Gregg Bayard
Gregg has an extensive profession background in the technical development and management of food commodities and environmentally responsible residential, commercial and mixed-use development. He is the president of the Athens Land Trust – FSV Subsidiary, Inc. which is a development partnership between The Athens Land Trust, Inc and Ambling Development, Inc for the development of The Fourth Street Village, an affordable housing project in Athens, GA. He is also the principle for Salt Creek, LLC a sustainable & conservation developer of residential, commercial & mixed use properties, with operations focused in Coastal Georgia. He is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Parallel Housing, Inc. a 501(c)(3) for the development of Sustainable Fellwood, the redevelopment of the 27 acre Housing Authority of Savannah former Fellwood Homes.
Gregg has BSA Horticulture from the University of Georgia and a Masters of Plant Protection and Pest Management, also from the University of Georgia.
Mike Browning
Mike has practiced landscape architecture for over 25 years. A graduate of the University of Georgia’s School of Environmental Design in 1978, his early career influences included a stint as a grounds superintendent at a small Georgia college, graduate studies in regional planning at Georgia Tech, and work as a landscape architect with two of the top landscape architecture firms in Atlanta on projects up and down the eastern seaboard. His professional experience has involved a range of design work diverse in scale and type. Adept at land planning and site design, his early work focused on high-end corporate facility and regional retail facility site design, then evolved to include more planning work, management of design teams producing resort landscapes, environmental assessments, special garden design, large scale interior landscape design, urban planning and redevelopment, and real estate entitlement with a diversity of private and public sector clients. His work has garnered awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Landscape Contractors Association, the National Fund for the National Garden, the state of Georgia Dept of Community Affairs, and others.
Mike is a certified arborist, past board member of the Georgia Urban Forest Council, board member of Griffin Technical College, and has served in various capacities on city and county planning commissions. He currently directs the Savannah Branch office of jB+a, inc., a planning and landscape architecture firm headquartered in Atlanta. He is active in Rotary, serving as the grants committee chair for Savannah Rotary East. He also serves on the board of directors for the Savannah Tree Foundation.
Scott Coleman
Scott represents the 4th generation in his family to pursue a career in natural resources. He grew up in Fort Gaines, Georgia, where he spent his formative years learning many intricacies of the natural world from his grandfather, a renowned botanist and horticulturist. Scott graduated from the University of Georgia in 2005 with a degree in Wildlife Biology. While in college Scott gained a variety of experiences working at The State Botanical Garden of Georgia, Callaway Gardens and The Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway. He began working on Little St. Simons Island in early 2006 as a naturalist and by the end of 2007 his job had evolved to ecological manager for the island.
In his current role, Scott works to maintain, enhance and restore the natural ecological communities and wildlife populations on the 10,000 acre island. He has led the development of a 50-year conservation plan for Little St. Simons Island and is leading the transition of the island into a model for conservation management. His responsibilities include coordinating the island’s research, monitoring, restoration and natural resource management. Scott also manages a wide range of partnerships with public and private conservation organizations, and these conservation partners have roles with many ongoing projects on the island. Some of these projects include a nest and incubation project with American Oystercatchers, using fire management as a tool to maintain some of the rarest plant communities in coastal Georgia, mist netting to learn more about the island’s bat populations, assessing altered salt marshes to work towards restoration, and eliminating exotic/invasive species on the island. Scott has also headed up a project to implement native plant landscaping and habitat restoration around the island’s lodge accomodations and to develop a volunteer program to maintain these areas.
Scott also serves on the Jekyll Island Authority’s conservation committee and is part of a project to ensure the protection and conservation of the Cannon’s Point property on St. Simons Island. He is particularly interested in engaging the local public through educational events and hands on volunteer projects to help build a culture of conservation in our coastal community. Scott is the liaison between Coastal WildScapes and the UGA Native Plant Certification program.
Scott is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Wildlife Biology through the University of Georgia and plans to incoporate habitat restoration into his research project, looking at ways to assess altered marshes before restoration.
Christa Frangimore Hayes
Christa spends her time photographing coastal butterflies and exploring their relationship to native plants. She has a background in conservation management, fine art and ecology. She currently lives on St. Catherine’s Island, is adjunct faculty with the University of the South Sewanee, and avid advocate for protecting coastal habitats and wildlife.
Christa obtained a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Georgia State University in 1976 followed by an Assistantship in Traditional Art Glass Techniques at Atelier Fanjat, Lyon, France from 1977-79. In 2002, She completed her formal studies by obtaining a Master of Science Degree in Conservation and Sustainable Development from the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia. From 2003-2005 Christa was the science and non-fiction acquisitions editor for the University of Georgia Press. She then broadened her scope of knowledge as Assistant Faculty at the Fanning Institute at the University of Georgia where she developed programming for the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership.
Christa is a founding member and active board member of Coastal WildScapes.
Linda Lamb
Linda is a retired science teacher and who now lives in McIntosh County. She has a BS and MS degree in Biology and Science Education respectively from Georgia State University. She taught in the DeKalb County schools for 30 years. Almost all of the time was spent teaching at Fernbank Science Center and the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta where she developed and taught courses in anatomy and physiology for high school students and ecology and natural sciences for middle and elementary students. While at Fernbank she also co-authored and taught elementary school classes in Vermicomposting, Venomous Snakes of Georgia and Marvelous Monarch Migration. She served as the Chairperson of the Wild Garden Project for four years and is a member of the Monarchs Across Georgia Steering Committee. She is one of the founding members of a new non-profit, Coastal WildScapes, which is exclusively dedicated to preservation and restoration of native coastal habitats. Linda is passionate about native plants and the concepts of sustainability, stewardship of the land, ecosystem services and coastal habitats.