My name is Bailey Dunn. I am one of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge interns for the spring of 2019.

I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona and have been interested in critters from a young age. After high school I moved up to Logan, Utah where I attended university at Utah State..Go Aggies! There I got a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Ecology and Management. While taking classes I became a trip leader for the Outdoor Programs through the university, leading rafting, climbing, kayaking, and backcountry ski trips across the West. This program focuses on outdoor leadership while practicing Leave No Trace principles, helping me to develop a strong passion for natural places and a desire to educate those who recreate in them.

In the winters, when I wasn’t a backcountry yurt host, I volunteered at a Predator Research facility to help capture coyotes, I worked for a Postdoctoral Research Student in Yosemite National Park to perform tree surveys for the Western Forest Initiative, and I interned with Yellowstone to Uintas Connection to set up camera traps in Idaho to monitor large carnivore activity. Over the summers between classes I worked as a fisheries and wildlife intern for the U.S. Forest Service in Utah and Wyoming. We performed northern goshawk surveys, checking for chicks and monitoring ests sites, snowshoe hare surveys, and riparian habitat surveys. These included beaver dam activity, habitat analysis, boreal toad activity, mark-recapture and PIT tagging of the toads, and water tests.

Also during those summers, I worked with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to perform additional stream and fish surveys. In my most recent internship, I worked in the herpetology department at the Houston Zoo in Texas where I performed animal husbandry tasks for all types of reptiles and amphibians and learned operant conditioning training techniques. The field of wildlife management provides numerous opportunities to travel and research. Through all of the opportunities I’ve been given, I’ve gained valuable life lessons and research skills that will help me to learn even more here in Florida.

Here on the refuge we have gotten out in the field to survey occupancy in the ponds. We’ve seen newts, beetles, fish, and lots of bugs. Not captured in buckets that we’ve also seen while traveling around the refuge are gators, waterfowl, the lone flamingo who has called this refuge his home for the winter, and armadillos. The ecology here is unlike any place I’ve worked in before and have already learned more than I imagined I would after just one week. It is such a privilege to be surrounded by the abundance of hard working individuals here on the refuge and the wide variety of wildlife.

Thank you for this opportunity and I’m looking forward to this spring!