The past few months of my fellowship with USFWS have been busy with travel and opportunities for growth. In July, I visited the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia for the Department of Defense (DoD) and Fish and Wildlife (FWS) Climate Summit meeting. I was not only an attendee for the first time, but also a notetaker for the breakout sessions that occurred. While I was initially somewhat nervous to take on this task, it turned out to be a really great learning opportunity. I was able to meet and connect with many of the hardworking people behind the scenes of these types of events, as well as learn about the topics of major concern for both DoD and FWS pertaining to climate change.
The general format for the sessions I was taking notes for was a breakout group consisting of those from DoD and FWS and each breakout group was given a topic of interest to discuss the barriers, opportunities, and potential actions that might occur. The two groups I took notes for discussed these ideas for policy and pilot topics. This entailed members discussing policies they come across every day and the challenges and opportunities that come with it, and for the pilot group they discussed potential future project ideas that could be implemented. As a result, many great ideas were brought up to explore and efforts are being taken to actually implement some of them for future projects.
As a notetaker, I was able to capture the ideas people brought up as they spoke about these topics. It was a difficult task in some aspects, as it is not always easy to know what exactly someone is saying as they are speaking. However, I feel it was a useful experience to learn from because I think I became more efficient as the week went on, and definitely learned a lot about the inner workings of DoD and FWS and how they work together.
While me and the other fellows are still working on writing climate profiles for Army installations, I have also been assisting with some field work at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. I have helped with Karner blue butterfly and Blanding’s turtle surveys, which have given me lots of variety over the past two months. Since I am a remote worker primarily, these are great opportunities to get out into the field and spend some time with biologists on the ground. I particularly enjoyed learning about the process for the Blanding’s turtles as it involved going out and checking nets and inserting trackers and markers. Overall, its been a great addition to my fellowship and I hope to do more in the future.
