Andrea ColtonViews:
Conservation is driven by the passions of those who want to preserve nature’s beauty and remarkable diversity. Some find this passion early in life, others discover it later. I belong to the latter party. While I dragged my parents to the zoo in every city we visited and was obsessed with the exotic animal kingdom, early interests extended as far as being able to list the four species of tapir and tell people that camels could close their noses in dust storms. Though I loved animals, I had never put much thought into how they existed within their natural environments. Several fieldwork opportunities allowed me to expand the narrow bubble my interests were trapped in and find my place in conservation over the years.
Tracking Rhinos in South Africa
The summer after my sophomore year of college kick-started my seasonal job “career” in South Africa. Despite dreaming of experiencing African wildlife, I never thought I would have the opportunity to work with them for a whole summer. My main duty was assisting the research manager with daily tracking of rhinos with radio transmitters attached to their horns. The job was simple: find the rhinos, compile a list of locations, and send the list off to the preserve’s anti-poaching unit so they knew where to patrol the next day. It was a very straightforward solution to curbing poaching in the area, but it was the first time I saw any boots-on-the-ground conservation efforts up close. I realized working with wildlife, rather than captive animals, was something I could pursue as a career. I was also privy to discussions surrounding conservation practices and the necessary anthropogenic component for the first time, which expanded how I thought about issues in conservation.
Getting a Taste of Community Ecology
By the time the next summer rolled around, I had been applying for any fieldwork jobs I could find and had been receiving zero responses. I realized I maybe needed to set my sights closer to home and look within my own university for a professor willing to take on a student in desperate need of expanding her skill set (and who did not yet understand the faux pas of sending every potential employer the exact same cover letter – seriously, why did I tout my radio telemetry skills for a job doing dolphin counts). At the time, I was interested in getting out of the country again, so I found a professor who did research abroad, hoping I could learn how she was able to research internationally without moving. Her research largely focused on plant communities, which was an entirely new area for me and one that made me hesitant. I loved animals, not plants, after all. But her work highlighted the importance of plant–animal interactions and emphasized the role animals have within their community. Under her guidance, I embarked on my own research project quantifying the extent of woody encroachment in a small prairie. My days were spent searching for every tiny seedling I could find and identifying the species. During this project I learned how to observe the world around me to ask questions, develop a methodology to answer those questions, challenge myself to a new field, and teach myself a new skill set.
Discovering a Love of Reptiles and Amphibians
About a year after I graduated, it was time to apply for the next job. I wanted something that provided diverse experience and hands-on work with wildlife, as my previous experiences had me working with plants and animals I wasn’t allowed to get too close to. I was lucky enough to be hired as an intern for Petrified Forest National Park to conduct herpetofauna, prairie dog, and bird surveys. The weeks I found myself most excited for were the ones surveying for reptiles and amphibians. There was something inherently cooler about them than anything else I had worked with. We mostly caught Plateau Fence Lizards and Sagebrush Lizards, but I loved the anticipation of hoping the next trap would produce the rarer Collared Lizard or Lesser Earless Lizard.
This job also introduced me to every herper’s favorite hobby: nighttime road cruises. Once a week we would wait for sundown and drive through an empty national park looking for whatever we could find on the road. I was scrutinizing every stick to see if it was a Chihuahuan Nightsnake. I was up to my ears in Spadefoot Toads after the first big rain of the season brought them all out. We would stop to process a toad just to turn around and see five more had come onto the road behind us. We found sleepy Greater Short-horned Lizards, rattlesnakes, kingsnakes, and even a coveted milk snake. It was the most fun I had on a job and made me realize my interest in herpetofauna.
Tracking Ornate Box Turtles
Eventually, I was hired onto a project surveying for Massasauga Rattlesnakes and Blanding’s Turtles in Illinois but got tasked with occasional Ornate Box Turtle tracking. A master’s student had radio transmitters on several turtles, but one had a missing antenna. Transmitters will still emit a frequency without an antenna, but you must be much closer to the turtle to pick it up. So, someone had to track the turtle daily for several weeks to make sure it never strayed outside our receiver range and to ensure we knew where it settled down to brumate for the winter.
Now, at this point, my radio telemetry skills were rusty. When I was in South Africa, we often had to estimate rhino locations with triangulation since we were confined to roads (nearly all tracking happened near the truck, as it is not too safe to traipse around the South African bush). Here, I did have to find the exact location for the turtle. I frequently stopped too soon, tearing through a clump of grass in vain for a turtle who was not there. Even when I got to the area I knew the turtle was in, I still had to spend 15 minutes on my hands and knees digging through every bit of grass. Eventually, I looked over and saw him just sitting, looking at me. The satisfaction I felt in that moment made me realize that despite how frustrating it was to find a well-hidden turtle, I loved every moment of it and knew I wanted to work with them more – which eventually led me to my master’s.
Spotted Turtles: Part 1
Going to graduate school to work with Ornate Box Turtles in Illinois was set, but I knew I wasn’t quite ready to give up seasonal work. I loved being able to live in new areas of the country for short spurts and assist with research on a variety of wildlife. So, before I committed to two years of graduate school, I applied to be a Spotted Turtle technician with the Orianne Society. I spent three months exclusively trapping one site (albeit a very large one) and found zero Spotted Turtles. While never finding my target species was disappointing and a bit humbling, I found so much joy in simply wandering through pine forests and moseying through peaceful and secluded wetlands. What I lacked in Spotted Turtles, I made up for in Mud Turtles, alligator bellows, and snake encounters.
The coastal plains of the Southeast are unique and incredibly diverse landscapes that are truly a privilege to work in. It is an even greater privilege being able to return full-time for Spotted Turtles: Part 2 to continue researching and protecting the creatures the Southeast has to offer.
