Did I mention how adorable baby terns are?

It’s crunch time! Although my internship lasts until the end of September, one of the programs I am most involved in is coming to an end.

Let me back up…

One of my major responsibilities this summer was to act as the liaison between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s External Affairs office and a group of about 28 SCA Interns (Go here: http://www.fws.gov/northeast/cpwn/programs/cip.html for more information about the interns). On August 6th all 28 interns will be sending me their summer projects to edit, organize and make available for web display. I will not be the only person working on this task although I am responsible for interviewing a bunch of these folks in person. The interviews themselves will be sent down to the AV department to be turned into a movie for the regional office all employee meeting on the 17th of august.

I am busy and exhausted… but loving every minute of it.

Most of being exhausted comes from all the travel that I do for my job. Recent highlights include a trip up to Umbagog New Hampshire, Ellsworth Maine and Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Mass. In Maine I got shuttled to an island off the coast. On this journey I saw seals, razorbills, puffins and BABY TERNS! The best part of all of this, aside from dodging angry mother birds, was holding a baby arctic tern. I never would have imagined that this is what I was going to do in my life. Perhaps it goes away after a while, but right now I am still living a dream.

THE Oxbow - Honorable battle with the water chestnut

What ho my (three) loyal followers?!

Yesterday I had the opportunity to venture out into the “oxbow” an isolated chunk of the Connecticut River, displaced from its original course through a process of erosion and deposition of river bank sediments. Oxbow is a general term for what happens when a chunk of a river gets cut off from the rest of the river in a certain way. We here in the Pioneer Valley like to think of ourselves as the center of the universe (because we are) so we have THE oxbow which doesn’t have any particular name attached to it. There are in fact other oxbows out there but we don’t talk about them.

The Oxbow has a problem with water chestnut, an Asiatic invasive with pretty white flowers that proliferates throughout waterways and chokes out the local flora. Actually, more than that… river ecology 101 tells me that the water chestnut out-competes local plants absurdly well, with clusters of the weed so dense that no light can get through. Because of the diminished levels of light, photosynthesizing plants can’t work their magic making really hard for fish to survive. Native plants die of shade, fish and invertebrates die because of suffocation and the bacteria levels raise in the water making it all sorts of nasty.
That is where our rockin’ Youth Conservation Corps (YCC)groups come in. I was at the oxbow to chat with some youth and their project leaders, get some pictures and pull up some chestnut. I also had the opportunity to work with our youngest STEP (Student temporary employment program) student who with a little encouragement wrote a fantastic article on the YCC group and the work that they do to protect our waterways.

Also, while you’re at it – check out the new section of the USFWS Northeast region website on “Connecting People With Nature”. I helped design this with a few co-workers of mine and have a few articles up for your viewing pleasure. Here is the link:

http://www.fws.gov/northeast/cpwn/