Nominated by
Travis Mangione
March 22, 2023
Ever since Emalee was hired, her smile and can-do attitude always shined. Her main duties included red-cockaded woodpecker monitoring and equipment maintenance; two duties not for the faint of heart! The red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) monitoring was not your average duty because it was the Big Cypress population. Few RCW populations are as inaccessible as Big Cypress sometimes requiring helicopter or airboat to get to the clusters. Even with the arduous task of tree inspections across a 728,000 acre preserve, she always is cheerful and enthusiastic.
She also stayed positive with equipment maintenance. No biologist I have met enjoys working on equipment. It is one of the reasons we choose to be biologists and not mechanics. She still tackles it with a smile. In the office, everyone enjoys Emalee's company and laughter is not far behind. Emalee is hard working, graceful, persistent, and always level-headed. She has done an awesome job for our office over the last two years, and we are happy for her as she goes on another adventure!