Photo of a San Bruno Elfin larva on sedum from a site visit. Courtesy of Samantha M. Lantz.

I am at the halfway mark in my summer as a FWS fellow and the time seems to be going fast. These last few weeks I have spent learning about the San Bruno Elfin Butterfly and creating the first drafts of a monitoring protocol, core conceptual, and recovery implementation strategy. For the monitoring protocol, I’ve met with partners from each of the sites where the species is found to get their input on how the species should be monitored and what methods are realistic for them. One of the challenges with creating this document is that the sites vary in terrain so what might work at one site may not work for another. Hopefully at the end of this fellowship I will have produced a document that reflects what each of the site managers finds useful. For the recovery implementation strategy, I have done a crosswalk of the recovery plan with documents that describe the current status of the species. This crosswalk allows us to see the recovery criteria and see if the criteria has been met based on survey reports and the most recent 5-year review of the species. Where the criteria has not been met leaves opportunity for ideas on recovery actions that could be implemented to meet those criteria.

Along with working on my deliverables, I’ve also been trying to network as much as I can while I’m still working in the service. I live in the San Diego area so when my fellowship is completed I’d like to get hired with the Carlsbad field office or one of the local refuges. I’ve spoken to many people asking for advice on how to be hired in a specific geographic location. The advice I’ve received is to just reach out and find a reason to talk to people from the places I’d be interested in working. My project supervisor has been very supportive. She’s put me in contact with several biologists from the Carlsbad office, each of whom I’ve met over Teams and have all referred me to even more people I could get to know better.

I’ve also been able to get some field work experience even though my project is remote. This past week I was able to visit the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge to assist with the Hermes Copper Butterfly survey. While on the hike, I got to meet and spend time with the refuge manager and a refuge field biologist. Both were incredibly insightful and I learned a lot from them. We did not see any Hermes but we did see quite a few different species of other butterflies and I learned different techniques for finding and identifying them. At the end of the hike the refuge biologist gave me information for an opportunity to help with bird banding at another local refuge, which is another opportunity I’m looking forward to. Hopefully I can continue to meet more San Diego people and accept more local opportunities.

Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Program: US Fish & Wildlife Service - DFP

Location: Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office