Craig Pittman, Clay Henderson & Anne McCrary Sullivan: A Conversation

Alan Scott is a career professional with the National Park Service. He currently serves as Chief of Education and Interpretation at Everglades National Park where he develops and supports programs that engage park visitors and neighbors.

Anne McCrary Sullivan is author or co-author of four books, three of which focus on the Everglades, including Ecology II: Throat Song from the Everglades and The Everglades: Stories of Grit and Spirit from the Mangrove Wilderness (Pineapple Press), written with Holly Genzen. McCrary Sullivan is an AIRIE (Artist in Residence in Everglades) Fellow, a Florida Master Naturalist, a wilderness paddler, a Fulbright Scholar, professor emerita of National Louis University, and a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her newest book is Learning Calabar: Notes from a Poet’s Year in Nigeria. In The Everglades: Stories of Grit and Spirit from the Mangrove Wilderness, we hear 21 tales from people who have ventured into it – for scientific work, search-and-rescue missions, artistic work, personal renewal, or just for adventure. We find stories of manatee rescue, shark encounters, and wild beauty.

Clay Henderson is the author of The Floridas. He is an environmental lawyer and retired faculty at Stetson University. He has served as president of the Florida Audubon Society and the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. Despite Florida’s important place at the beginning of the American conservation movement and its notable successes in the fight against environmental damage, the full story of land conservation in the state has not been told until now. In Forces of Nature: A History of Florida Land Conservation (University Press of Florida), Henderson draws on historical sources, interviews, and his long environmental law career to celebrate the individuals and organizations who made the Sunshine State a leader in state-funded conservation and land preservation. He writes about early naturalists like William Bartram and John Muir, familiar heroes like Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and May Mann Jennings, and lesser-known champions like Frank Chapman, who helped convince Theodore Roosevelt to establish Pelican Island as the first national wildlife refuge in the United States. In Forces of Nature, Henderson recounts the many small victories that helped Florida create several units of the national park system, nearly 30 national wildlife refuges, and one of the best state park systems in the country.

Native Floridian Craig Pittman is an author and environmental reporter. After 31 years at the Tampa Bay Times, he now writes a weekly column for the Florida Phoenix and is a co-host of the popular podcast “Welcome to Florida.” His six nonfiction books about Florida include The New York Times bestseller Oh, Florida: How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country and Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther. The quiet manatee has long been a flashpoint of environmental debates. It is Florida’s most famous endangered species and its most controversial. Manatees appear on hundreds of license plates, attract hordes of tourists, and expose the uneasy relationships between science and the law and freedom and responsibility. The battle over their protection has evolved into a war. Pittman is the first environmental writer to explore the complex history, culture, and science of the controversies and concerns surrounding this remarkable creature. In Manatee Insanity: Inside the War over Florida’s Most Famous Endangered Species (Florida History and Culture), he follows Florida’s gentle giants through time and space, detailing interactions with various human actors, from Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Jeb Bush to Jimmy Buffett.