In Person: Social with coffee and snacks at 6:30 PM | Announcements at 7:00 PM
Program at 7:15 PM
Zoom Registration Link: https://bit.ly/45woHJZ
Jean Huffman, Helen Roth, Susan Carr, Annie Schmidt
Four women are working together to restore and protect 700 acres of privately owned sandhills and steephead ravines in Gadsden county Florida. Jean Huffman, Helen Roth, Susan Carr, and Annie Schmidt will talk about their efforts.
Full view of the banner photo: Two Longleaf Pine trees on Annie Schmidt’s property. Pine on the left is 80+ years old, the one on the right is over 200 years old!
Jean Huffman, PhD
Jean Huffman is a fire ecologist, dendrochronologist and land manager. She is the director of the Tall Timbers Tree-ring Lab at Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy. Her current work focuses on fire history research and promoting the preservation and best management of Florida Natural Areas. Her Ph.D., from Louisiana State University, is on tree-ring based fire histories of the Florida Panhandle, and her M.Sc., on pine lilies and flatwoods and dry prairie restoration, is from the University of Florida. She has worked for decades with on-the-ground fire and land management in Florida, most recently as the manager of the St. Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve, and previously as biologist at Myakka River State Park. She is honored to serve as the manager for Susan Carr’s land and to continue to work and learn about land management and restoration with this rewarding restoration project.
Helen Roth
Helen has lived in Tallahassee since 1979 where she and her husband raised their four children. She purchased 100 acres in Gadsden County in 2008 and quickly realized that her background in education, real estate, and information technology did not fully prepare her for what she needed to know to properly manage the property. There were beautiful steephead ravines, endangered plants, and old-growth longleaf pines, but the upland forest was suffering from a long period of fire exclusion. In 2011 she began restoring the uplands to an open canopy longleaf pine and wiregrass savanna through the use of prescribed fire and brush management. In 2020 she placed the property under a conservation easement with Tall Timbers.
Susan Carr
Born in Gainesville Florida, Susan spent most of her life living in and studying the natural areas of North Florida. More recently, Susan is trying to protect remaining natural and rural parts of North Florida through her work with the Alachua Conservation Trust, where she supports land conservation by matching conservation opportunities with conservation-minded landowners. Susan’s professional history is long and varied, including previous positions with nonprofit environmental organizations, academia and the Federal government. Susan has a B.S. in Botany from the University of Florida, a M.S. in Plant Biology from Louisiana State University, then later a Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from UF. Her graduate research focused on floristic diversity of fire-maintained pinelands across Florida, and fostered her deep appreciation for Florida’s natural landscapes. In recent years, Susan is trying to restore and protect a piece of natural Florida in Gadsden county, along with her Crooked Creek Conservation comrades.
Anne C. Schmidt
Annie Schmidt received her M.S. in Conservation Biology at USF. She has worked as a volunteer and professionally, throughout Florida’s diverse ecosystems, for over 30 years, as a conservation field biologist for public and private organizations. She has been a FDOF Certified Prescribed Burn Manager since 2004. In 2016, Annie and her husband, Jack Stites, acquired 153 acres of cut sand pine plantation surrounded by slope forests and steephead ravines. They immediately started restoring the uplands back to longleaf pine/wiregrass habitat. The property was then put under conservation easement with Tall Timbers in 2019. Annie acquired 155 more acres in 2020, contiguous to the original property, which she is in the process of restoring and will be putting into conservation easement, as well.
