It only takes about five minutes of walking away from the traffic on Fletcher Avenue, but there’s a spot along the sandhill ridge in the University of South Florida (USF) Forest Preserve where the sound of cars and Tampa’s concrete jungle starts to fade away. The stillness of the roughly 500-acre, gingerbread man-shaped habitat becomes the dominant feature, and then the nuance of the wild space starts to come into focus.
There are bright, purple flashes of blazing star blooms on the end of long green stems growing out of the slate-gray sand. Above, an occasional patch of red Christmas lichen is matted on an oak tree. Nearby on the ground below, is the freshly kicked-out dirt on the front porch apron of a gopher tortoise hole. Elsewhere there are recently-recarved burn lines, random herpetology research projects, and, yes, perhaps a pile of fresh shit from a boar or other large mammal that made its way across the trail as the sun came up (complete with dung beetle, too).
Stay quiet, and there might even be two white tail deer having breakfast before bouncing back into the woods.
“This is kind of like a little playground for them,” Nicole Brand told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, pointing to the deer and a round patch of wild grass that serves as a gateway to the preserve’s wetland on the banks of the Hillsborough River.
Where the elevation slightly dips, the ground becomes wet, soft, and riddled with decomposing cypress needles that help the river filter water that so much of the greater Tampa Bay region ends up seeing in its drinking supply.
Brand—who founded a Food Systems Center training facility at Pinellas Technical College before spending six years as the Director of Communications for the Florida Wildlife Corridor—was leading reporters and food sovereignty researcher food Will Schanbacher on a hike through the greenspace, which is also home to a variety of plants and animals, plus many endangered and threatened species including just four plant species found only in Hillsborough County.
The “playground” is also Brand’s office.
Last August, she became director of USF’s Environmental Conservation Outreach, Research, and Education (ECORE) System. Her job, in short, is to be a steward for not just the preserve, but also the USF College of Arts & Sciences’ popular botanical gardens, and the GeoPark.
A major focus at the botanical gardens is outreach and education to USF students, staff and the public at large who can visit to hear about the importance and utility of the plants native to Florida.
Dr. Craig Huegel told CL that those plants are “the structural backbone necessary to support all of our native wildlife – from bees and butterflies to songbirds.”
“Our native meadow showcases many of the most important native plants possible for creating pollinator habitat. Our butterfly garden adds to that and our newest water feature and surrounding plantings highlight the most effective way of incorporating habitat for songbirds into an overall landscape,” Huegel, who is the director of the USF Botanical Garden, added. “We hope that by showcasing these things that our visitors can then take these messages home and make a difference in the landscapes they manage.”
The position is a first for the school. Because it was approved by the State University System of Florida’s Board of Governors, Brand’s work could set the table for a new era of land management at schools that seek a director to oversee their own botanical assets. But it’s remarkable that she’s even here.
In April 2021, the preserve’s future came into question. Despite language in the school’s 2015-2025 master plan update that says it “shall not be developed,” the university issued a request for information to develop the USF Forest Preserve.
The pushback from activists was swift and aggressive. There were demonstrations, headlines, and even a documentary about the preserve’s role in helping animals connect to the Florida Wildlife Corridor. That RFI was canceled, and he said it was to preserve his health, but then-USF president Steve Currall resigned shortly after.
[content-8] Dr. Jeannie Mounger, a Ph.D graduate at USF’s Department of Integrative Biology, was a leader in the push to save the preserve, and told CL that in the back of their minds, activists thought there was no way the school would ever create any kind of substantive land manager position for the preserve.
“That was something that faculty had been asking for for 20 years, and nothing was done about it. So I am kind of over the moon in a way with how things have proceeded,” Mounger said.
USF’s current president Rhea Law has an opportunity to further move away from Currall’s RFI misstep by finding more funding for ECORE. Brand’s salary is backed by hard money, but she’s had to rely on collaboration and in-kind work from organizations like the Florida Forest Service to get things done in the preserve—not exactly a sustainable situation in Mounger’s eyes.
In a statement to CL, Magali Michael, interim dean and English professor for USF’s College of Arts and Sciences did not comment on the appetite for a push to find more funding for Brand’s work at ECORE, but did call the preserve, botanical gardens and GeoPark “vital to the evolution of the USF Greenway.”
“The creation of ECORE contributes to USF’s goal of contributing cutting-edge and evidence-based solutions to address the increasing number of social, environmental, and public policy challenges facing contemporary society, including mitigation and adaptation to climate change,” Michael added.
Despite not knowing if and when more funding will come, Brand’s year of work saw increased cleanup efforts, aforementioned prescribed fire to keep the preserve healthy, and even full-on lidar scans to help researchers examine the differences between parts of the preserve before and after the burns. There’s been renewed interest in the preserve from students and faculty across multiple departments at USF, and on Halloween, Brand will lead more students on a costumed “swamp stomp” through the preserve.
“Taking people physically there and helping to connect those dots, I think is really powerful,” Brand said.
Mounger added that because of Brand’s work, more of the university community at large realizes that that land is out there, that they have a relationship to it, and that they can build on that relationship. What Brand has accomplished in her short year at the helm of ECORE, Mounger said, has exceeded expectations.
For Brand, the work—which started with six months of forensic forest examination and the unpacking of the histories of the preserve, botanical gardens and GeoPark—has only begun. Around one corner, she identified where students from USF’s Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) will help remove ecowaste left behind by researchers who might’ve forgotten to clean up after work. She not only points out a dozen more units set to be part of a regular burn rotation, but talks about how much she enjoys getting out into the surrounding communities to tell the preserve’s neighbors how and why the fire she plans will actually help make them safer.
And as Brand’s land management plan keeps coming to head, that community will play a role bigger than it realizes. Mounger noted that locals can push for that funding ECORE needs to service the three properties, and even contribute to a botanical gardens ecosystems fund while the school decides on how much money it can kick over to continue caring for one of the Bay area’s most precious green spaces. Whether it’s her that makes it happen or not, Brand thinks that parts of the preserve—which is currently just for students and research—could one day open to the public.
All of this work will take time, but two years after USF opened the door for development, things at the preserve are looking less scary. If the momentum continues, the future might actually look scary good.
