Matt Elliott (GTC Senior Co-Chair)
Greetings fellow tortoise friends!
We are very excited to welcome you in a couple of months to the 45th annual Gopher Tortoise Council meeting November 17-19 at the University of Georgia Conference Center in Tifton, Georgia. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, but typically November in South Georgia is really nice. Our social will be held nearby at the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Georgia Museum of Agriculture and will feature local tacos from Taqueria Hermanos Chavez as well as local beers.
As usual, we will have two full days of talks and panel discussions, along with poster presentations, and a silent auction (please bring some cool tortoise or conservation-themed items!). Our awards dinner on Saturday will also be held at the Museum of Agriculture and will feature another of our local specialties – BBQ. We are hoping to offer two field trips on Sunday – one to Alapaha River Wildlife Management Area, once known as the “Rayonier Snake Sanctuary”, and home to a lot of Joan Diemer and Dan Speake’s pioneering gopher tortoise and indigo snake research back in the 1970’s, and another to Doerun Pitcherplant Bog Wildlife Management Area, site of some amazing longleaf pine-wiregrass, seepage bogs, and a surprisingly large number of tortoises.
Right now we are still working on our t-shirt designs, but we will be going once again through CustomInk.
Additional meeting details including lodging information will be available on our meeting website (https://gophertortoisecouncil.org/annual-meeting) and will be kept updated with the latest information. If anyone has questions about the meeting, please reach out to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
I am looking forward to seeing all of you!
Matt Elliott