Christina Evans
Christina Evans is the recipient of the 2022 CSO of the Year Award for Resource-Based Recreation.
Christina Evans is a professional photographer who manages the website for the Friends of Kissimmee Prairie.
Christina started visiting in 1997 when Kissimmee Prairie first became a state park. Since then, she visits regularly to take photos. Her professional work and interests spill over into her work for the park, including an article on the prairie’s caracaras in a national birding magazine.
Friends of the Kissimmee Prairie was incorporated in 2011, and Christina has served continuously on the board in many roles, including president.
She has led fundraising efforts by organizing and hosting wildflower walks in the spring, summer and fall led by hosts such as authors and native plant nursery owners Craig Huegel, Roger Hammer and Tom Heitzmann. This effort was expanded to include butterfly walks by Buck and Linda Cooper.
As realization grew that the prairie has one of the darkest skies in Florida, she worked with Park Ranger Jenn Benson in filling out an application for the International Dark Sky Society. She led efforts to purchase and operate monitoring sensors to meet the requirements for the society’s official designation of the first Dark Sky park in Florida. The preserve and CSO now host stargazing events that have significantly boosted park visitation and raised awareness of dark sky issues.
The preserve is a hotspot for biodiversity with flower and pollinator lists among the longest in the state. Christina assembled and formatted checklists of plants, butterflies and birds and found donated funding to print them. The CSO has distributed thousands of the checklists from the park’s office.
Thank you, Christina, for your continued support of the park.
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