Thought I wouldn’t just leave you all with a cliff hanger. I’m sure everybody is wondering with anticipation if I really found that eelgrass stuff.
Well, I did! My project was a not huge waste of time and Ol’ Wallace Kaufman was absolutely right!
I met up with a local eelgrass expert Jen Hayduk who came out with me on a kayak excursion during the extremely low tide on July 13th. We found quite a bit of it! Here is a map I made documenting that green fettuccine stuff that everyone calls eelgrass:
Photo credit: Corey Coyle – Farm in Windsor with Four Silos
In academia people love to talk about silos as a way that people limit themselves. I’ve seen the term thrown around for political ideologies, research paradigms, and most pertinently to me today, social groups. My time at the Nelson Institute has taught me how important it is to escape these silos, and mix different ideology’s and innovations to break through old ways of thought. My project, at its heart, is an attempt to bridge new generations to the outdoors.
It has been quite an experience to be doing research out of my silo. As a biologist and environmental activist, I have had my views for years on what progress in the conservation world meant. It was mostly related to the preservation of land, and the inherent and useful value that protected areas can sustain. I’ve volunteering in Seattle to oppose tree extraction in the Canadian Boral in my twenties. I’ve fought invasive species until I was bleeding and tired. This is all pushing back at the issues of my day when I found them.
“Whoa! What is that!?” exclaimed Dustin as he walked by an area I had passed just moments before. As I turned around and walked towards him, I noticed glistening light brown fur sprinkled with white spots just beneath the tall grass.
The brown mound of fur was an elk calf, probably no more than a day or two old. I had missed stepping on it by no more than a foot. Since beginning my project placement this summer, I have had to learn to see animal sign (and animals in general) while hiking between data collection points. Situational awareness in the field is perhaps one of the most valuable skills I have learned through my project placement.
Over the past few weeks, I have been working with the Liberia Land Authority to help strengthen government’s efforts to improve coastal wetland management in Liberia. Some of my activities have included working in the office in Monrovia, attending meetings on behalf of the Land Authority with land and environmental stakeholders and working with communities in the Marshall Reserve in Marshall City, Margibi County, about 48.7 km from the capital city. Continue reading Reflection 2- Gathering Community Perception of Wetlands→
With only 2 weeks until my exit seminar things are beginning to wrap up, but at the same time, I feel like I am busier than ever. I have mostly finished my background reading (although there is always more to read) and am concentrating on writing. I went out on another survey route, this time with IMBCR in the mountains, and had my first deliverable (A Tale of Two Methods) for the Bird Conservancy published on their website.
If I have learned nothing else, it is the need for flexibility. When I went out on the BBS survey, I was given two days warning, but planning to go out on an IMBCR survey has required patience. After weeks of planning, re-planning, watching the weather, and coordinating busy schedules, I finally went out on an IMBCR survey. Just to keep things interesting, I had to find a small dirt road not found on Google maps with a road marker not visible from the turn off in the dark. It was sad when my 9-year old flip phone finally died a few months ago, but sometimes smartphones are lifesavers. Continue reading Writing Challenges, Lodgepole Pines, and Unmarked Roads→
It is hard to believe that it’s already mid-July and we are all wrapping up our time in the EC program! I feel like this summer has flown by. A lot has happened since my last blog post! We’ve had two rounds of focus group meetings, I presented to the Water Quality Policy Management Team, visited the WDNR Green Bay and Oshkosh offices, helped create a flow chart on how fish passage policy will be communicated for dams, and went to a Madison Mallards game with fellow DNR staff.
It’s been about a month since my last update, and we are really in the thick of crunch time, trying to develop some materials that will hopefully be a start to something that will help “put Pembroke on the map” (a catchphrase my team finds itself using pretty often to describe our project) in a meaningful way.
Within the last month, I’ve learned a lot, particularly about how hard it is to do big work on a time crunch, with multiple stakeholders with different backgrounds and interests. We talked quite a bit in class how logistically difficult it is to work with people sometimes, and how hard it is to tackle large projects on a short time frame, when the reality is that conservation work often needs to be ongoing, monitored and tweaked for decades, to ensure lasting impact. We’ve also discussed how daunting it can be to try to compromise with people who have different visions and needs for conservation projects. This has become abundantly clear, particularly within the last month, as we’ve run into a few challenges and hiccups along the way.
I am writing this post just prior to starting the final draft of my Collaboration Evaluation Report for the Mississippi River Basin Project (MsB) taking place within The Nature Conservancy. This past year has been a whirlwind to say the least and it is crazy to think that it is all boiling down to this report and the presentations that will accompany it in the coming weeks.
I remember when I first learned about the project placement component of our master’s program and my mind was racing with all of the possibilities of where I would go and what I would do…I wanted to work with elephants in Africa and sea turtles in Hawaii, the possibilities seemed endless! Being new to the field of conservation, I was naive to the fact that conservation extends beyond beautiful places and endangered species, and I was just trying to figure out how I, someone with little to no science background or conservation experience, would fit into the equation.
For the past 5 weeks, I have been working for the Rocky Mountain West branch of the Wildlife Conservation Society. It has been an incredible learning experience, involving office, field, and community work. I truly appreciated the multi-faceted opportunity that this summer work has provided, as it helps me to better understand how community development and relationship building works in the US (or a more developed country than I am used to working in). Kris, my supervisor, is incredibly proficient with communication and any work involving the local community. Every single contact or person I met, be it an NGO worker, government employee, or rancher all respect and appreciate her genuine and well-rounded approach to conservation. I cannot imagine a better person to learn from in terms of inclusive community development in this political and environmental climate.
We continue walking the path to become leaders in conservation, day by day with determination and overcoming challenges to achieve our goals, goals or why not, “dreams”. This blog aims to summarize and reflect on the experience and lessons learned during on this journey, which I chose to take with the Conservation International Agency for the Global Environmental Facility (CI-GEF) and supporting the Project “PROMESA CHACO” managed by the organization GUYRA Paraguay sponsored by GEF funds. This project seeks to “prevent and reduce greenhouse gases, resulting from deforestation and increase carbon reserves within the Chaco Seco Forest Complex in Western Paraguay”.
The context of my work is to support, through the PROMESA Chaco project , the development of the operational plan of the National Park Defensores del Chaco (PNDCH), and, second, in the gathering of information on traditional knowledge and best practices in agricultural techniques and livestock management of the farmer communities who live in the area of Agua Dulce, which is located in the buffer zone of the park. The idea for the latter is to collect, summarize and publicize their best practices in an adequate format for different stakeholder groups, which in turn is expected to help to reduce negative impacts on the park. Those activities are within the component number three for the strengthening of local capacities with the objective of reducing climate change. Continue reading REFLECTION#2→
The Nelson Institute: Environmental Conservation Leadership Projects 