Meeting+2011+Jun+16

Thursday 8:30-10 1214 Jordan Hall, NCSU Campus
 * Wake County Nature Preserves Meeting**

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Perlmutter won't be able to attend (scheduling conflicts)
 * Attendance Notes**


 * Present:** Dostilio, Blank, Connors, Hess (notes), Steelman (presiding), Sullivan, Lobsinger, Caldwell


 * Revisit meeting schedule and priorities**
 * What things need to get done? What committees are needed?
 * Should we alternate meeting times and locations to allow broader participation?
 * Is it time for new leadership? MOU calls for annual election during first meeting of year - should we wait?

AT THAT MEETING WE DECIDED ON FOUR AREAS ON WHICH TO CONCENTRATE. I SUGGEST THAT WE NEED TO ESTABLISH FOUR SUBCOMMITTEES TO MAKE PROGRESS IN THESE RESPECTIVE AREAS AS WE THINK ABOUT TRANSITIONING (OR NOT) TO FEWER MEETINGS. Toddi
 * PRIORITY AREAS FOR 2011 (AS ARTICULATED AT FEB 3 MEETING)**

1) Announce / Celebrate Turnipseed Preserve as the first WNP (What is our timeline? actions? who will lead?) 2) Establish a website and develop other promotional and marketing materials - and other activities to increase public awareness of what we're up to and about (Need update from Kaytee) 3) Get some signs (Need grants for this $$. What is status of WalMart grant application?) 4) Perhaps we could incorporate our work with the Museum's new Nature Research Center (NRC). We could do outreach through the NRC to better teach the general public about our mission, showcase our WNP sites and explain our efforts. Gary P in contact with the new NRC director (Meg Lowman) and could suggest this as further partnership with the Museum. Gary will be taking the director of the NRC on a tour of Turnipseed - current dates being considered 19/20 February
 * **Promotion / marketing / website** - keep in mind that Dan Holly at the N&O is interested in doing an article

1) Swift Creek Bluffs (Triangle Land Conservancy) through the designation process (need to touch base with Leigh Ann about this process and what their potential timeline could be) 2) Biotic surveys of other potential WNP candidate sites (Swift Creek Bluffs, Temple Flat Rock, Lake Raleigh Woods) - how to get students and other professionals involved 3) Reach out to Cary re Hemlock Bluffs (new director Danny Hopkins) - also talk with Laura White (director of Hemlock Bluffs) about this (we will need to set up a meeting-- who will take the lead?) 4) FOR784 (Environmental Impact Assessment) completed a draft General Management Plan for Lake Raleigh Woods (LRW) in December 2010. Presenting this plan to Kevin McNaughton (Facilities ) and Tom Skolniki (University Architect's office) prompted Provost Arden and Vice Chancellor Leffler to establish the LRW Advisory Panel. The panel will include Larry Nielsen and Gary Blank, among others representing CALS, CNR, and units of the administration. Gary Blank was invited by the Chairman of the University Physical Environment Committee to discuss findings of the plan with them at the March meeting. Charles Rudder and Gary are completing editing and data archival of the draft plan so it can be conveyed to the Facilities Operations. Whether an application for WNP designation can proceed will be a matter for the Advisory Panel to address.
 * **Other WakeNature Preserves designated** - Hemlock Bluffs, Swift Creek Bluffs, others?

Draft Lake Raleigh Woods General Management Plan

1) Continue with biotic survey of Turnipseed WNP (bryophytes, mammals including bats, and mussels) 2) Pond restoration at Turnipseed, with Leopold Wildlife Club 3) Finding out a way to get Turnipseed open quickly, even if in a limited way
 * **Continue work on Turnipseed/Get Turnipseed open for some kind of use**

1) Finalize MOU (Toddi and Kaytee) 2) Signatures on Memorandum of Understanding - we should really have NCSU and Wake in place by theTurnipseed announcement, others as soon as possible. (We need to strategize about how best to move' this forward, serial, parallel??) 3) We need some discussion about WRC involvement in light of continuing budget cuts (Scott Anderson has some comments). This might be an issue for other organizations as well - do they have the resources to commit to partnership? 4) Get Raleigh signed on to MOU 5) Grants for signs (Who can we go to?)
 * **Organizational and funding issues** - MOU, grants for materials and activities


 * GOALS AS ARTICULATED IN AT JAN 20 MEETING:**
 * Announce / Celebrate Turnipseed Preserve as the first WNP (DONE-- DO WE WANT ANY MORE PUBLICITY ON THIS?)
 * Continue with biotic survey of Turnipseed WNP (bryophytes, mammals including bats)
 * Signatures on Memorandum of Understanding - we should really have NCSU and Wake in place by the Turnipseed announcement, others as soon as possible. (IN PROCESS)
 * We need some discussion about WRC involvement in light of continuing budget cuts (Scott Anderson has some comments). This might be an issue for other organizations as well - do they have the resources to commit to partnership?
 * Establish a website and develop other promotional and marketing materials - and other activities to increase public awareness of what we're up to and about (IN PROCESS-- DO WE NEED A COMMITTEE??)
 * Get some signs
 * Swift Creek Bluffs (Triangle Land Conservancy) through the designation process (IN PROCESS-- DO WE NEED A COMMITTEE?)
 * Raleigh signed on to MOU
 * Biotic surveys of other potential WNP candidate sites (Swift Creek Bluffs, Temple Flat Rock, Lake Raleigh Woods) - how to get students and other professionals involved
 * Pond restoration at Turnipseed, with Leopold Wildlife Club
 * Reach out to Cary re Hemlock Bluffs (new director Danny Hopkins) - also talk with Laura White (director of Hemlock Bluffs) about this (DONE- WE WERE REJECTED)
 * Finding out a way to get Turnipseed open quickly (?? DO WE NEED A COMMITTEE??)
 * (from Gary P.) Perhaps we could incorporate our work with the Museum's new Nature Research Center (NRC), currently under construction: []. We could do outreach through the NRC to better teach the general public about our mission, showcase our WNP sites and explain our efforts. I'm in contact with the new NRC director and could suggest this as further partnership with the Museum. (DO WE NEED A COMMITTEE??)


 * ALTERNATIVE FROM HESS ... can we step back and take a look at our mission and perhaps approach this differently?**


 * //The mission of the WakeNature Preserves Partnership//** is to organize and provide resources to identify ecologically valuable, publicly owned open spaces within Wake County, NC, and to build capacity for appropriate management and long-term stewardship of those areas.

Our goals are to ...
 * identify and designate as “WakeNature Preserves” protected open spaces in Wake County that contain important ecological or geological resources or meet other criteria that qualify them for this distinction;
 * create more public awareness and appreciation of our highest quality natural areas in Wake County;
 * develop the organizational capacity to conduct natural resource inventories on and develop management plans for Preserves;
 * develop an organized, volunteer base of citizen-scientists to monitor Preserves.

Given this, I wonder about three specific actions that relate to these goals directly.
 * Identify potential WNP sites publicly (ie, on our web site)
 * Collect and publish (web) information about each of these sites
 * Start building the volunteer base by developing a list of people willing to lend assistance, and the kind of assistance they can offer.

Here's my line of thought ... not yet completely coherent ...

(1) Have we identified the ecologically valuable, publicly owned open spaces? These are the places we'd want to target for WNP designation. I feel like we've done this, but only sort of, and we have not taken the time to publish the information in a usable form. We should at least be able to create a list of potential places from Natural Heritage Data (we've actually done this before and I have a list - it's just not current or pretty). Why don't we do this and put the information on our wiki in a user-friendly form? Get the IDENTIFY part moving and then deal with the DESIGNATE part. Name the parks, map them, get some photos, say why they're important from an NR perspective. I (Hess) would be willing to make this a project for a Fall independent study or special topics for a couple of students (maybe 2 credits?), especially if I can get some GIS support (Heather?? are you out there??). There may also be a GIS student who's looking for a project - I can talk with Heather about this. This, and # 2, could be part of / combined with the notion of marketing and web presence expressed above.

(2) Creating a list, as suggested in #1, moves us toward more public awareness ... especially if we provide information about what the important natural resource elements on that land are. Why haven't we done this? Shouldn't we? Even if they are not currently designated as WNPs, doesn't listing them and describing them help move us toward our goals? Why can't we make maps showing these parks //**now**//? And start to create the seasonal guide or other types of interpretive, educational material John Connors has talked about so often? Wouldn't this help build public awareness - let others discover what these places are - which could help build locally-grown momentum for others to get on board with WNP designation? Might this be a better way to build awareness and interest in many places in parallel rather than picking away at one property at a time, which seems to be our current //modus operandi//?

(3) Wouldn't having such a list, out in public, help focus development of organizational capacity and volunteer base? Wouldn't it give us a more focused place to start conversations about WNP status, capacity-building, and volunteers with the municipalities that have places on the list (which is not all the muni's in Wake)?

(4) We haven't reached out formally to the wider community to develop the volunteer base of citizen-scientists. In large part, this is because we're not ready to put them to work yet - and asking people to volunteer and then giving them nothing to do isn't a good idea. But this leads to a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem ... we'd like to go to agencies and say "Look at all the people who'll help, and look at their knowledge base" but we can't because we don't know who they are. And we don't want to build the list because we can't guarantee them anything to do. Should we break this conundrum by deciding that the egg comes first and develop a list of people who would be willing to offer assistance (and what type) BUT we tell these people right up front what we're doing - that it might be a long time before they're called on. We can start with our professional networks - ask them if called, would the be willing to help and in what ways. Then let that spread out from there.


 * NOTES**
 * Steelman reviewed information on website
 * Blank asked if we could have a "buy a sign" bit on the wiki and the support page - Hess will add a note to support page
 * Hess reviewed his ideas
 * Blank - create matrix of where the places are, what's needed, and associate with volunteers needed to do the work
 * Connors - committee to develop and organize inventory and management services [ Resources Committee ]
 * Connors - Promotions Committee - web site development
 * Concern about putting sites onto a website without their buy-in - might be heavy-handed
 * Establish a template for each WNP site
 * Should we revisit Hemlock Bluffs from the perspective of having expertise to offer toward the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid issue
 * What about getting the potential WNPs listed on the wiki, but not on a WNP page?
 * Issue of accessibility ... what if we're bringing attention to sites that are not "safe" to visit ... access by appointment only, limited access, tours on such-and-such a date, etc
 * List of "last great ecological places in Wake County"?
 * Two issues ... developing the list of places ... what do we do with the information? ... we need to be sensitive to concerns of partners when we start talking about publishing the information
 * Stewardship plan is the most important part of this process - without that, it should not be listed?
 * Stewardship plan allows you to plug volunteers into meaningful activity as they become available
 * Potential committees: Inventory / list ; promotion / marketing (including MOU) / fundraising ; capacity-building (volunteers, etc) ; preserve proposals remans ad-hoc ;
 * Meeting frequency: monthly?
 * Advantage - less time given limited resources
 * Potential disad - even more meetings because people are on many committees; work not getting done
 * Colleen and Jackie have a list of inventory people - need to ask if they are willing to serve and then make it operational


 * Renewing Private WikiSpace**
 * Note: I (Hess) erroneously thought we expired 20 June ... but would like to deal with this now anyway ... but there's no urgency, as I had originally thought. Sorry.
 * TLC has been supporting our wiki space to (a) keep it add free (the main thing) (b) have extra storage (c) have our custom theme
 * TLC has had access to a mechanism to get a good discount, and I've (Hess) asked if they can continue this support
 * Failing that, renewal is due 20 Sept for another year at $50
 * We have approx $155 available from the Osborne Family donation of 2010
 * I (Hess) recommend that we renew this for another year, if TLC cannot continue to support this


 * Action Sought:** Unless TLC can continue to support this, approval of motion to spend $50 to renew wiki spaces for one year


 * Note**: Agreement in the room that this is OK.


 * MOU Update**

From Larry Petrovick, Wake Soil & Water Conservation District ... We hope to get the MOU signed at our June 13 Board meeting. From Jamie/Sig...the County would sign, but not needed for OSAPAC.[this means OSAPAC doesn't have a vote]


 * Notes**
 * WRC still unknown
 * Museum - still discussing time commitments
 * Holly Springs - not done
 * NHP - being done


 * CVS Pulse update**

From Perlmutter - On 5 June, two 20 x 50 m plots were surveyed at Swift Creek Bluffs by the Carolina Vegetation Survey. I worked on plot one laid on a slope of a ravine leading down the bluff in a beech-dominated mesic mixed hardwood forest. We counted at least 50 spp of vascular plants, with an understory vastly dominated by Umbrella Tree (//Magnolia tripetala//) and a somewhat sparse herb layer with few scattered quartzite rocks.

As time permitted I conducted a brief cursory lichen survey of the area, finding a low diversity of about 20 spp, likely due to the limited area I worked in. A more thorough lichen survey would likely yield a richer flora for the preserve. A preliminary lichen list is posted on the Swift Creek Bluffs page on the wiki.

It may be weeks or months before the full list is prepared from the event. I will let you know when it is ready. Images are posted on the Swift Creek Bluffs page.

I learned from Forbes Boyle that Mitchell Mill was also sampled, but not Turnipseed.