The Conservation Trust for Florida, Inc. is a non-profit land trust that was founded in 1999 by a group of professional conservationists to address the need to protect rural land and natural areas in Florida. David Carr, formerly the Executive Director of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, was the founding Executive Director and is a member of the Board of Directors. Dr. Gary Meffe, Editor-in-Chief of the international scientific journal Conservation Biology, served as the founding Facilitator and as Executive Director from 2002 until 2003. Busy Shires Byerly, the current Executive Director, has worked on projects with leading conservation organizations such as The Wildlands Project, Defenders of Wildlife, and the National Gap Analysis Program.

The Board of Directors of the Conservation Trust for Florida is an entirely volunteer group of individuals committed to the mission of protecting working rural landscapes.

With talents ranging from ecological and forestry sciences to conservation biology, accounting, environmental education, law, and public planning, these individuals serve to guide and advance the many projects and education programs that CTF pursues.

A copy of the CTF's Strategic Plan (Strategic-Plan-021704.pdf) is available for download. The plan is an outline of the CTF's program goals and guides its actions for the three-year period, 2004-2006. This plan was formulated over a series of board planning meetings during the Fall of 2003 and was adopted, after revision, by unanimous consent at the Strategic Planning Retreat on November 21, 2003. This plan will be reviewed and revised at least annually.

Board of Directors:

Terry L. Zinn: President of the Board , An environmental attorney with the Florida Department of Transportation, District 2 in Lake City, Florida. Terry also operates a wildflower seed business in Alachua County.

Bill Schlitzkus: Vice President of the Board, Bill is a longtime resident of Cross Creek, having moved there after graduation from Georgia to take a forestry job with Owens-Illinois Paper Company in 1965. He has been with them through numerous permutations to the current landholder, Plum Creek Corporation. He is familiar with Conservation Easements from the other side, as he worked closely with the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) on their purchase of the Conservation Easement and fee simple portions of the Lochloosa tracts. He also worked with Gainesville Regional Utilities, SJRWMD, and Suwannee River Water Management District on the Conservation Easement for Gainesville's Murphree Well Field. He has extensive experience with forest land management in north central Florida and numerous contacts with private land owners. He has expressed a great interest in conservation efforts in the area, and he enjoys hunting and fishing in the area.

Steve Nesbitt: Secretary of the Board,Sandhill crane expert. Ornithologist and retired Biological Administrator for the Florida Wildlife Commission, and member of the Whooping Crane Recovery Team.

Michael Campbell: Treasurer of the Board, Mike is co-owner of a wholesale propagation nursery located in Micanopy, Florida. He received both Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Forestry at the University of Florida. Mike has been employed with timber industry, local government, and private consulting firms prior to starting the nursery.

David Carr: Member at Large, David is a noted conservationist, businessman, landowner, and native Floridian. He is former Executive Director of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation and current Chair of the Scenic Highway 441 Corridor Management Council.

K. Marlene Conaway: Member at Large.Marlene served as the Chief of Comprehensive Planning for the Department of Community Affairs, Florida State Government from 2005 to 2006. She served as the Deputy Director, Department of Planning and Development for Carroll County, Maryland and as a program administrator for a Maryland county, she worked with farmers to help them understand the benefits of selling agricultural land preservation easements to the State. A major accomplishment was designing the “Critical Farms” program to prevent agricultural lands from being converted to development when a farmer retires. Easement funding is provided by the County, as bridge financing, to help individuals who want to farm purchase the land. The program has preserved fifty farms in the last twenty years and received a national award in 2005.  

Keith Glynn: Member at Large, Keith has lived on a small horse farm in northwest Marion County “Horse Country” since 1995. He currently serves as a board member of the Horse Protection Association of Florida. He has expressed great interest in the recent CTF Horse Country conservation efforts. Keith has been employed at two local private environmental consulting firms as an environmental scientist prior to working in the furniture industry. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Earth Science from the University of Massachusetts and his Master’s degree in Environmental Science from Rutgers University. Keith enjoys kayaking and mountain biking in the area.

John Hendrix: Member at Large , pecan farmer, ecologist and environmental consultant. Born in Gainesville, John lives in western Putnam County between Melrose and Hawthorne. He is a Certified Wetland Scientist, has served on the Keystone Heights City Council, and has worked since 1974 with local, state, and federal park management and environmental protection agencies before retiring as a Biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in March, 2005. John received his Bachelor's Degree in Zoology and Master's Degree in Environmental Biology from the University of Florida, and was a founding board member of the Alachua Conservation Trust.

David Pais: Member at Large, David was educated at Rollins College and University of Florida, where he studied environmental ethics. He is active in the Florida Native Plant Society and was a founding member and president of the Gainesville Chapter and Past President of the State FNPS 1996-98. He is certified as an Arborist, a Landscape Designer, and Landscape Contractor and operates a design and consulting business which specializes in Ecological Restoration, Native Landscapes, and Habitat Enhancements throughout Florida & the Caribbean. He is also a Licensed Real Estate Broker specializing in preserving & protecting the Native Landscape of Florida. He currently lives in Melrose.

Nancy Peterson: Member at Large, and Associate Director of Research and Outreach/Extension, UF School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), a university-wide program in ecology, environmental sciences and sustainability. Nancy’s background is in natural resource management and environmental education. She has a long history of working with not-for profit organizations, serving for 10 years as the executive director and 2 years as environmental education coordinator for Green Earth, Inc a land trust organization located in Carbondale, IL. In addition, she was the first director of The Science Center, a regional hands-on children’s museum also located in Illinois. She and her sister have managed their family farm for over 30 years.

Barry Rutenberg: Member at Large, President of Barry Rutenberg Homes, a home building business in Gainesville, Florida.

Hans Tanzler, III: Member at Large, Mr. Tanzler is an attorney with a legal masters degree in taxation.  He is also a CPA, financial executive and valuation analyst with broad based experience over the last ten years in various industries including manufacturing, real estate and computer technology. He is currently managing Cypress Grove Farm, a container nursery of Florida native trees and scrubs located in Waldo, Florida (www.cypressgrovefarm.com).  He formerly practiced fifteen years us an attorney/CPA tax attorney in Jacksonville and five years with the IRS and Department of Justice in Miami. He is a current member of the St. Johns River Water Management District's Governing Board, the University of Florida Foundation Board of Governors and former Chairman of the Jacksonville zoological society.  He and his wife, Deborah, both University of Florida graduates reside in Jacksonville, Florida.

David Carr, (son) Adam Carr and Terry Zinn placed sign at the Bishop
and Henderson Tract, a new property acquired by the
Alachua County Forever Program.

Staff :

Busy Shires Byerly: Executive Director, received a B.A. in Geography from the University of Florida in 1997. From 1991 to 1992, she attended Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. A graduate of the Florida Natural Resources Leadership Institute in 2002, she has worked on projects for The Wildlands Project and the National Gap Analysis Program. She is a former newspaper reporter for the Alachua Post (2001 - 2003) and she was the Land Conservation Specialist for an environmental consulting firm Conway Conservation (1998 - 2001). She worked as a groom and rider for horse farms until her first professional job in 1998. She is also a member of the Town of Micanopy's Planning and Historic Preservation Board (2004 - present). She is a native of Alachua County and grew up on a horse farm and still rides dressage. Her family owns and operates Gold Leaf Farm, the 1970's host for the Canadian Event Team. She works for CTF because she believes that she understands the issues that farm owners face as they consider long-term land conservation goals for their families and their farms.

Ellen Huntley Dube: Land Conservation Director. Ellen has 12 years of experience in sustainable agriculture, land-use planning, and not-for-profit management. In collaboration with the University of Florida and Institute of Food and Agriculture Science Cooperative Extension, she has trained farmers in market development, organic farming systems, conservation, and utilization of technical assistance programs of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the USDA. Ellen is a coauthor to the Department of Defense published paper: Land Corridors in the Southeast: Connectivity to Protect Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. She assisted in coordinating the North Florida Local Food Partnership which established the first local farm product label in the Southeastern U.S. Ellen has administered federal, state, and local government and foundation grants for program budgets of up to $450,000. She directed a community food and nutrition project that reached 2500 participants annually from 1999 to 2005 and raised $900,000 through fundraising efforts including annual drive, special events and grant solicitations and earned-income programming during this time. A native of Florida, Ellen received a B.S. in Chemistry from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina (1991) and completed her M.S. in Soil and Water Sciences at the University of Florida (1997). Ellen taught Secondary School Science as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, West Africa, from 1991 to 1993. She is a member of the Florida Association of Environmental Soil Scientists.

Dr. Thomas Scott Hoctor: Research Scientist. Tom is a Research Associate at the GeoPlan Center in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. He has M.S. from the University of Florida in Forest Resource and Conservation specializing in conservation biology and policy. His undergraduate studies were in History and Science from Harvard University where he received a Harvard College Scholarship and a John Winthrop Scholarship for academic achievement. He has worked on numerous research projects including, the following: A joint Army Corps of Engineers/U. S. Department of Defense project to identify listed species and identify natural resource conservation opportunities on lands surrounding eleven military bases in the Piedmont ecoregion of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina; A project to develop recommendations and tools to facilitate regional ecological assessments in all U.S. EPA regions; a project with Region 4 EPA and the EPA OPEI to survey existing regional assessment efforts and develop guidelines that can be used to conduct regional assessments of areas critical for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services; identification of reserve options for protecting federally listed species in South Florida, 2002-. Working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Dr. Karen Root of Applied Biomathematics and Bowling Green University, and Frank Mazzotti et al. from the University of Florida to update habitat models for listed species and develop reserve options and priorities for conserving all federally listed species while maximizing benefits to the region’s overall biodiversity.

John Henry November: Land Conservation Assistant Director. John was born and raised in the seaside community of Atlantic Beach, Fl. He is currently attending the University of Florida's Levin College of Law. In addition to being the Assistant Director of Land Conservation for CTF, he is the treasurer of the Animal Law Association and is President of SolarCity Gainesville at the Levin College of Law. John graduated from the University of Florida Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with an Environmental Studies Minor. He wrote an honors thesis approved for high honors titled: "Altruism Within Nonprofit Organizations". John is also co-founder of the Marsh Preservation Society and was the Developmental Coordinator for the Public Trust Environmental Law Institute of Florida. John enjoys kayaking throughout Florida and is a bird enthusiast.

Advisory Board:

Fay Baird: Hydrologist with Pandion Systems, Inc., one of the founders of Micanopy's charter school, and a Micanopy Town Commissioner. She is not a bad banjo player, either.

Bob Buschbacher: Ecologist and conservationist. He formerly directed the World Wildlife Fund's conservation program in Brazil, and is currently the coordinator of the University of Florida's multidisciplinary Working Forests in the Tropics program.

Margaret (Peggy) Carr: Associate professor in the University of Florida's Department of Landscape Architecture. She serves as the principal investigator for the Florida Statewide Greenways Planning Project and for an EPA funded project to identify major ecological systems and areas of importance to biological diversity in the eight southeastern states.

William Ellis: Electrical engineer and computer programer. He holds a BSEE from the University of Florida with experience in digital video and computer graphics. Currently he operates his own consulting business and is our resident Webmaster.

Larry D. Harris: Larry was born and raised on the Missouri and Platte River bottoms where annual floods and bird migrations dominated (formerly) life. During the 1960’s he became a natural historian and worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service doing things such as prescribed burning (c.1963); TX Parks and Wildlife in Gulf coastal ecology and Tanzania Game Division implementing Conservation reserves (750,000 acres was his domain). In the 1970’s he worked at the UFL school of forest resources and conservation, imagining that UFL, too, could be a international leader in Biodiversity understanding, conservation and management. In the 1980’s he began helped promulgate new conservation programming here at home (e.g. FL’s Nongame Wildlife Program; Pinhook Swamp linkage programming, FL Greenways programming and ‘WHIP’, the USDA/farm bill for Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program. Larry committed the 1990’s to developing and teaching wildlife conservation ‘Issues’ for UFL non-majors and advised Nationally and Internationally on issues of biodiversity conservation. He retired c. 1996.

Steve Kattell: Partner at Davis, Monk and Company working primarily with nonprofit organizations. Steve provides guidance regarding CTF's budget and finances and ensures compliance with Internal Revenue Service regulations.

Erik Lewis: GIS mapping expert and urban planner at the University of Florida.

Gary Meffe: CTF Executive Director from March 2002 to May 2003; textbook author, and Editor-in-Chief of the international scientific journal Conservation Biology.

Hugh L. Popenoe: Cattle and Water Buffalo Rancher in Alachua and Levy Counties and Professor of Soils, Agronomy, and Geography at the University of Florida. He was Founder and Director of the Florida Sea Grant College, chaired the administrative committee of the Florida Water Resources Research Center, served as Director of the UF Center for Aquatic Sciences, was Vice-President of the Florida State Horticultural Society and Vice-Chairman of the Gulf Universities Research Consortium. He is a Founder and currently President of the American Water Buffalo Association.

Jennifer B. Springfield: Practicing Gainesville attorney with 20 years experience, primarily in environmental/land use law and certified mediator.

Carlton Ward, Jr.: Carlton is an environmental photojournalist from Clearwater, Florida. Through his photographs, he promotes conservation of natural environments and cultural legacies. Carlton’s passion for nature was born from the Florida landscape, where eight generations of family history ground his perspective. As a leading proponent of conservation photography, Carlton founded the Legacy Institute for Nature & Culture (LINC). LINC’s mission is to raise awareness for natural environments and cultural legacies, educate about important connections between human societies and natural ecosystems, and promote conservation of natural heritage. Learn more at www.LINC.us and www.carltonward.com

Richard White: Currently works as a Board Certified Wills, Trusts & Estates Attorney. He serves as a member of the Professional Advisory Board for the Dade Community Foundationon and on the Board of Directors for the Gainesville Community Foundation. He received his B.A. from the University of Florida in 1972; his J.D. from Florida State University in 1975; and his LL.M. in Estate Planning from the University of Miami in 1977.

Kathleen Williams: Wildlife biologist, writer, and photographer.

Freddie Wood: Fifth generation farmer in Evinston. He owns the historic Wood & Swink General Store, which was built in 1882 and also includes the town's post office. Freddie would like to see as much farmland saved in Alachua County as possible.