Join Mattie M. Kelly Environmental Institute as they begin their 2018 Seminar Series with guest speakers Jeff Talbert and John Bente presenting “Wetlands Restoration at Deer Lake State Park.” The seminar will take place on Friday, January 19, 2018 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Northwest Florida State College in the Robert E. Greene, Jr. Science Building (Building 350), Room 110, Niceville Campus. Admission is free and the event is open to the public.
Jeff Talbert is an eight year veteran of the Florida Park Service. He started as a park ranger at Grayton Beach State Park where he worked for five years. He was then promoted to Topsail Hill Preserve as a resource management park services specialist where his duties included sea turtle monitoring, habitat restoration, increasing shorebird nesting productivity, prescribed fire, park boundary enforcement, and producing high quality interpretive programs. He joined the Atlanta Botanical Garden as a field biologist working in partnership with the state parks on the wetlands restoration project at Deer Lake State Park. Jeff is a Florida native and gained his appreciation for Florida’s environment growing up on the east side of Ocala near Silver Springs and the Ocklawaha River, then later on the east coast along the Indian River.
John Bente has been a resident of Bay County FL since 1970. He was a mariculture biologist most years between 1970 and 1990. During the period 1994 and 2014, John was a natural area biologist for the Florida Park Service in District 1 (the Panhandle of Florida). During that period he pursued multiple restoration efforts on State Parks. Most recently he worked on securing funding for a Coastal Dune Lake Watershed Restoration Project (Pitcher-plant restoration) as a partner project between the Florida Park Service and Atlanta Botanical Garden. That restoration project was funded in 2015 and John now works for Atlanta Botanical Garden as the project coordinator on that same restoration effort.