Marianne Korosy

Director

Marianne has BS (1980) and MS (1984) degrees in Geology from FSU and a PhD (2013) in Conservation Biology from UCF. She worked in injection well permitting for the Department of Environmental Regulation in Tallahassee and as a Special Assistant to the Tampa District Manager 1984-1987.

Marianne worked for West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority 1987-1994, managing water use permit applications for production wellfields as well as drilling of water production and monitor wells and management of wellfield impacts on wetlands and private wells. She worked extensively with agency attorneys during administrative litigation concerning the agency’s water use permits issued by the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

Marianne jointed Clearwater Audubon in 2000 and, with another Board member, worked with Honeymoon Island State Park officials to establish a bird stewardship program on Three Rooker Island educating boaters about the thousands of seabirds and shorebirds nesting there annually. She served on the Chapter’s Board for three years. Marianne worked as an Audubon Florida Spoonbill Technician in the spring and summer of 2004, the first year of banding spoonbill chicks on Alafia Banks in Hillsborough Bay, before enrolling in the Conservation Biology PhD program at UCF in Fall 2004. Marianne’s doctoral research focused on winter ecology of four sparrows in Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park – the federally Endangered Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, the eastern migratory Grasshopper Sparrow, Henslow’s Sparrow, and Bachman’s Sparrow.

After finishing field data collection for the PhD, Marianne worked for Audubon Florida as a contract employee 2009-2011, building coastal bird stewardship programs with local governments and nonprofit groups in Pinellas, Manatee, Sarasota, and Lee counties. She was hired as full-time staff in 2011 in the Important Bird Area program and in 2012 she began managing the Florida Scrub-Jay stewardship program handed off to Audubon by The Nature Conservancy and Florida FWC. In 2016 Marianne was promoted to Director of Bird Conservation and moved to Tallahassee in 2017 to direct the coastal shorebird and Florida Scrub-Jay stewardship programs with federal grant funding from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Marianne retired from Audubon Florida on October 1, 2021. At present, Marianne serves on the Board of Florida Ornithological Society, the Roberston Fellowship Award committee, and as a proposal reviewer on the Cruickshank Research Award committee beginning in 2026.

She loves reading (literary fiction, mysteries, and history primarily), native plant gardening, bird feeding October – April, traveling (domestic and international), road cycling, and volunteering at Second Harvest regional warehouse in Tallahassee.