The community is invited to “mosey on down” to the Florida Museum of Natural History tomorrow evening for a fundraising event called “Passport to Cowboy Florida.” Coordinators hope folks will dress in blue jeans and bandanas and plan to kick up their heels and pony up some dollars to support the museum’s year long activities. WUFT-FM’s Donna Green-Townsend talked with coordinators Chris Machen and Eileen Silverman about how the fundraiser is in conjunction with the current exhibit “Five Centuries of Cracker Cattlemen.”
The Obama administration will no longer allow new deep water drilling projects to go forward without environmental reviews, as happened with BP’s Deepwater Horizon. The administration announced the new policy today (Monday) after the White House Council on Environmental Quality reported that BP got environmental exemptions based on decades-old data. Shallow-water drilling will also be subjected to stricter environmental scrutiny under the new policy.
Tar balls continue to wash up on Gulf shores despite the positive spin the President tried to give by vacationing in the Panhandle over the weekend. The big questions remain, ‘just how much oil remains in the water column below the surface and what will the impact be on coral reefs in the Gulf?’. Donna Green-Townsend talked with Gustav Paulay from the University of Florida about those issues. Professor Paulay is the Curator of Invertebrates at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Paulay says in addition to the Florida Keys, there are several other coral colonies at risk in the Gulf.
Shark experts from around the globe recently met in Providence Road Island. Among them was George Burgess from the University of Florida. Burgess wears many hats including work as the Curator of the International Shark Attack File and as the Coordinator for Museum Operations at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Though the BP oil spill was not on the official agenda for the conference, Burgess says it was a hot topic amongst all the shark researchers. In part two of her interview, Donna Green-Townsend talked with Burgess about how the BP oil spill will virtually take a toll on the entire food chain in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Gainesville community can experience a true audio and visual art and science performance Friday night (May 7) at the Phillips Center For The Performing Arts. Donna Green-Townsend talked with the Musical Director of the Gainesville Chamber Orchestra, Evans Haile, about this celestial happening involving music, NASA video and telescopes.
Curator Emeritus David Webb at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville (photo courtesy of the Florida Museum of Natural History)
Scientists around the world are taking note of recent discoveries in a North Florida river, discoveries which could change history books. As Donna Green-Townsend reports, paleontologists and archaeologists like David Webb, with theFlorida Museum of Natural History are busy analyzing and arranging exhibits from their findings in the Aucilla Riverin Florida’s panhandle.
