By Clare Walsh
Growing up, my summers usually consisted of poking at the worms, catching fireflies, or watching the birds fly from tree to tree. As long as I can remember, I have always been curious about the movement of the deer and birds in my backyard. “Where do they go when I’m not watching?” “Do I see the same animal or a different one each time I notice them?” “How many are there in the area?” Even on the walks to and from the bus stop, I noticed the trees reaching for the sky and told myself I would one day learn to identify and name all the plants I saw. If I wasn’t exploring another part of the backyard or pondering about the movements of wildlife, you could find me watching shows from the Science channel, Nat Geo Wild, or Discovery. I particularly remember one segment of a documentary that showed a helicopter flying across the African Savanna searching for black rhinos to dart and tag. The show explained how tagging the rhinos would be used to understand their movements, population dynamics, and habitat use. At that moment I realized I wanted that to be my career: to study animals and figure out why they do what they do and understand how that affects their population.
Flash forward to the present day, I am entering my sophomore year of college at the University of Delaware, pursuing a Wildlife Ecology and Conservation major with minors in Musical Theatre and Statistical Data Analytics. I intend to pursue a career in wildlife research which brought me back to where I completed my high school capstone project, Willistown Conservation Trust. During my time as the Watershed Intern, my independent project was to identify and tag trees and shrubs at the Ashbridge tree planting so that we can eventually classify it as an arboretum. This usually consists of bringing a notebook, a pen, and tree tags. Each tree tag has a different number on it that is used to identify a particular plant that is protected in the tree cage. Once the tree is tagged, we determine what the plant is, noting both the common and scientific names and any maintenance or location notes as necessary.
Learning how to identify these plants can be challenging because of the diversity of the native trees and shrubs in the area, however, I still enjoy it. It has been fun to connect plants that I have seen before to their names and discover how different the leaves actually are. At first, I thought that all leaves were essentially the same, but once I studied them and compared them to each other, I realized they can actually be quite different from each other. To help gain a better picture of the trees and shrubs in the planting, I got a field guide which illustrates the commonalities and differences between the plants. I have been excited to learn these plant names because almost anywhere I go I am bound to find at least one of the plants from the study area. The plants of the landscape have a direct impact on the wildlife which I had the opportunity to experience first hand when I participated in freshwater mussel surveys.
Three weeks into my internship, I was able to assist with freshwater mussels surveys at Darby Creek. Their presence indicates higher water quality of the stream while the absence of mussels indicate lower water quality. The survey protocol involved searching for 15 minutes per segment with scientists spread out across the width of the stream. Each person is lined up across the stream in a lane, snorkeling or using a see-through pan moving upstream to search for mussels poking out from the stream bed. After the 15 minutes is up, the GPS coordinates are recorded and each person reports their mussel count. This is repeated until the survey site is completed. The surveys concluded that three freshwater mussel species were found which contributes to a larger research project of freshwater mussels in the watershed.
Surveys and survey data are particularly interesting, but especially in the context of wildlife population studies. Seeing a data set of what seems to be a collection of unrelated numbers then being turned into something meaningful is extremely satisfying. For example, counting the number of freshwater mussels provides a data set useful for analysis. After understanding this analysis, it can help guide a decision in wildlife or land management, or even determine if restoration or development of land has an impact on the landscape ecosystem. Participating in this study combined my interests in statistics and wildlife and strengthened my interest in wildlife population and movement dynamic research.
Throughout this internship, I came to a greater understanding that wildlife research does not necessitate a remote part of the world, far from civilization. Although research may require bushwacking through the Amazon rainforest, or trekking through the arctic, scientific research can be done quite literally in your backyard. Frankly, it should be done in developed areas as this kind of research can help us better understand human wildlife conflict and how it can best be resolved. Working as an intern at Willistown Conservation Trust has fanned the flame of passion for wildlife research, and I am so thrilled to pursue this career that I dreamt of as a child.
