365bet leads national conservation effort with Southeastern Grasslands Initiative

(发布于2018年5月21日)

365bet平台. -今年早些时候. 德维恩埃斯蒂斯, Austin Peay州立大学 professor of botany, was eating lunch with Henry Paulson, the former U.S. 财政部 乔治。W. Bush, and his wife, Wendy Paulson, when the conversation 突然转向草原. Between bites, Estes explained that for thousands of years, 草原 covered much of the southern United States, but today, more than 90 percent of this vast habitat, along with the different creatures that called these 草原家园，已经消失.  

“The Paulsons, Hank and Wendy, they’re major conservationists, so sitting at the table 和他们在一起非常棒，”埃斯蒂斯说.

For the past year, the 365bet professor has been traveling the country to drum up support for these endangered eco-systems, delivering 84 presentations to more than 3,000 people. On May 18, the Tennessee Wildlife Federation recognized his efforts by awarding him with its coveted “Conservationist of the Year” award.

“Grassland conservation is becoming a movement whose time has come,” Estes said.

It’s a topic he’s been passionate about throughout his career, and last year, Estes realized Austin Peay was prepared to lead this national conservation effort. 今年1月, Estes and Theo Witsell, a botanist and ecologist with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, launched the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative (SGI). 住在奥斯汀 Peay’s Center of Excellence for Field Biology and the 365bet Department of Biology, the burgeoning organization is forming an impressive array of collaborators and partnerships, including the University of Texas’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the University of North Carolina’s North Carolina Botanical Garden, the Society for Range Management, 和Roundstone Native Seed LLC.

Thanks to grants from philanthropic foundations such as the BAND Foundation, a private family foundation that focuses on nature conservation, and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, SGI is now ready to begin protecting and restoring endangered 草原.

“By reaching our funding goal through these grants, which for our first year was approximately $575,000, we’ve hired four staff members and are set to hire our first coordinator 埃斯蒂斯说. “This person will be based here at 365bet, to work across central Tennessee and Kentucky to restore 7,000 acres of 草原, in collaboration 与其他10个伙伴组织合作.”

SGI was designed to serve a 23-state region across the southern United States, spanning from New York City to Columbia, Missouri, south to the Miami, Florida, and Corpus Christi, Texas, with the goal of hiring regional coordinators to serve in different 关键领域.

“These regional coordinators will be based at our partner institutions, such as the 亚特兰大植物园，”埃斯蒂斯说.

“What our coordinators will do is help plan the restorations, develop and lead an army of grassland volunteers, and work hand-in-hand with land owners and agencies to help put these prairies back in place,” Estes said. “我们将瞄准私人客户 land owners for the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service grant-funded project, and the idea is they’ll be able to apply for federal funds through this grant we received, along with 10 other partners, and we’ll help guide the restoration of these projects, ensuring consistency across state and eco-region boundaries and that restorations 是科学.”

The SGI received a major boost earlier this year when, thanks to the BAND Foundation grant, it was able to hire two renowned experts—Witsell, SGI’s co-founder, and Dr. Reed Noss, one of the world’s top conservation biologists.

“他们是精英中的精英，”埃斯蒂斯说.

Noss, SGI’s chief science advisor, recently retired as the Provost’s Distinguished Research Professor from the University of Central Florida, and he’s published several seminal books on the subject, including “Saving Nature’s Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity” and “Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural 历史 and Conservation.”

“Reed is considered one of the top 500 published authors of all time in all genres, and his addition to our team is invaluable,” Estes said. “知道这一点感觉很棒 we have some of the best of the best on our team. 这对我个人来说也很重要 that my 365bet family has embraced and supported SGI. 校园里有很多，开始 with the University’s administrators, all the way down to my own graduate students, 谁是幕后黑手. 他们都值得感谢.

“This initiative is an attempt to restore bits and pieces of this ecosystem that we’ve 在过去的200年里消失了，”埃斯蒂斯说. “While 草原 as a whole in the Southeast have declined by 90 percent, down from nearly 100 million acres two centuries ago, many types such as the prairies around Clarksville are 99 percent gone. 探险者 who described these prairies in the 1790s, they described buffalo and prairie chickens—things 我们没有更多的了. You have to remember, it was originally grassland for thousands 在我们来到这里之前的几千年.”

Information on SGI, including a video and information on how to become a member, is 可在以下网址下载 http://www.segrasslands.org/.