Saving the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge
March 9, 2017
Hosted by Rob Moir
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
Rolf Olson, Refuge Manager, Mark Musaus, former Refuge Manager, and Elinor Williams, president, Friends talk with Rob. The Loxahatchee is an awesome threshold brimming with wildlife between Lake Okeechobee, agricultural lands, and pine flatwoods to the north and the Everglades to the south, partially bounded by the largest remaining remnant of a cypress strand. An invasive plant, Old World climbing fern, is smothering about 72% of the Refuge. This tenacious vine with 100-foot-long tendrils kills plants by either blocking out light or by causing trees and other native plants to collapse under the weight. Because aerial spraying kills all plants, the climbing fern stems must be hand-cut. Then the lower portions are sprayed. Crews, brought to each island by air boat, often stand in nearly waist high water. The Refuge is known for having the greatest number of alligators in America, not the greatest biomass of alligators, just the greatest number of snapping jaws per foot. Snakes,too
Moir’s Environmental Dialogues
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With the knowledge of Carson and the courage of Achilles, individuals are steadfastly going the distance to defend wildlife and ecosystems from assaults of environmental degradations and destructions. Join environmental studies scientist Dr. Rob Moir for lively dialogue and revealing narrative inquiry into how individuals are overcoming the obstacles turning forlorn hope into effective actions for oceans, rivers, watersheds, wildlife and ecosystems. Discover how listening to individuals, thinking locally, and acting in concert with other, you can act to save ecosystems. Got environmental stewardship? Become an Eco-steward. Act to bring about a greener and blue Planet Earth.
Rob Moir
Rob Moir is director and founder of the Ocean River Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Moir, an educator and scientist, has been a leader of citizen science and efforts to clean up Salem Sound and Boston Harbor, as founder of Salem Sound Harbor Monitors & Salem Sound 2000, later president of Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, and through his appointment by the Secretary of Interior to the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. He was formerly Curator of Natural History at the Peabody Essex Museum, Curator of Education at the New England Aquarium and Executive Director of the Discovery Museums in Acton, MA. Dr. Moir was awarded a Switzer Environmental Fellowship from the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation, and the James Centorino Award for Distinguished Performance in Marine Education by the National Marine Educators Association, which he later served as president. He was Sea Education Association’s first assistant scientist to work consecutive voyages of the R.V. Westward in 1979 and 1980, an advancement officer for his alma mater, Hampshire College and serves today on the boards of his alma mater, Cambridge School of Weston, Ocean Champions, and the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters. Dr. Moir has a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies and a Masters of Science and Teaching from Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene, NH and certificate of studies from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
