Please join me in welcoming Brad Slaughter to Orbis. Brad has over 12 years of experience managing projects and conducting floristic inventories, vegetation sampling, surveys and mapping of rare plants, invasive plants, and plant communities, and ecological threat assessments. He has expertise in the classification and description of plant communities and is coauthor of A Field Guide to the Natural Communities of Michigan. Brad serves on the Michigan Rare Plant Technical Advisory Committee and managed Michigan’s Natural Heritage Database of rare vascular plant element occurrences for several years. He also coauthored the most recent iteration of Michigan’s Floristic Quality Assessment. In addition to his extensive writings, Brad regularly delivers presentations and field trips for a variety of audiences. He also participates in wildlife surveys, including surveys for federally threatened and endangered species such as the Mitchell’s satyr butterfly, Karner blue butterfly, Poweshiek skipperling, eastern massasauga, and Kirtland’s Warbler.