2023 Whitman College intern, Margaret, tells her story

“I’m Margaret Burgess, a Junior Biology major [at Whitman College]. This summer I joined the powerhouse team of women behind Home Range Wildlife Research, a nonprofit based in Winthrop, WA dedicated to wildlife conservation and education. I worked on their Lynx and Wildfire project collecting fuels data and setting wildlife cameras.

So what did that look like? Field days were full of excitement and many miles of bushwhacking. My field partner and I would usually meet at the office in town and then drive out to the study area on a heavily washboarded old logging road. During my internship a section of the road washed out due to thunderstorms, but that wasn’t about to stop us, it just added to our eventful daily routine as we slowly bumped over logs, rubble, and downed logs in the work truck.

I remember my first day out in the field vividly, following behind my supervisor we hiked up a trail and then suddenly peeled off, shooting up a steep slope and whacking through brush. This set the tone for the intensity of field work that took some adjusting to: scrambling over logs carrying 40 liter packs filled with equipment. As we traveled through the mountain landscape I was in awe at the tracking signs my supervisor Carmen noticed: broken willow branches where a moose had walked, felid scrapes, bear claw imprints climbing up trees, antler scrapes in preparation for shed, faint tracks left in the dust, and of course scat. Carmen was helping me to look at my surroundings in a whole new way and as the summer went on I was able to see the forest more like she did, picking up on some of the smaller signs of animal presence.

After hiking out to our field site we would carefully select a tree to set one of our wildlife cameras on. The cameras were set at roughly knee height for lynx detection and to test them we would take turns crawling back and forth in front of them to check their scope and frame. In total, we set 30 cameras in various regions of our 175,184 acre study area. Along with each camera we collected fuel data, which is essentially counting sticks and logs and categorizing them based on their size. Honestly, I will never look at logs and sticks quite the same way.

One day as Carmen and I traversed through a forest strewn with downed trees we started hearing this ugly screeching sound. We slowed our pace and noticed that the sound was tracking with our movement about 60 meters down the slope. Carmen knew this sound, it was a lynx! As we continued listening we heard the faint raspy meows of the lynx’s kittens. We had stumbled upon a den site of one of the 50 remaining lynx in the North Cascades. What a special moment!

Later in the summer after we finished setting up the cameras, we also started retracing backtracks of lynx that they had collected in the winter. Essentially following in the footsteps of the lynx and collecting fuels data at specific increments along their track. Other fun field encounters include startling a moose and hearing it run away breaking trees in its wake, finding four baby skunks playing in the road, rubber boa and rattlesnake sightings, and finding fresh wolf tracks and scat from the newest pack in the area.

Through my internship with Home Range, I met an amazing group of hardworking women who are experts in their fields. They oozed knowledge and I did my best to soak up every drop. Working in the field gave me a better grasp of what it means to actually do science in a way I can see myself pursuing in the future.”

Find the original posting of Margaret's blog here: https://blogs.whitman.edu/ccec/2023/08/01/margaret-burgess-intern-at-home-range-wildlife-research-in-winthrop-wa/