Hello! My name is Arcata Leavitt and I’m one of the Spring 2019 Dr. Ed and Hilda Carney Interns here at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. I grew up in Eugene, Oregon and spent my childhood summers attending outdoor adventure camps, learning as much about animals as I could, and traveling in Oregon, Washington, and California. Inspired by my time spent outdoors as a kid, I pursued a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Science and graduated from Oregon State University in 2016. During my time in college I was a coxswain on the women’s rowing team (that’s the one who steers the boat and directs the crew via microphone) where I had the opportunity to race across the country. I was also an undergraduate lab volunteer in the Terry Lab, where I assisted a graduate student by preparing rodent bone and insect samples for isotopic analysis. While in school I developed an interest in threatened and endangered species conversation as well as avian ecology, and since graduating I have been lucky enough to work on a variety of wildlife projects across the country.

My first experience working professionally with wildlife was in Flagstaff, Arizona where I was a fisheries research intern for Arizona Game and Fish. There I conducted fisherman surveys at Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado River, just upstream from the Grand Canyon. I also assisted electrofishing efforts on the Colorado including trout monitoring and tagging, and carp and sunfish removal. I was able to travel south to a state-run native fish hatchery once a week and help with feeding and research efforts there. After graduating, I worked as an intern for Washington Fish and Wildlife on the Pygmy Rabbit Reintroduction Project. The work included surveying for pygmy rabbit presence on public and private lands and assisting with capture efforts. The descendants of a pygmy rabbit captive breeding program are housed in semi-wild enclosures where we would trap the rabbits and translocate any young to wild areas we hoped they would recolonize. In the fall of 2017 I was able to travel to the east coast for the first time, where I was a fall migration songbird banding intern in Falmouth, Maine. I helped run a 15 net banding operation during peak songbird migration and was able to band over 100 songbirds. While in Maine I also assisted with common loon chick capture. Most recently, I have worked in northwest Wyoming on a common loon research and monitoring project where I will be returning this summer. With that job I have spent a lot of time surveying for loon presence and backpacking through Wyoming’s backcountry, including parts of Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the beautiful Wind River Range. I assisted with loon capture and banding as well; pictured above is me with an 8 week old loon chick in Yellowstone. In the next few years I hope to develop and begin a graduate project on common loons in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. 

This internship at St. Marks has already exposed me to so many new things, and it is only the first week! I am so grateful for the opportunity to come here and work in an ecosystem and with a species that is completely new to me. We have already seen a flamingo, a vermillion flycatcher, and plenty of armadillos and alligators, all species you would never see on the west coast, I can’t wait to see my first frosted flatwoods salamander! I have al