I’m so excited to let you know that I gave my first formal talk about invasive species, “Origin of an invasive hunter: Educating kids of all ages about invasives”, yesterday at the 2011 Texas Invasive Plant and Pest Conference at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.
It was a blast! Thank you so much to the many scientists and citizen scientists in my audience who attended and gave me a rousing round of applause at the end of my talk. (I also showed them The boy who cried invasives, as part of my presentation.)
I also want to thank the student from Moody High School in Corpus Cristi who raised his hand during the question and answer session to let me know “that was pretty awesome man!” You’re cool too and you and your team of students have been doing great work against the saltcedar bandits!
Thanks again to the conference organizers who invited me to speak. That was great! I can’t wait to talk about invasives in front of everyone again!
I was honored to have a picture with Dr. Damon Waitt (right), Senior Director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and past president of the Texas Invasive Plant and Pest Council, and Mr. Travis Gallo (left), the Invaders of Texas Citizen Science Program Coordinator.
I had a fantastic opportunity to talk with many wonderful scientists during the conference, and I had a chance to create several short video interviews. I’ll be uploading them in the coming days, and I look forward to sharing them with you so you can enjoy some of the conference fun and discover new secrets about invasive species.
Commander Ben signing off…
Commander Ben 