SGI NEWS
The Southeastern Grasslands Institute is thrilled to congratulate our friends at PBS Appalachia on their Emmy Win for Best Documentary for “The Prairie Preacher”. The documentary features two SGI staff: Dr. Dwayne Estes, SGI Co-Founder and Executive Director, and Alaina Krakowiak, SGI’s Central Appalachian Grasslands Coordinator/Ecologist. The documentary is available on YouTube here.
Read the full APSU press release here.
Spanning across the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, near the small town of Guthrie, KY, is a globally rare type of prairie community. Now, thanks to a generous donation by Robert and Deborah Hulse to the Southeastern Grasslands Institute (SGI), this place will be permanently protected for future generations…
What did Clarksville – or even the entire Middle Tennessee region – look like in the late 18th century, shortly after the American Revolution? At Austin Peay State University, the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative (SGI) has spent years exploring this question in its effort conserve and restore the south’s original native grasslands…
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The BAND Foundation of Washington, D.C., has continued its commitment to Austin Peay State University through a recent gift to the APSU Foundation to benefit the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative (SGI). This contribution brings the organization’s total giving amount to date to more than $800,000.
Dr. Dwayne Estes leads a grassland tour.
SGI, based at Austin Peay State University and part of the Center of Excellence for Field Biology, is in the early stages of developing a seedbank to serve the broader Mid-South region, especially for grassland species.
On Feb 6, 2020, the Piedmont Prairie Partnership, a group of non-profit, state, and federal agencies, released two new videos documenting the history of Piedmont Prairies and work being done in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to bring them back. Historically, much of the Piedmont was covered by prairies – some with scattered trees and some without.
The Southeastern Grasslands Initiative and Quail Forever officially signed a 5-year Memorandum of Understanding December 6, 2019, outlining the scope of a relationship that was initiated in 2018 and has already borne fruit: the Farm Bill team for the Resource Conservation Partnership Project (RCPP), which is supervised and based out of SGI headquarters on the APSU campus, are staff members of QF!
The Austin Peay State University Southeastern Grasslands Initiative and The University of Texas at Austin Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center will advance their missions of landscape conservation and ecological restoration through a partnership formalized last week.
We are pleased to recognize Kevin England of Alabama for outstanding volunteer commitment to SGI. Kevin, a 7-8th grade science teacher at Double Springs Middle School, got his masters degree studying botany at the University of West Alabama, and as a resident of northern Alabama, he is very active in documenting the region's vascular flora and lichens.
The TN Department of Transportation awarded SGI to develop a plan to better conserve and manage the grassland and pollinator habitat found on Tennessee highway rights-of-way. A large part of the project involves finding and documenting the existing habitat along Tennessee’s highway corridors so that we can help TDOT prioritize areas in need or protection and restoration. Here’s the exciting report from our first surveys of the 2019 season.
