We are only a few weeks away from really kicking off field season and it can’t come soon enough! So far we have had a few days a week out in the field but still split with a decent amount of office work and I am going a bit stir crazy. I am really looking forward to seed collections, weed surveys, rare plant surveys, and everything else we will be doing this summer. I have been keeping busy in the office with designing outreach materials. My favorite is “ecosystem jenga”, it consists of a jenga blocks each colored differently to represent plants, animals, soil, and water. There are event cards that go along with the game that describe an alteration to the ecosystem which results in the addition or removal of blocks. It needs some work still but I think it worked really well to get the point across to show the fragility of an ecosystem that has been altered too much. We used it at an Earth day event and I was hoping the kids would be interested but they were way more entertained by coloring. Maybe next time I’ll bribe them with candy and stickers to keep their interest. The most entertaining day of work since my last entry had to be our ATV training. I have never ridden one before and it was a blast, I am looking forward to using them in the field. Not much to report on other than that; looking forward to some training events coming up in May (which will be saved for the next blog entry) and just getting out in the field.

Until next time,

-Nate T, proud member of Team Manatee