{"id":435,"date":"2017-12-07T21:44:21","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T02:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/conservation\/?p=435"},"modified":"2017-12-07T21:44:21","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T02:44:21","slug":"fwc-hires-scientist-as-new-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":"FWC Hires Scientist As  New Director"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Sutton, a scientist on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission&#8217;s staff, has been named the agency&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/content.govdelivery.com\/accounts\/FLFFWCC\/bulletins\/1ca805f\">new executive director.<\/a>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>He succeeds Nick Wiley, who recently announced he was leaving the agency to take a job with Ducks Unlimited in Tennessee.\n<\/p>\n<p>Sutton formerly worked in the land management section at the Southwest Florida Water Management District.\n<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve worked with him in the past on a limited basis and found him to be a knowledgeable, serious and hard-working public official.\n<\/p>\n<p>He has a background in working on endangered species issues.\n<\/p>\n<p>His promotion is encouraging  because the vast  majority of Florida&#8217;s wildlife species are non-game species, which means they are not hunted or commercially exploited.\n<\/p>\n<p>Managing those species, which range from familiar species such as the Florida panther and Florida manatee to less-familiar species such as a number of cryptic reptiles, rare plants and invertebrates, is one of the agency&#8217;s challenges.  It will be more challenging  as population growth and the pressures of the development and road-building lobbies put more pressure on natural habitats  while funding to protect key parcels languishes in Tallahassee despite voter mandates to do otherwise.\n<\/p>\n<p>The FWC is also getting some new faces on the commission. One of them is the wife of a former commissioner and another is the son of professional golfer and Trump supporter Jack Nicklaus. Still to be appointed by Gov. Rick Scott is a successor to commission member Brian Yablonski, who is resigning to take a job in another state.\n<\/p>\n<p>How the new mix of wildlife commissioners will deal with the issues facing Florida&#8217;s wildlife will be something the environmental community should continue to monitor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Sutton, a scientist on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission&#8217;s staff, has been named the agency&#8217;s new executive director. He succeeds Nick Wiley, who recently announced he was leaving the agency to take a job with Ducks Unlimited in Tennessee. Sutton formerly worked in the land management section at the Southwest Florida Water [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}