Thank you "Ocklawahaman" Paul Nosca for making me an admin so I may post updates about freeing the Ocklawaha River. Also thank you all for signing this petition.

I majored in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida and earned a Masters in Sustainable Development Practice also at UF. Currently I am a lab manager of the Biosecurity Research and Extension lab at the UF Entomology and Nematology Department supporting the Doctor of Plant Medicine program. I was recently appointed to the Alachua County Environmental Protection Advisory Committee and became a board of trustees member of the nonprofit that my grandmother, Marjorie Harris Carr, founded in order to restore the Ocklawaha River, Florida Defenders of the Environment.

This past Thursday I went to the well attended Climate Crisis: An Intergenerational Discussion hosted by Alachua County NAACP Environmental & Climate Justice and The Climate Reality Project Gainesville FL Chapter and organized by my former grad school advisor Dr. Marianne Schmink. It was an inspirational event with a lot of young people speaking out. I really appreciated the closing statement when Alachua County Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said that we need to free the Ocklawaha River by removing Rodman dam. One of the featured speakers was 14 year old Isaac Augspurg who is suing the state of Florida for perpetuating an energy system based on fossil fuels. I gave Isaac a copy of the biography of my grandmother written by Peggy Macdonald to say thanks. The last person I gave that book to was the new Chief Science Officer Dr. Tom Frazer when he visited my department with Governor Desantis back in April. 

I encourage you all to find more ways to be vocal about this issue of freeing the Ocklawaha River beyond signing this petition. For example, attend local events about the environment to raise awareness, write an op-ed, follow FDEP secretary on Noah Valenstein on Twitter to send him tweets about the river, email Greenway Manager Mickey Thomason to tell him to restore the flow of the river and to stop using the outdated “Lake Ocklawaha Drawdown Plan 1979-1983”, and attend the September 17th public meeting about the proposed drawdown that Mickey announced at the Cross Florida Greenway office (the meeting time was not specified but you may call Mickey at 352-236-7143).