UF IFAS Natural Resources Diversity Initiative

Join us as we attempt to catalog the biodiversity at our community partner's site!

Do you want to help with community science at our park?

Join us alongside UF Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society and UF IFAS Natural Resources Diversity Initiative as we host a digital BioBlitz through iNaturalist. This means that we are attempting to catalog the biodiversity in the park! https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/bioblitz+guide

We are using iNaturalist, a website that helps experts identify species and catalog the many types of animals, plants, and more that live around the world! It is as simple as taking a picture of what you see around Little Orange Creek's park or preserve and uploading it to the website. If you can identify it, that's fantastic, but experts are online to help if not. For video tutorials, click here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials

Finally, you can find our BioBlitz page live through the QR code on the flyer (use your phone's camera to scan), or through this link: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/little-orange-creek-bioblitz

The event will run online until November 15th - we hope you'll stop by the park and make some observations to help with this student-led effort!

I hope you all are ready for NRDI's next GBM TODAY!

We will be having a Q***r in Nature event out at NATL. This particular GBM will be longer than our normal ones going from 4:30-7:30!

Feel free to come and go as you please throughout the event.

We will start off in the entomology building Steinmetz Hall room 1031 for our guest speaker, Author Eliot Schrefer! Eliot is going to chat about his book Q***r Ducks as well as other works. At around 5:20-5:30 we'll head over to NATL (which is the Natural Area Teaching Lab right across the street).

Here will we will have a panel of graduate students and professionals who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community. They'll talk about their experiences both in the conservation field as well as academia, and how intersectionality and mental health play a huge role within this community.

Finally around 6:30 we'll wrap by taking small groups around NATL to look for various animals and just socialize and chat.

This is a good opportunity to celebrate who people are for everything they are. We all belong in nature and understanding some of the barriers that inhibit people from feeling safe in the outdoors and academia can help create better allies, stronger communities, and better solutions to breaking those barriers down. Hope to see you there!

Join us for our next GBM on Monday, October 10th at 4:45 PM in the NZH Breezeway! We will be joined by h**p powerhouses Priya Nanjappa and Amanda Hipps to discuss their journey and experiences in h**petology - this is a meeting you don’t want to miss!

Mark your calendars! NRDI will be tabling at this, and we will have a student-centered pride in nature event on campus as well - stay tuned!

Join ACT for the second annual Pride at Prairie Creek! An outdoor celebration of the LGBTQ+ community for family, friends, and allies to come together and enjoy a day at Prairie Creek Preserve.

Join us on a guided hike, watch live wildlife demonstrations, learn about the conservation and q***r inclusivity work being done in our community from the organizations themselves, shop local vendors, and enter a drawing of chance for some REI Pride goodies and more!

Featuring musical performances from Clay Dixon and the Picadillies and Patchwork, food from EIM Thai and Feliz Flavors, and drinks from First Magnitude Brewing Company and Opus Coffee!

Please bring blankets and seating to sit out and enjoy the musical performances.

Visit our website for more information:
https://www.alachuaconservationtrust.org/upcoming-events/pride2022


Pride Community Center REI Eim Thai
Opus Coffee Feliz Ice Cream
First Magnitude Brewing Company Patchwork Girls Clay Dixon and the Piccadillies

A great day of educating & the gators WIN at UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences TailGATOR yesterday!

Thanks to everyone to stopped by and learned about h**ps from our President, Lameace. 🐊

A special shout-out to UF Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society, we love our continued collaboration with all of you!

Presidents meeting presidents at the UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences TailGATOR event! Lameace and Maria are representing WEC today!
🐊

UF Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society
UF IFAS Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Our officers (left to right) Alex, Lameace, and Charisse had a blast tabling for UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences’s Kickoff event!

We’ll be at the CALS TailGATOR event this Saturday! Be sure to stop by our table to say hi!

Thanks for everyone who made it to our first GBM! We had an incredible turnout and we are so excited for our upcoming semester!

Our next meeting will be September 26th at 4:45 PM online. Join us for a meeting with our outreach partners (Alachua Audubon, Gainesville Cultural Arts Coalition, and Creekside Environmental Ed for Kids) while they discuss their respective programs and how to get involved! We will also discuss dates for volunteering under NRDI with CAC and CrEEK. This is a great opportunity for newcomers to volunteer with one of our program leaders and gain experience without the pressure of leading an event! See flyer for details.

We also have a new GroupMe for more streamlined communication! Meetings and outreach events will be advertised here, as well as general chatting about cool opportunities, relevant events on campus, so on and so forth. Here's the link to join: https://app.groupme.com/join_group/89349851/CMapkADs.

Reminder: Join us tomorrow at 4:45 PM in the Newins-Ziegler Hall Breezeway for our first meeting of the semester, or see the flyer on how to log in for this hybrid event!

It's tiiiiiiime! Our first meeting of the semester will be IN-PERSON on Monday, September 12th at 4:45 PM in the Newins-Ziegler Hall breezeway.

Grab a slice of pizza and learn about our environmental education endeavors, as well as biweekly speakers centered around SciComm and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives!

We're seeking an intern to help with social media, marketing, event planning, and other outreach. The internship will require 10-15 hours/week beginning August 2022 and continuing through April 2023. Visit https://tinyurl.com/ghinternship22 for more details.

A few more photos from our outreach event on Saturday with Little Orange Creek!

Special thanks to our rockstars Spencer and Maria for holding down the fort at the start of the event - and additional thanks to Madison and Lameace for joining in despite a jampacked schedule that day! 👏

Can we admire that Spencer, Maria, and Lameace had returned THAT MORNING from a week long immersive course in the field? 😱

Photo credit: Alison Blakeslee, Alachua Conservation Trust 📸

NRDI had a great time tabling at Little Orange Creek Nature Park’s Nature Day in May event yesterday!

We have had an active semester working with LOC for Science Friday’s and this was a fun way to wrap up the start of a new partnership.

Wishing you all a happy start of summer! ☀️

Thank you Sunrise Wildlife Rehabilitation for coming to talk to our students today, some of whom are aspiring wildlife rehabilitators!

Natural Resources Diversity Initiative will be hosting Nan from Sunrise Wildlife Rehabilitation TOMORROW, March 28th at 5:30 PM.

We will meet at the Natural Area Teaching Lab pavilion for a discussion about careers in wildlife rehabilitation, what science communication as a wildlife rehabber entails and meet some of Sunrise Wildlife Rehab's live animal ambassadors!

Join us for a great discussion, weather permitting! See flyer for details.

We had a great time during tonight’s meeting… New faces and new friends all around!

Special thanks to UF MANRRS for collaborating with us to make this discussion and nature walk possible, and to Dr. Morales for leading such an impactful discussion!

Join MANRRS and NRDI on Wednesday, March 16th at 5:00 PM for an event on BIPOC experiences with nature and the natural resource fields. Wildlife Ecology and Conservation professor Dr. Nia Morales will speak on the history of discrimination in outdoor recreation and then lead an open group discussion on the effects of those events. Afterwards, we'll take a reflective nature walk through the UF Natural Area Teaching Lab guided by NRDI members. Steinmetz Hall @ 5pm, limited Zoom option available.

Pizza will be provided!

Register: https://forms.gle/29A666rcS2ZotDsx9

Just a reminder that our Science Communication Seminar series continues this Tuesday! We host Denali Kincaid ( on TikTok) on February 22nd at 5:15 PM in the Newins-Ziegler Breezeway, or online in this hybrid event! Denali will talk to us about how they've formed a TikTok geared towards making geology more accessible to the general public- and the importance of increasing visibility for LGBTQIA+ scientists in the process. See flyer for details. We hope to see you there!

UF GREBE Audubon Campus Chapter invited us to their movie night this Friday! We'll be watching "the Big Year," a movie about trying to go birding (and failing). We hope to see you there!

Sign up here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IIzYIkqDVk0bansnRfhlhJeXq2zC4gjNGXiQTtx3phU/edit?fbclid=IwAR1y29l0ge8vi34-MpFIrzXKslWCSciCGdpTWrNTdGDmw-sGuCcq30aMhS8 =822023094

The Natural Resources Diversity Initiative will be hosting Christine Krebs from the Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants this Wednesday, Feb. 2nd at 4:45 PM online to discuss the scope of invasive plant problems in aquatic systems and share current opportunities for students to get involved. This is a great opportunity learn something new, to network, or to find opportunities that will build your CV! See flyer for details.

Join us tomorrow at 5:15 PM for "Using Memes as the Means for Conservation" with Iona Hennessy, modmin of Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends and co-founder of Wild Green Future. Learn how memes have been repurposed into empowering conservation movements, and how this small meme group (whose origins started in UF IFAS Wildlife Ecology and Conservation...) has turned into something much bigger.

We have planned some upcoming outreach events for K–5 students and would love some help from our members! You can find the details in the NRDI activity sign-up sheet. 👇🏼

If you'd like to participate, please enter your information on both the sign-up and contacts sheets. Note that I would like to arrive to each event ~15-20 minutes early to set up. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions. ☺️

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Sign up sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/14y68axQBscjGEldt_CMP46wLInWkrhPOeCUhBt0GDe4/htmlview
Contact sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1iwIBCl7nL0xWpz0ESWhQ6C5uIDomECxHn-cMdE-8_jc/htmlview