{"id":541,"date":"2018-04-25T16:05:44","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T20:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/conservation\/?p=541"},"modified":"2018-04-25T16:05:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T20:05:44","slug":"gaye-sharpe-named-to-succeed-jeff-spence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=541","title":{"rendered":"Gaye Sharpe Named To Succeed Jeff Spence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gaye Sharpe, whose skills as a scientist, manager and fifth generation Polk County native helped to make the Polk County Environmental Lands Program a success, has been tapped to become the new director of parks and natural resources.\n<\/p>\n<p>Sharpe, whose appointment by County Manager Jim Freeman must be confirmed by the County Commission, will succeed longtime director Jeff Spence, who is retiring.\n<\/p>\n<p>She played a key role in the development of Circle B Bar Reserve and Polk&#8217;s Nature Discovery Center and had been involved in a variety of environmental monitoring work before taking over the Environmental Lands Program, which was funded by tax proceeds approved in a 1994 referendum organized by Sierra and other local environmental groups.\n<\/p>\n<p>Her appointment provides some continuity in the program at a time when taxpayer funding for the program has ended, forcing the program to be supported by an endowment created to provide a sustainable funding source for the management and operation of the sites purchased by Polk County and its partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gaye Sharpe, whose skills as a scientist, manager and fifth generation Polk County native helped to make the Polk County Environmental Lands Program a success, has been tapped to become the new director of parks and natural resources. Sharpe, whose appointment by County Manager Jim Freeman must be confirmed by the County Commission, will succeed [&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-541","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\/541","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=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}