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Board Member Elections, Dec 2022
The Nominating Committee has developed a slate of candidates who have agreed to run for a position on the OkIPC Board.
- Jodie Crose, Corteva Agriscience
- Elaine Ewigman, ODWC
- Brandon Gibson, Tribal Alliance for Pollinators
- Chris Hise, The Nature Conservancy
- Steven Smith, Noble Research Institute (re-elect)
You can read the profile of each candidate below. Write-in candidates will also be accepted during the election.
The link for voting will be sent through this eNewsletter on the morning of December 8th. Online voting will be open Dec. 8-14. Subscribe to the newsletter!
Jodie Crose
I was raised on a small cattle and pecan operation in northeast Oklahoma. I grew up in agriculture and found my passion for invasive species control while attending college at Oklahoma State. I studied botany and plant and soil science and took courses that introduced me to the impacts of these plants and taught me how to control them. I just couldn’t get enough of Oklahoma State, so I stuck around for a Master’s degree in agronomic weed science. From there, I traveled to northeast Wyoming where I recently completed my PhD with the University of Wyoming. My dissertation focused on invasive annual grass control and native species restoration. In May, I accepted a position as a field scientist working in range and pasture with Corteva Agriscience. I look forward to becoming more involved with OkIPC and working with land managers throughout the state to reduce invasive plant impact.
Elaine Ewigman
I am the Aquatic Nuisance Species/Fish Kill Coordinator for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. I worked as the very first ANS Technician, starting my time with ODWC in December 2021, and just recently promoted to the coordinator position September 1 of this year. I work with anything that is invasive in and around water as well as investigating reported fish kills on public waters. Even though the organisms I work with are not wanted in our state, I still find them fascinating in their own ways. I’m looking forward to being a part of this group!
Brandon Gibson
I am a program coordinator for Tribal Alliance for Pollinators based in Bixby, OK. I began my current position in January 2020 and have been enjoying it ever since. We collect seeds of plants that are native to Oklahoma and sourced exclusively from Oklahoma, often from remnant areas. We then grow those seeds out and distribute the plant plugs to the tribes of Oklahoma at no cost to them. I spend most of my time during the warm months of the year propagating native plant species, collecting seeds, conducting plantings with tribes, and doing presentations about how, and why, to establish native habitat. During the winter months, I spend most of my time cleaning/processing native seeds for our native seed bank that is available to the tribes of Oklahoma for habitat restoration, as well as conducting presentations about our native plants and pollinators.
Chris Hise
I direct land management and research efforts at The Nature Conservancy’s Four Canyon Preserve, a 4,000-acre natural area in western Oklahoma. I also serve as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Manager for TNC’s Oklahoma Chapter and is a certified Type 2 Prescribed Fire Burn Boss. I graduated from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. A lifelong resident of the Great Plains, Chris enjoys all types of outdoor activities and spending time with his family.
Steven Smith
I grew up in Yukon, OK on a small farm. I graduated with a bachelors and master’s degree from Oklahoma State University. After OSU, I served as a wildlife management area manager for the Nebraska Game and Parks Department for two years. I have spent the last 17 years as a wildlife and fisheries consultant for the Noble Research Institute. I am privileged to get to work with farmers and ranchers to achieve their regenerative agricultural goals in the Southern Great Plains. It has been my pleasure to serve on the OkIPC board the past few years. The OkIPC has been a valuable resource in highlighting the danger of numerous invasive species as well as promoting native species.
Seeking Nominations for Board Members
The OkIPC is seeking nominations for the following positions with the Council:
- President Elect
- Treasurer
- 4 At-Large Board Members
Self nominations are accepted. Any member in good standing can be nominated to the Board. Members in good standing must have a current paid membership. To check your membership status, renew your membership, or join for the first time, please go to: https://www.joinit.org/o/okipc.
Please send nominations to: prill@ou.edu no later than March 29th.
Annual Business Meeting
Annual Business Meeting
10:00 a.m. Embassy Suites Norman, Room University A (OKNRC)
Tentative Agenda
- Minutes – reading and approval of previous meetings records
- Membership Status of Board Members
- Elections
Slate of Nominees approved by the board 10 Jan 2020 (no additional nominations were made by OkIPC members)
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- President-Elect – Amy Buthod
- Secretary – Jeri Irby
- Treasurer – Amy Buthod
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At Large Board Members –
Term 2019-2021
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- Mike Kenna
- Marla Peek
- Jay Pruett
- Greg Scott
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Term 2020-2022
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- Laura Goodman
- Steven Smith
- Priscilla Crawford
- Curtis Tackett
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- Action Items
- Update to Invasive Plant Watch List – Amy Buthod
- Fact sheets and Publications – Karen Hickman
- Announcements
- Adjournment
Mission: Facilitating education and management for protection of our economic and natural resources.
Stakeholders:
- Businesses/Industries: agricultural, horticultural, landscape, aquacultural, wildlife, tourism, forestry, and recreational
- Landowners and managers: private and public
- Agencies: federal, state, local
- Native American Tribes
- Non-profit organizations: conservation, agricultural, and land management
- Institutions and Programs: education, research
Strategies:
- Increase awareness through education about invasive plants, focusing on:
- Sources of invasives
- Economic and ecological effects of invasives
- Recognition of invasives
- Prevention of invasives
- Early detection and rapid response to invasives
- Control and management strategies for invasives
- Encourages legislative and regulatory improvements that increase invasives control effectiveness.
- Promote greater coordination between all entities engaged in or affecting invasives management.
- Serve as a clearinghouse for invasives management strategies.
- Identify and encourage sources of funding for invasives education and management.
- Identify invasive species and assess their potential threat for Oklahoma.
adopted 29 September 2009 by the OkIPC Officers and Board of Directors, revised 16 December 2013
Annual Business Meeting
11:00 a.m. Hyatt Regency Hotel, Room A, Tulsa
- Minutes – reading and approval of previous meetings records
- Officer and Member Reports
- President
- President Elect
- Secretary
- Treasurer
- All other Board Members
- Committee Reports
- Annual Meeting (including Invasive Species specific meeting)
- Policy
- Membership and Communication (including website)
- Nominations
- Old Business
- Membership sign-up/renewal app
- Member swag
- New Business
- 2018 annual meeting
- Student award presentation
- Kudzu Survey
- OkIPC Mission and Strategies
- Announcements
- Adjournment
Mission: Facilitating education and management for protection of our economic and natural resources.
Stakeholders:
- Businesses/Industries: agricultural, horticultural, landscape, aquacultural, wildlife, tourism, forestry, and recreational
- Landowners and managers: private and public
- Agencies: federal, state, local
- Native American Tribes
- Non-profit organizations: conservation, agricultural, and land management
- Institutions and Programs: education, research
Strategies:
- Increase awareness through education about invasive plants, focusing on:
- Sources of invasives
- Economic and ecological effects of invasives
- Recognition of invasives
- Prevention of invasives
- Early detection and rapid response to invasives
- Control and management strategies for invasives
- Encourages legislative and regulatory improvements that increase invasives control effectiveness.
- Promote greater coordination between all entities engaged in or affecting invasives management.
- Serve as a clearinghouse for invasives management strategies.
- Identify and encourage sources of funding for invasives education and management.
- Identify invasive species and assess their potential threat for Oklahoma.
adopted 29 September 2009 by the OkIPC Officers and Board of Directors, revised 16 December 2013
Election Results
It was a very close elections for At-Large Board members:
Marla Peek and Jay Pruett were re-elected and we can welcome Greg Scott, Jeri Irby, and David Gerkin to the Board.
Thank you so much to Mike Porter who has served for the past two years on the OkIPC Board!
As anticipated, Tonya Dunn and Amy Buthod were re-elected to Secretary and Treasurer respectively. Karen Hickman was approved as President-Elect, this will be her 3rd term as President.
Election Nominations
The OkIPC Nomination Committee has solicited nominations for 5 At-Large Board members, President Elect, Treasurer, and Secretary. Below is information about each nominee. Please familiarize yourself with the candidates before the elections which will begin with online voting on January 5th and concluding on January 19th.
At-Large Board Nominees:
Jerí Irby
Jerí Irby is the Forest Regeneration and Tree Improvement Area Forester for Oklahoma Forestry Services. Irby is responsible for the OFS Forest Regeneration Center, also known as the state nursery, where OFS grows trees and shrubs chosen for their adaptability to Oklahoma’s climate and environment. Seedlings are sold to landowners and others for reforestation, wildlife habitat development, erosion control, windbreaks, and a variety of other environmental purposes. The facility is located on 120 acres south of Norman in Goldsby. Irby is also overseeing the Tree Improvement Center which conducts research, breeds and propagates genetically improved seeds for the state nursery. Serving as Education Coordinator with Oklahoma Forestry Services since 2012, Irby coordinated the environmental education program Project Learning Tree; directed youth forestry camp; developed and implemented forestry curriculum and managed outreach events throughout the state. Irby has served as secretary/treasurer for the Oklahoma Division of the Ouachita Society of American Foresters and is the recipient of the Ouachita Society of American Foresters Young Leadership Award in 2016 and Ted Silker Award in 2015. Irby holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Forest Resource Conservation from Oklahoma State University and a Master of Science degree in Land Resources and Environmental Science from Montana State University.
David Gerken
David Gerken is the Turfgrass Product Manager for Johnston Seed of Enid, OK. David joined the Johnston Seed Company in March of this year after 19 years serving as an Assistant/Associate Professor in Horticulture at Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City campus. David has a BS in Vocational Agriculture and MS in Horticulture/Turf Science. In addition to his faculty experience at OSU-OKC he was a high school instructor back in the 1980s in Kansas, and following his MS program he worked in the golf course management industry and for an environmental solutions company prior to taking the position at OSU-OKC in the late 1990s. On the side David and his wife Cara maintain a registered cattle herd and a commercial stocker operation, They have also produced and market some specialty crops such as high tunnel vegetables.
Marla Peek
Background: Marla Peek is Director of Regulatory Affairs for Oklahoma Farm Bureau, where she has worked for almost 30 years. Marla works with state and federal agencies to achieve the goals of the Farm Bureau, the state’s largest agricultural organization. Farm Bureau’s mission is to improve the lives of rural Oklahomans.
Marla grew up on a farm in Custer County in western Oklahoma, where her family grew wheat and stocker cattle. She and her sisters raised registered Duroc hogs. Marla has a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Communications from Oklahoma State University, and a master’s degree from the University of Central Oklahoma.
Marla works extensively on natural resources issues, including water quality and quantity, invasive plant species, and threatened and endangered species. She has served on the boards of or worked with various natural resources conservation initiatives including the:
- Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council
- American Farm Bureau Federation Water Quality Task Force
- Oklahoma Eastern Redcedar Task Force
- Oklahoma Grazinglands Management Association
Some of the proposed, candidate, threatened or endangered species issues she has worked with include the Arkansas River Shiner, Lesser Prairie Chicken and the Monarch Butterfly.
Mike Porter
Michael D. Porter is a senior wildlife and fisheries consultant with the Noble Research Institute in Ardmore, Oklahoma where he has worked for 37 years. Mike provides wildlife and fisheries management technical assistance to land managers in south-central Oklahoma and north-central Texas. Prior to working with Noble, he was self-employed as an independent wildlife management consultant to ranchers in South Texas and as a range research technical assistant for Texas A&M Range Research Laboratory. His career has been devoted to helping people, especially land managers, better understand and conserve wildlife and fisheries resources.
Mike earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences and a Master of Agriculture Degree in wildlife science from Texas A&M University. Mike is a certified wildlife biologist and a certified professional in range management.
Mike has considerable experience managing white-tailed deer, northern bobwhite, eastern bluebird, beaver, waterfowl, largemouth bass, channel catfish, bluegill, grass carp, ponds, hunting leases, prescribed fire, woody plantings, aquatic vegetation, soil erosion as well as other natural resource issues.
Jay Pruett
My career of 45+ years in environmental management has included work for a pollution control agency and as director of environmental affairs for an electric utility corporation in four states, along with work on conservation projects in Latin America.
For the past 14 years, I have been the director of conservation for the Oklahoma Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, overseeing the operation of our 12 nature preserves, new acquisitions, conservation program development and implementation, and partnerships with other conservation entities, organizations, and agencies. It was in this role that I arranged for and oversaw an ‘audit’ of invasive species management in Oklahoma in 2009. The results of that audit led me to create the Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council (OkIPC), to fill a need for coordination and facilitation among a number of stakeholder entities involved in one way or another with invasive plant species in the state. I designed the organization and guided development of the strategies and implementation plans for accomplishing the organization’s goals. I have been on the board since its inception and served as president for several years.
My years of overseeing operation of The Conservancy’s preserves, including their invasive species management programs, as well as working with a multitude of agencies and organizations, along with my creation and leading of the Oklahoma Prescribed Fire Council, have all given me experience that is directly relevant to the work of OkIPC. I would love to continue to work with the OkIPC board to build on the board’s past successes and make further strides in managing the negative impacts of invasive plant species on our native habitats and wildlife in Oklahoma.
Greg Scott
Background: Gregory has been practicing as a soil scientist for over 40 years, for the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service from 1976-2013; and currently, the Oklahoma Conservation Commission since 2013 following his retirement from the USDA-NRCS in 2013 as the State Soil Scientist for Oklahoma. His field experience includes Oklahoma, Alaska, North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas.
He earned his B.S. degree in Agronomy-soils in 1976. He earned his M.S. in Environmental Science-Geology in 1999. His thesis examined the interplay between fluvial and aeolian processes along the terraces of the Cimarron River in Major County, Oklahoma.
Greg serves on the board of directors for No-till on the Plains, an educational NGO in Kansas, and is a Director for the Lincoln County, Oklahoma Conservation District. He is a published author, including Soil Surveys, peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and popular publications. He represents Green Cover Seed, (Bladen, Nebraska) in Oklahoma. Green Cover Seed specializes in seed mixes for cover and forage crops, concentrating in soil health and plant diversity.
Greg lives with his wife Becky on a small cattle operation in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. They have a cow-calf operation, and experiment with forage and grazing systems.
Treasurer Nominees:
Amy Buthod, Oklahoma Biological Survey
I have served as the Botanical Specialist at the Oklahoma Biological Survey since 2000. In this position, I am charged with overseeing the collections (approximately 275,000 specimens) of the Robert Bebb Herbarium and with participating in botanical surveys throughout the state of Oklahoma. During my tenure, I have collected approximately 18,000 specimens of vascular plants, both native and exotic. I am familiar with all of Oklahoma’s invasive plants taxa and, because of my ongoing, extensive field duties, am on the “front lines” when it comes to identifying new invaders to the state. For instance, in 2013, Bruce Hoagland and I discovered the presence of marsh dayflower (Murdannia keisak; Commelinaceae; Buthod and Hoagland 2013) in southeastern Oklahoma. Marsh dayflower is a fast grower and forms a thick mat of vegetation, reducing water flow and allowing it to outcompete native species. It is considered a noxious weed in Washington, and is on the “watch” lists of many other states. I believe my work could provide valuable knowledge to the Oklahoma Invasive Plants Council, and I would look forward to serving on the board as treasurer or in any other capacity.
Secretary Nominees:
Tonya Dunn, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Tonya has served as secretary already and her attention to detail in her minutes of the board meetings has been very valuable in recording the often fast-paced and complex discussions of the board members in a very readable style. Her representation of USCOE is also a value to us on the board, especially now that she is working in the aquatic invasives arena.
President-Elect Nominees:
Karen Hickman, Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Oklahoma State University
I am currently Assistant Dean of Academic Programs in the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources and Professor of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Range Management and the Ecology of Invasive Species, and advise quite a few undergraduate and graduate students. My research program has focused on the ecological interactions of invasive plant species with native communities and the effects of management on plant population and community dynamics in the Great Plains. I currently serve on the Board of Directors for the Society for Range Management, president of the Enid, OK Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and previously served as president of the Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council, the Oklahoma Section of the Society for Range Management, and the Range Science Education Council. As a founding member of the OkIPC, I am confident that we can continue to influence how Oklahoma deals with invasive plant species. I am eager to continue to serve OkIPC again as President..
Join OkIPC
The Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council has re-established an official membership!
Benefits:
- satisfaction knowing that you are contributing to the battle against invasive species in Oklahoma – see our organizational strategies
- discounted registration fees to invasive plant seminars and workshops
- sticker to declare your commitment to fight invasives in the state
- eligible to vote in board member elections
Membership funds contribute to:
- small grants fund
- development and printing of outreach materials
- student scholarships to related conferences
4th Quarter Board Meeting
September 30, 2017, 12:00 p.m. Conference Call: 405-325-8164. Password: 2112.
- Minutes – reading and approval of previous meetings records (2017 Sept 12 DRAFT OkIPC BOD Meeting Minutes)
- Officer and Member Reports
- President
- President Elect
- Secretary
- Treasurer
- All other Board Members
- Committee Reports
- Annual Meeting (including Invasive Species specific meeting)
- Policy
- Membership and Communication (including website)
- Nominations
- Old Business
- Re-establishing official paid memberships
- New Business
- Announcements
- Adjournment
3rd Quarter Board Meeting
September 12, 2017, 2:00 p.m. Conference Call: 405-325-8164. Password: 2112.
- Minutes – reading and approval of previous meetings records (2017 July 27 Draft Minutes)
- Officer and Member Reports
- President
- President Elect
- Secretary
- Treasurer
- All other Board Members
- Committee Reports
- Annual Meeting
- Policy
- Membership and Communication
- Nominations
- Old Business
- Conservation Summit summary – how can OkIPC have a greater role?
- Website – OkIPC and OkInvasives
- New Business
- Reinstate official council membership with monetary dues
- Invasive species specific meeting/event
- Stakeholders to target for nominations
- Announcements
- Adjournment
Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council 