Escambia County Awarded $16,500 for Panhandle Diamondback Terrapin Project

Escambia County's Natural Resources Management Department received a $16,500 award from the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program's Community Grant Program for the Panhandle Diamondback Terrapin Project, supporting diamondback terrapin monitoring and citizen science efforts. The department was formally awarded at the PPBEP's Community Grant Symposium, held Thursday evening, Nov. 14.

"I'm thrilled to have received this award," Escambia County Environmental Specialist Kindall Butler said. "Diamondback terrapins inhabit a majority of the Florida Panhandle and are critical to our estuaries, even if they're relatively unknown to most people. Their feeding habits help control periwinkle snails, which can cause significant damage to marsh plants when left unchecked. This award will benefit our monitoring and education efforts throughout our region, and I look forward to working with our partners on this project."

The project will expand monitoring, education, and citizen science opportunities throughout Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa counties to better understand terrapin nesting, habitat use, movement, and abundance. Monitoring efforts will continue through the summer nesting season and include spring data collection, tagging, and population monitoring. Education efforts will aim to teach more visitors and residents about diamondback terrapins and train citizen science volunteers.

Citizen science volunteers will monitor potential and known nesting beaches for terrapin activity during the nesting season, and will collect a variety of environmental and morphological data from observed terrapins. The data collected will support federal and state agencies in determining the status of terrapins in the Florida Panhandle.

In addition, funds will also support expansion of the existing Panhandle Terrapin Project, a collaborative citizen science driven effort between the U.S. Geological Survey, Florida Sea Grant, and Escambia County Natural Resources Department.

Anyone interested in becoming a citizen science volunteer for the Diamondback Terrapin Project is encouraged to contact Kindall Butler at [email protected] or Rick O'Connor at [email protected].

Follow Natural Resources Management on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date on the project and ways to get involved. To learn more about the project, visit https://tinyurl.com/PnhndlDiamondbackTerrapinPrjct.

Rick O'Connor, Florida Sea Grant Extension Agent, and Kindall Butler, Escambia County Environmental Specialist, received a $16,500 award for the Panhandle Diamondback Terrapin project from the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program's Community Grant Program.