Injury

I'm sad to report that I am no longer working on the Cascades Carnivore Project, as I tore my hip flexor on the job and have had to resign my position. What a bummer!

I sustained the injury while tracking on a particularly long day, and I mistakenly thought that it was an overworked muscle. Long story short, I did in fact really hurt myself, and the recovery period is six weeks (it's not a complete tear, whew! A severe strain with small tears is a lot easier to mend.). Foxes and wolverines don't wait around for people, so I'm back home in Houston for physical therapy and healing so I can continue working this spring.

I pre-condition for any research position I accept, as the physical demands are often many and being able to keep up obviously means having high cardiovascular endurance, strong joints, and muscle strength. In this field, you have to stay in shape, and jobs will weasel any last shreds of weakness from your body. Since this project involved a lot of snowshoeing, I worked hard in the weeks prior to arriving in Washington to ensure a strong pelvis and high endurance so I wouldn't huff and puff and fall down all the time. Having snowshoed last winter in Montana on the bobcat project, I was not at all concerned that I would hurt anything. Unfortunately, not all things are preventable.

The injury makes for a decent pub story, however, in that I got hurt while tracking a wolverine. Doug Chadwick (author of The Wolverine Way), calls the wolverine an "unmitigated badass" and I couldn't agree more. We followed this guy up and around and he ran and he walked and he loped and he followed fox trails and scaled creeks... but he mostly went up. It took us four hours to follow him three miles, whereas he most certainly covered that distance in less than an hour. In the days following that I worked on the injury, the southern Cascades were covered with almost five feet of  snow, making it difficult to check cameras and track animals (there were no tracks!). Undoubtedly, it made my hip worse, but I'm very fortunate that I didn't post-hole (crashing through the snow on one snowshoe) and tear it completely.

I'm really happy to have had this opportunity... I would have preferred to still be up there, as the season runs through the end of March. I really enjoyed my time in the Cascades learning red fox ecology, tracking the elusive wolverine, and refining my tracking skills. I also loved the snowmobiling! All in all, despite what is a very inconvenient injury, I'd still chalk it up to a good experience.

Currently, I am rehabbing, completing a grant application for graduate school, applying for and interviewing for my next research position, and discussing graduate school opportunities with various professors.

For more information on the Cascades Carnivore Project, visit: http://cascadescarnivoreproject.blogspot.com/

One Quarter Century

It's midnight, so it's officially February 6, which means it's MY BIRTHDAY!

25. Twenty five. One quarter century.

Wow. It's crazy! I can't even believe I've lived this long! It's like I'm an adult! As children, we think about an age like "25" as a dream-like concept. We imagined our whole lives as The Far Away Future: we planned our education, fairy tale weddings, and interior decorating plans through Barbie and her friends (ok, some of us did. Don't judge). Well, there wasn't a Barbie biologist around when I was a kid, so I came into my passion towards the end of college, when the Future became Now.

And Now is the time to make a difference. 

I devote my time on this webpage to advocating wildlife conservation. We are fighting an uphill battle to save thousands of species from extinction, and I'm lucky enough to assist in projects that study some of these animals and promote their preservation in the wild. I have numerous goals I want to accomplish within this field of research, and although I've crossed some off in the two years since graduating, here are a few of the goals I hope to accomplish in the next 25 years:

- Get a graduate assistantship for my master's degree in carnivore ecology
- Achieve a PhD in the same field
- Work with National Geographic and Animal Planet television for public education... yes, I want you to enjoy wildlife projects with me via tv!
- Write, speak, and present issues and ideas in wildlife conservation to varied audiences: children, presidents, scientists, family, friends, and international collaborators
- Own a pair of Christian Louboutin heels (not for field research, obviously... for wildlife benefit events!)
- Study as many of the felid species as I am able, starting with bobcats, lynx, ocelots, snow leopards, clouded leopards...
- See the wolverine placed on the endangered species list, and then removed from it (among many others)
- Meet celebrities with influence and get them out in the field with me to help spread the message (hello Ellen DeGeneras, Leo DiCaprio, Jason Mraz, Simon Cowell, and President Obama)!
- Foster the realization for the ever-pressing need to care about the earth- right Now, not later

These goals are the tools I plan to wield in the fight to save the world. Seriously. I'm only 25- I can be lofty like that. I want to illuminate the importance of natural resources, to illustrate the dire need for saving, not spending, the fruits of our earth. Most importantly, I want to ignite passion and compassion for wildlife conservation. I want you to share nature with the birds, carnivores, insects, and omnivores that walk the wilds, and I want you to work to conserve and protect what's left of it so the future will have more, and not less. I want to laugh with you, learn from you, and share with you my passion, my unyielding determination, and my insatiable curiosity in the pursuit of protecting all that is wild. But, I need your help. I'm only 25.

Thanks for all your support, reading, tweeting, laughing, and working to spread the message and achieve goals in wildlife conservation. I love you all!

Stillwater Lake, Montana