Please note: Due to the partial government shutdown, our previously scheduled speaker is unable to participate in this month’s Florida Conversations. Instead, presenter Leslie Pool will present this month’s talk. 

Long before they had the vote, Florida’s women worked tirelessly to save the state’s precious natural resources. Using grassroots tactics, women’s clubs and garden clubs—and Audubon societies which were among the first groups to welcome women—fought to save disappearing wading birds, demanded better forestry practices, and pressed governments to beautify their communities. This presentation will survey a variety of women and work that led from the conservation movement in the early twentieth century through the environmental movement that developed.

Leslie Poole is assistant professor of environmental studies at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. A fourth-generation Floridian who grew up in Tampa, Poole’s work as an environmental historian focuses on how women worked together in grassroots efforts to preserve and improve Florida’s natural resources with actions that included creating the first state park, fighting for better forestry, saving birds and endangered species, and running environmental agencies.

Florida Conversations is free and open to the public. It is underwritten by the Tampa Bay History Center Endowment Fund at USF with media sponsorship from WUSF Public Broadcasting. The series is co-sponsored by the USF Libraries and the Tampa Bay History Center.