It was the gifts he brought that Carol Otis noticed first, small fishes plucked from the shallows of the Atlantic Ocean and given in courtship to a female least tern.
Otis, an avian enthusiast and recent transplant from Portland, Ore., recognized the endearing mating behavior and began looking for a nesting colony of the state-threatened bird on her daily walks along Delray Beach’s shoreline.
“I asked lots of people, but no one knew,” Otis said.
Then, in late April, she saw them. Tiny least terns the smallest of their species in North America sitting on fragile nests that are no more than scrapes in the sand on the wide-open beach. There were 17.
Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Noah Valenstein is exiting next week after running the agency for four years under two governors.
Shawn Hamilton, currently the state agency’s deputy secretary for land and recreation, will become Florida’s interim environmental secretary on June 4, the department confirmed on Thursday.
Hamilton has been with the Department of Environmental Protection since 2007, starting as a public affairs manager in the agency’s Northwest District Office and moving to assistant district director in 2010 and district director in 2011. Hamilton was promoted to the deputy director position last year.
A press release from the department noted that Hamilton has worked as the agency’s environmental justice coordinator, providing statewide guidance on sensitive environmental justice issues, and as the primary state liaison for the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice.