2022 Volunteer Awards at Kissimmee Prairie

Samantha Carlson 

Samantha Carlson is the recipient of the 2022 Youth Volunteer of the Year Award for Visitor Services.   

Seventeen-year-old Samantha assists with office projects at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve. She works easily with others and is always willing to lend a helping hand.

Samantha also helps with the historic event at Okeechobee Battlefield Historic State Park. This is our largest event, which requires lots of planning and hours to accomplish. She consistently helps with the cleaning and maintenance at the Okeechobee Battlefield.

Thank you, Samantha, for volunteering while attending high school and completing college course work. Your efforts are appreciated.

Christina Evans  

Christina Evans is the recipient of the 2022 CSO of the Year Award for Resource-Based Recreation.

Christina Evans is a professional photographer who manages the website for the Friends of Kissimmee Prairie.

Christina started visiting in 1997 when Kissimmee Prairie first became a state park. Since then, she visits regularly to take photos. Her professional work and interests spill over into her work for the park, including an article on the prairie’s caracaras in a national birding magazine.

Friends of the Kissimmee Prairie was incorporated in 2011, and Christina has served continuously on the board in many roles, including president.

She has led fundraising efforts by organizing and hosting wildflower walks in the spring, summer and fall led by hosts such as authors and native plant nursery owners Craig Huegel, Roger Hammer and Tom Heitzmann. This effort was expanded to include butterfly walks by Buck and Linda Cooper.

As realization grew that the prairie has one of the darkest skies in Florida, she worked with Park Ranger Jenn Benson in filling out an application for the International Dark Sky Society. She led efforts to purchase and operate monitoring sensors to meet the requirements for the society’s official designation of the first Dark Sky park in Florida. The preserve and CSO now host stargazing events that have significantly boosted park visitation and raised awareness of dark sky issues.  

The preserve is a hotspot for biodiversity with flower and pollinator lists among the longest in the state. Christina assembled and formatted checklists of plants, butterflies and birds and found donated funding to print them, and the CSO has distributed thousands of the checklists from the park’s office.

Thank you, Christina, for your continued support of the park.

Brock Stanaland

Brock Stanaland is the recipient of the 2022 Long-Term Project of the Year Award for Natural Resources.  

Brock Stanaland’s amazing wildlife photography makes him a perfect fit for the PhotoPoint project at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. With nearly 58,000 acres of land, the prairie is the largest endangered dry prairie in Florida.

Prescribed fire, invasive plant management and imperiled species management occur across the landscape by our dedicated team. One way to visually document the success of our resource management programs is through PhotoPoints placed strategically across the landscape. There are currently 53 PhotoPoints, and each requires annual visits. It takes an immense amount of time to navigate and traverse our trails via all-terrain vehicle, walk out to the center of a management zone (our largest zone is 5,207 acres) and take a sequence of photos at each point.

In 2019, Brock signed up as a volunteer, completed our ATV training course, and has completed multiple sets of each PhotoPoint since. Over these three years, he has walked through thick vegetation, driven through variable trail conditions, and encountered some potentially dangerous wildlife on his quests to the PhotoPoints.

Not only has he successfully completed PhotoPoints in rough environmental conditions, but he has also done it with a positive attitude and a smile on his face. He is trustworthy, reliable and self-motivated – all qualities needed (and appreciated) by the park biologist who has many things to keep track of!

Even on his days off, Brock can be found on the park drive looking for wildlife to photograph with his personal equipment.

Thank you, Brock. We are incredibly grateful for your efforts on the PhotoPoint project and stunning wildlife images to share with our visitors!

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