Hello! My name is Kayden Barber and I am one of the biological science enters at St. Mark’s NWFR for Fall 2023. I am very excited about this opportunity and can’t wait to be immersed in a new environment working in conservation! I have lived in Michigan my entire life, but I love to travel. I have been all over the Caribbean and have visited Europe - mainly Germany - to see family. Now that I have my bachelor’s, I would love to travel he world doing conservation work. I recently graduated this past spring from Saginaw Valley State University with a BS in Biology and a minor in Chemistry. Ever since a young age, I always knew I wanted to study biology and work with wildlife. I loved exploring the woods behind my house looking for little critters and going frog hunting in our pond - catch and release, of course.

My summer after graduating has been very eventful as I have been gaining field experience before I apply to graduate school. I spent some with with CMERA where I did field research working with elasmobranchs, and safely releasing the sharks and stingrays. I found my love for fieldwork during my time at CMERA. After that, I took a field course to study the biology of the Florida Keys. I studied coral reef, seagrass, and mangrove ecoogy along with learning to to identify different species. I collected water quality data and did bleach watch monitoring. HAB screening, diversity indexing, parrotfish feeding surveys, and seagrass watch monitoring.

After my marine-focused experiences, I wanted to find something terrestrial. This led me to apply for the internship at St. Mark’s. I am excited to possibly work on the recovery efforts for the frosted flatwood salamanders and the red-cockaded woodpeckers as well as habitat management. I think that this internship will teach me a lot about working in the field while also using the skills and knowledge I developed through university and my previous experiences. I am excited to further develop as a Biologist!

Through this opportunity, I am hoping to develop my skills for graduate school as well as find my research focus. As of right now, I am a generalist and do not have a specific concentration in mind, but hopefully, I will fall in love with one of the critters I’ll be working with who will become my muse. My end goal is to be working in the conservation district in a nonprofit or possibly the state. So far, I love Florida - except for the hurricanes - so I might move to the state permanently. To summarize, I am very excited about this internship and it not only helps me develop as a biologist, but it is also contributing meaningfully to the conservation of the natural world. Thank you for allowing me to be part of the St. Mark’s NWR’s team, I will definitely make the most of it.