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Friday, September 10th, 2010
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Project Orianne was founded in 2008 to prevent further declines of eastern indigo snakes and to restore their populations. Orianne is a young girl who had the opportunity to hold an indigo snake; her love for this snake prompted her to ask her father if he could do something to save them. In response to her request, the Kaplan family created Project Orianne and forever changed the future of North America’s largest and most charismatic snake. The Kaplan family has given the eastern indigo snake a chance by providing a group of experts armed with the necessary funding to change the species declining trajectory to one moving towards recovery. Project Orianne staff is as follows:
Executive Director, Dr. Christopher Jenkins
 Dr. Chris Jenkins is Executive Director of Project Orianne. Chris has also worked with Wildlife Conservation Society, the US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, University of Massachusetts, University of British Columbia, and National Geographic. He has worked on the conservation of reptiles and amphibians throughout North America and in the Andes of South America. Chris’s primary interests are in the ecology and conservation of snakes, and the management of nonprofit organizations. He received a B.S. and M.S. from the University of Massachusetts in Wildlife Biology, and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Idaho State University. His dissertation focused on the effect of livestock grazing, invasive plants, and altered fire regimes on the reproductive ecology of Great Basin rattlesnakes. Chris’s current projects include protection and management of eastern indigo snakes and their habitats, understanding the factors responsible for the decline of eastern indigos, restoration of gopher tortoise and eastern indigo populations, and the conservation of vipers; including rattlesnakes of the Rocky Mountains and developing projects on Appalachian populations of timber rattlesnakes. Chris is working with IUCN to develop a Viper Specialist Group which he will chair, serves as Co-chair on the Upland Snake Initiative of the Gopher Tortoise Council, and is on the Steering Committee for the Southeast Region of Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation. Chris has contributed to multiple scientific papers and has written multiple book chapters, including Modeling Snake Distribution and Habitat in the recently published book titled Snakes: Ecology and Conservation. Chris lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife, two children, a bird dog, and a lazy mutt.Gary Baldaeus, Chief Financial Officer
 Gary serves as Orianne‘s chief financial officer. After completing eight years of military service during the 1960’s, he obtained his BBA in accounting from City University of New York-Baruch College. Upon graduation he joined Ernst & Young and retired after thirty years with the Firm. While with Ernst & Young he served in numerous capacities as an audit and consulting partner, including, among other things, as a specialist in the healthcare and non-profit industries. He is a practicing CPA, and a member of the AICPA, NYSSCPAs, and other professional and social organizations. He has presented to a broad array of professional organizations on all aspects of accounting and operating matters and has served as an adjunct professor at New York Medical College. He is a member of the board of directors and serves as Audit Committee Chairman of Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center, a tax exempt nursing home organization located in New York City serving children with significant medical needs.Dirk Stevenson, Director of Inventory and Monitoring
 Dirk attended Southern Illinois University where he studied zoology (Bachelor of Science, 1988). He has close to 20 years of professional experience working as a field zoologist in the southeastern Coastal Plain. Dirk has previously worked for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, The Nature Conservancy, and the Department of Defense (Fort Stewart). Dirk has published several dozen technical and popular articles, including recent eastern indigo snake and flatwoods salamander papers that appeared in peer-reviewed journals. He authored or co-authored numerous species accounts (including the eastern indigo snake account) and provided many photographs for a recently published book on the herpetofauna of Georgia. Dirk resides in Hinesville, Georgia, with his “birder” wife Beth, and two rat terriers.Fred Antonio, Director of the Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation
 Growing up in Arcadia, California, Fred spent his early years scouring the San Gabriel Mountains collecting reptiles and a vast array of animal artifacts. By his early teens, his “zoo”, that included snakes, lizards, giant kangaroo rats, and even a spider monkey, had grown to the point that his Father built him a reptile house in the back yard just to get the menagerie out of the house! Fred pursued his formal education graduating from Montana State University with a degree in Fish and Wildlife Management. His career in the zoo field began as an elephant keeper at Central Florida Zoo, Reptile Keeper at the Dallas Zoo, and Research Assistant at the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission’s Wildlife Research Lab. He joined the staff of Santa Fe Community College Teaching Zoo where for 10 years he taught students that were studying to become keepers in the zoo field. Fred returned to Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens in 1988 where he was Director of Operation/General Curator prior to joining Project Orianne in May 2009. Fred’s primary interests have been the reproductive and captive biology of pitvipers, which are the primary topic of his publications. He has served the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) as Population Manager for the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, Wildlife Conservation Management Committee (WCMC) Vice Chair for Studbooks, and is currently a member of the Steering Committee for the AZA Snake Advisory Group. Fred’s interest in the eastern indigo snake began early in his career when he reproduced indigos at Central Florida Zoo and Santa Fe Community College. In 2008, Fred published the first studbook and Population Management Plan (PMP) for the eastern indigo snake. Although currently the goal of the PMP is to provide snakes for conservation education programs, the opportunity to expand into a field reintroduction project is “an awesome vision whose time has come for our country’s largest and most impressive non-venomous snake species”.Heidi Hall, Program Manager
 Heidi Hall (Holm) studied Fisheries and Wildlife Management at Hocking College in Ohio where she earned a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Management. After a little globe-trekking, she continued her education at the University of Idaho, studying Wildlife Biology, earning a B.S. in Biology in 2003. Upon graduating, Heidi began her career as a consultant, working primarily with the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act; working with various species ranging from sage grouse to salmon. Heidi has conducted and written numerous Biological Assessments, Environmental Impact Statements, and Habitat Assessments, and is also proficient in grant and proposal writing. Having always wanted to work in the non-profit realm, Heidi is very pleased to be the Program Manager for Project Orianne. She currently resides in the Southern Appalachian Mountains with her husband and two dogs; where they enjoy and active life full of motorcycle riding, fly fishing, and hiking.Wayne Taylor, Director of Land Management
 Wayne Taylor earned a B.S. in Forest Resources and Conservation from the University of Florida in 1994 with a major in wildlife ecology. Following graduation, Wayne served in AmeriCorps on the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, where he received initial wildland fire training and his first fire experience. Since, he has led or participated in nearly 500 prescribed fires involving more than 200,000 acres while working for the St. Johns River Water Management District, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Air Force, private contractors, and volunteering for private landowners. Additionally, Wayne has wildland firefighting experience from Florida, California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming. He has been a host and mentor to the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center for 10 years by instructing and providing prescribed fire opportunities for U.S. and international wildland fire professionals. Wayne is fortunate to have directly experienced recent significant disturbance events on public lands he was managing, the ‘98 Florida wildfires and the ‘04 hurricanes, and directly observed their effects on shaping natural communities. He has applied this experience to upland and wetland natural community restoration and restoration logging in the context of ecologically driven prescribed fire programs. Wayne is currently a co-principal investigator on a long term fire-climate study in central Florida. Wayne is able to dedicate long hours working fire through the support of his wife and son.Javan Bauder, Research Ecologist
 Javan Bauder received his B.S. in wildlife resources from the University of Idaho in 2007, and his M.S. in biology from Idaho State University in 2009. For his master’s research, Javan studied prairie rattlesnake movements and habitat selection in the Frank Church Wilderness of central Idaho and how mountainous topography and prey availability influenced those movements. Javan is currently studying the thermal ecology of eastern indigo snakes in southern Georgia to understand how alterations to their thermal environment may have contributed towards their declines and is assisting in the development of an occupancy monitoring program for indigo snakes in the Altamaha River drainage. Javan’s primary research interests are the spatial ecology and conservation biology of reptiles and amphibians. He has previously studied amphibian use of manmade wetlands, and used genetic techniques to determine the source of a potentially introduced population of salamander in northern Idaho. Javan has also worked on a variety of wildlife research projects including amphibian landscape genetics in northern Idaho, southwestern willow flycatcher nest monitoring in Arizona, prairie falcon surveys in southern Idaho, and raptor monitoring on the Washington coast. Javan currently lives in northeast Georgia.Stephen Spear, Postdoctoral Research Scientist
 Dr. Stephen Spear received his B.S in Biology at the University of Richmond in 2001, his M.S. in Biology at Idaho State University in 2004, and his Ph.D. in Zoology at Washington State University in 2009. Both his master’s and doctoral research focused on understanding how landscape configuration influenced the population genetic structure of amphibians. For his master’s research, he studied tiger salamanders across the northern range of Yellowstone National Park to understand how cover type, topography and moisture gradients correlated with population connectivity and trends in population size. His dissertation research focused on the tailed frog, an endemic forest amphibian of the Pacific Northwest, and he investigated the relative effects timber harvest, large forest fires, and the Mount St. Helens eruption had on tailed frog gene flow and genetic diversity. In addition he has also worked on projects investigating giant salamander response to timber harvest treatments, and describing Tasmanian devil gene flow to predict how a deadly communicable disease might spread. Currently, he is working with researchers at Idaho State University, College of Southern Nevada, and University of Idaho to use demographic, genetic, and modeling approaches to predict how energy development might affect the persistence of midget faded rattlesnake populations in southwest Wyoming. Steve lives in eastern Washington with his wife and an assortment of adopted reptiles and amphibians.
Karen McLain, Accountant
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Karen McLain grew up all over the world including NM, UT, NY, IL, and Okinawa, with parents that worked for the U.S. Dept. of the Army. She received her degree in Natural Resource Conversation at the Finger Lakes Community College in Canandaigua, NY, but pursued an accounting career at several non-profit agencies before joining Project Orianne. Karen and her husband live with an assortment of animals in North Georgia, and enjoy camping and riding their horses.
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