Prescribed Fire Workshop
This is a question I get frequently, and the leaders of the workshop said they would be more than happy to come to east Texas, or those who would put us in touch with the right people over here – to present a prescribed fire workshop for landowners.
Texas Wildlife Association – Land, Water & Wildlife Expeditions
This is a TEKS aligned curriculum that will work with the schools/teachers in conjunction with regular curriculum. Students will learn things like pond management, macroinvertebrates, invasives, water quality, fish species, mammals/wildlife environment, vectors, health, in society, plant/tree species, botany, etc. They are looking for volunteers in two areas. Volunteers to help the students and landowners to volunteer access to their land for the hands own portion of the curriculum. TWA provides all of the curriculum, supplies for the field day stations, pay for busing students to the site, provide lunches, etc. I have volunteered our land for an Expedition site next year.
Texas A&M Forest Service/Texas Forestry Association
Jaden Kelly – Jaden wants to provide an Educator Workshop for the Project Learning Tree and Project WILD Curriculum for the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. This will teach educators (including TMN’s from PWL, Heartwood, Sabine Neches and Longleaf) how to use the Project Learning Tree curriculum in their projects and school outreach events. (Through the TSU/Lamar partnership, educators will receive CEU’s for attending the workshop. As will TMN’s)
The partnership with TSU/Lamar, provides us with access to classrooms for any classes, seminars, workshops we wish to hold there for educational purposes. Registration for the workshops will go through the TSU/Lamar system so they can show the workshop as Continuing Education for state reporting, but it will also provide any attendee with CEU documentation.
After discussing this with Jay and Alyssa – Jay would like for us to create a Survey to send out to the educators in our service area ISD’s, (and he will send out to agencies who require their people to acquire so many CEU’s) asking what they would like to see as far as workshops, seminars, extended learning opportunities for Ag, timber, water quality, etc. so we can start planning those types of presentations and speakers. We will work with Jay to create these opportunities and present them.
Habitat Enhancing Land Management (HELM) – Pineywoods Land Stewards
We have discussed this in the past with Matt. He was going to select a handful of Certified TMN’s, provide them with additional training and then they would go on landowner site visits with him, help the landowner plan pollinator habitat, improve prairie, etc. and help connect them with the necessary resources to get help. At the Conference, I met with Christine Middleton and Ricky Linex. Christine started HELM, on her own, without an Ag Extension Agent, in Hays County. They have a specific group of TMN’s who respond to a landowner Request for Assistance with evaluating their site for the goals they want to achieve. Then the TMN’S advise and connect them with the resources to achieve their goals. Jay would love to see us create this together! For some information: https://www.beautifulhayscounty.org/helm