 25,655 observations. Heartland CISMA: Introduced Species Observations – iNaturalist. As of today, Polk County has reached 36 snake collections for the snake lungworm disease project. If you have snakes: Shannon has room for a few more if they are small. If they are big snakes, you will need to hang on to them until the freezer gets emptied.
• Andrew Black: Salvinia molesta has been found on Crooked Lake. FWC is treating it. Andrew went to Dundee and spoke to their mayor who is interested in having his staff attend next year’s CISMA. The mayor has staff interested in starting a natural resources division and getting herbicide licenses.
• Jenna: Circle B center is busy getting ready for summer camp. They have been getting some invasive spray days in.
• Brooke: The county closed on 2 properties near Lake Wales Ridge State Forest and got approval to close on a property near Lake Rosalie. They are working on 2 other purchases. She attended the Florida Wildlife Society conference. Planning a fall drone workshop, if anyone has ideas for drone work, reach out to Brooke. BrookeMoherek@polkfl.gov
• Jackson: Found a new invasive mosquito species in Polk County: Aedes scapularis. They have been found mostly in the southern part of the county and are not known to be a primary vector of any infectious diseases. At this time, only pet owners of dogs might be concerned as it has been found to transmit the parasite that causes dog heartworm. They like flooded woodlands. There was recently a fish kill in Lake Hollandsworth. Despite FWC education efforts, many readers thought the cause was Mosquito Control. Jackson did an interview with Lakeland Now to help dispel this myth. They do not spray lakes, and lakes don’t tend to be good environments for mosquitos anyways. What Killed the Fish at Lake Hollingsworth? Here’s What Four Experts Told LkldNow. – LkldNow. He recently visited Peace River city park and saw a lot of invasives there (climbing fern, air potato, cogon grass, lantana). The park is managed by the city and they may need assistance in treating these. This might be something the CISMA could follow up with and help. Lastly, Polk County is hiring a new entomologist; interviews will start the first week of June.
• Marisa: They have their first intern starting this week doing education. Projects are starting up in collaboration with UF. They are doing a county-wide noseeum survey. She had a tegu parasite study get accepted by a journal- it’s not online yet but will be soon.
• Mike Sowinski: Has been doing compliance inspections in Key Largo and has been finalizing 2025-2026 projects. If those projects haven’t already started yet, they need to start by the end of June and certify forward the funding. An aquatics project fell through, allowing some of the uplands projects (such as the state forest project) that were not initially funded to get funding. No budget yet for 26-27 projects but they are expecting to get the same amount as previous years. He is hoping to send out who is initially included today or tomorrow. He is starting to schedule pre-quotes. Linda King is unofficially retired but may be back on a part-time basis.
• Elysia Dytrych: Her team has been taking advantage of the dry weather to treat Lygodium. They are treating on the state forest this week. Archbold recently found out an indigo snake swab was positive for snake fungal disease (Ophidiomyces ophidiicola). The snake was not showing symptoms but the disease can be lethal to snakes. Archbold now has a standing mandate to swab large upland snakes. Any questions reach out to Betsie Rothermel (brothermel@archbold-station.org), Rebecca Hardman (Rebecca.Hardman@MyFWC.com), or FWRI.
• Grant Steelman: Finishing up contracts and have an uplands invasives pre-quote meeting in mid-June. They are targeting some prescribed burns following up contracts to burn up biomass. They completed treatments on 4 tribal properties from Yeehaw to Big Cypress this year, a little over 5,000 acres total. They’ve been working on a grant that would have a tracked feller buncher to remove melaleuca biomass. This would help reduce fire hazards. They’ve been looking at a spray drone and have upgraded the mapping drone to RTK precisions. They have been doing some drone analysis of fire treatments. What they burned in July 2025 had some of the worst plant health indices, while the February burn had better health indices. The flight includes 4 drone rotations. This is project he is looking to present. If you know of opportunities, please reach out to him (grantsteelman@semtribe.com). They are in the process of final budget for the tribe and will be hiring an invasive species coordinator next year. They are still looking for a restoration biologist very good with plant ID and will also be hiring a botanist. If you know anyone interested, direct them Grant’s way. They have also been working with NRCS on other contracts. Lastly, they started an orchid survey with weather stations by orchid populations and cameras to catch bloom cycles.
• Andrew West: Has contractors going and has gotten 2 little projects done. They have a cogon retreatment coming up. Some of the extra FWC Uplands Invasives Program money is going to a project they originally had to cut in half. It will now be completed in full. Burning has been slow because of the drought. They had one burn about a month ago with help from Elysia’s team. They have 60 acres along the river they want to burn, just waiting for rain. They submitted an uplands invasives program project. They have one spot with Scleria lacustris. It is only about 8 inches tall but is already starting to seed out. It is just in one pond right now so they are going to treat it in-house. It’s also present on the neighboring properties, but their location is the only one along the river that he knows about. They are hoping they can keep it under control.

Workshop recap

• Overall the workshop went pretty well. We sold out both days. Food went well and had a nice variety. We had good sponsorships, so we were able to upgrade the food a little bit. There was some extra money from the sponsorships; we are planning to use it on printing more flipbooks.
• Shannon’s snake lungworm disease talk was framed as an update but we underestimated the number of new people in attendance. For those people, it was less of an update and more of a first-time talk. In the future if we have update presentations, we should essentially give the talk again and add on the update to account for people who didn’t see or forgot the original talk.
• People were very interested in the drone demonstration.
• There was a little bit of a theme about keeping an eye out for new species (EDRR, lethal bronzing, Heteropogon)
• A few people mentioned in the survey results that they want networking opportunities. Perhaps this is something we could include more next year, like a set networking break. We could have designated topics to network on, like a cogon grass group discussion.
• It is difficult to get speakers’ commitment and presentations ahead of time enough to get the CEUs set up and advertised on the Eventbrite early enough. We need to be firm in those deadlines so the CEUs can be advertised in time.
• Ideas for next year:
  o Andrew Black has an FWC contact who could bring a python next time and demo how to capture a python.
  o A group from Florida Southern presented a poster project on air potato. We could ask them to present, or we could do a poster session as one of the breakouts. Could potentially pair this with the networking session.
  o Maybe a coral ardisia agent or other biocontrol. Aside: there is talk about coral ardisia being a threat to cattle. Shannon will talk to Bridget to see if she knows the sources for this.
  o Along the biocontrol vein, we could have a talk about the planthopper biocontrol for water hyacinth. EENY-686/IN1182: Water Hyacinth Planthopper (suggested common name) Megamelus scutellaris Berg (Insecta: Hemiptera: Delphacidae). Andrew Black’s FWC office is breeding the hoppers and needs to release some periodically. If you have areas where you’d like to release them, contact Andrew (andrew.black@myfwc.com).
  o Could have a talk with panel about the impacts of unexpected weather events: freeze, drought, wildfire, lack of prescribed burning, etc.
  o EDRR updates, maybe from the south. This would be an update on emerging invasives they’re seeing in that area that might make their way to us
  o A talk on the results of imazapic treatment for natal/invasive grasses, especially in the context of restoration.

What’s next?

• Last year we did some fall field trips. This year, Chris Matson has offered the FFA center to do an invasive ID or grasses ID day. He is looking into the logistics on if we could do this.
• As we’ve added more structure to the CISMA leadership, one of the tasks the co-chair was tasked with is a fall membership meeting. We have done fall workshops in the past but they were smaller than the spring workshop. Grass workshop, forest pest, tree ID. The format of this might be more formal and designed more as a way to engage CISMA members and get more members in the steering committee. We could also do a presentation at the meeting. We could also use the membership meeting as a way to get input for what impacts on invasives people are noticing from the weather (drought, freeze, lack of Rx fire or a wildfire, etc.). If you have contacts that would be good on a weather panel, let Mary (maryapessos@polkfl.gov) and/or Olivia (Olivia.Wetsch@fdacs.gov) know.
• During the past few meetings we have discussed making a survey for herbicide application contractors, with the goal of finding out how the CISMA might help contractors/crews who are hired to treat natural areas. Rather than a survey, we could hold an in-person focus group. Tentatively looking at August/September. If you have contacts who would be good subjects for this, send them to Mary.
• The EDRR list needs to be updated. New species will need to be added, and some species may need to be removed. Last time, we broke up the list among the steering committee, about 15-20 species per person. Each person did a literature review of their assigned species and then reported to Mike on their findings. This is something we could do during the summer months. Mike will assign the list – he just needs to know who/how many people are interested. The more people participate, the fewer species per person. If we do it this summer, we could present the updates at the next workshop. If you want to participate, let Mary know.[