2022 Paul Moler Herpetological Conservation Award – Lew Ehrhart

“When you witness green turtle nest numbers go from 32 nests over a 13-mile stretch of beach in 1982 to over 15,000 nests per year during your career, you have to be optimistic,” he says. “Wouldn’t it be nice if our 401Ks grew like that?” (www.ucf.edu/news)

Llewellyen M. “Lew” Ehrhart is Emeritus Professor at University of Central Florida (UCF). He is a vertebrate zoologist whose research program is focused on reproduction, population biology, ecologic geography, and conservation biology of sea turtles. His most recent research interest involved characterization of juvenile and subadult populations in coastal lagoons and over near-shore reefs, as well as long-term studies of nesting beach productivity. He is broadly interested in herpetology and mammalogy, particularly the distribution, ecology, and conservation of Florida amphibians, reptiles and mammals. He was an invited contributor to the World Conference on Sea Turtle Conservation and the Western Atlantic Turtle Symposia (I and II) and served as Team Leader of the Southeastern Region Loggerhead and Green Turtle Recovery Team. His students have studied the biology of vertebrates as diverse as Hylid frogs, Kinosternid and Emydid turtles and wood storks.

Dr. Ehrhart brought sea turtle nesting surveying to the Canaveral National Seashore in the early 1970s, then took his research further south in the 1980s to formally establish the UCF Marine Turtle Research Project in Melbourne Beach. He then helped establish the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in 1991 and began what has become one of the longest continuous data set in sea turtle research in the world. (Above text from https://sciences.ucf.edu/biology/person/llewellyn-ehrhart/).

After he earned his bachelors at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania and his doctorate at Cornell, he joined University of Central Florida in 1969 and rose through the ranks, retiring as professor emeritus in 2004. He regularly taught Vertebrate Zoology (upper div.-majors), Mammalogy (grad. and upper div.), Herpetology (grad. and upper div.), Comparative Anatomy (upper div.-majors; pre-professionals), Biology and Environment (General Education Program), and a handful of other courses, including Field Biology. He advised almost 40 masters students. With colleagues and students, he produced more than 100 papers or reports and published a similar total of abstracts or proceedings. He presented many of these, and others, at conferences.

He belongs to: American Society of Mammalogists, Herpetologists' League, Society for Conservation Biology, Florida Academy of Sciences, and Animal Behavior Society

Awards:

Appointed Pegasus Professor for 2002-03 (highest faculty honor at the University of Central Florida).

Selected as the Florida Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching/Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, attended a recognition luncheon at the National Press Club and a Congressional Reception in Washington, D.C., was recognized in a proclamation by Chairman Crotty of Orange County and had November 21, 2002 designated "Llew Ehrhart Day" in a proclamation by Mayor Hood of Orlando.

Served as Distinguished Honors Lecturer throughout the academic year and delivered the Distinguished Honors Lecture to the at-large university community on 29 October, 2002.

Member of President Hitt's Platform Party and gave the "Academic Charge" address at the New Student Convocation on 17 August, 2002.

Awarded the first Archie Carr Lifetime Achievement Award by the Sea Turtle Conservancy on 10 May, 2008.

Winner of the International Sea Turtle Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award at its Annual Symposium in Oaxaca, Mexico; April, 2012.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Regional Director’s Honor Award for Conservation Partners, 30 October, 2013.

Recipient of the Charlie Corbeil Conservation Award by Preserve Brevard (for achievement in wildlife conservation in Brevard Co., FL), 14 April 2019.

During his exemplary career, Llewellyen M. Ehrhart has made extraordinary contributions, especially to the study and conservation of sea turtles in Florida. Last year, UCF Arboretum chose him as its inaugural Earth Day Conservation Hero. Sadly, Dr. Ehrhart passed away suddenly in March. He would have turned 80 years old on April 22nd, the 52nd anniversary of Earth Day. The Florida Wildlife Society is posthumously honoring him in 2022.

Please click this link to “meet” him:

https://www.carrrefuge.org/single-post/2018/01/09/A-Sea-Turtle-Paradise-Nestled-on-the-Space-Coast