Speaker: Kayti Ewing, Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department
Wildflowers are now being used by the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department (AHTD) to help beautify the over 200,000 acres of highway roadsides it maintains. Kayti will talk about AHTD’s Wildflower Programs, discuss the recent federal policies that have been put in place to promote and develop pollinator habitat on roadsides, and the issues—both positive and negative—related to the actual implementation of pollinator habitat on roadsides.
Kayti Ewing is a botanist with AHTD’s Environmental Division. At AHTD, she oversees the Department’s several Wildflower Programs, consults with USFWS regarding endangered and threatened plant species, and performs wetland and stream impact assessments in order to obtain the proper 404 permit. She was born and raised in Harrison, AR. She has a B.S. in Botany and an M.A. in Geography, both from the University of Oklahoma. For her thesis, she developed a Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) for Oklahoma wetlands. An FQA is tool used to evaluate and determine the quality (or degree of pristineness) of wetland habitats based on the vegetation present at a site.
The meeting will be at 7 PM at the Fletcher Library.