Hi there! My name is Rachel Schutes and I am a 2018 Summer intern at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. I grew up in Brimfield, Massachusetts on 180 acres of forested land. I spent my childhood exploring the forest in my backyard and catching fish and frogs in the pond near my house. I think that this upbringing nurtured my love for the outdoors and provided the initial spark that ignited my interest in wildlife. As I grew older my interest in nature only grew. I started to spend as much time outside as possible and developed an interest in all sorts of outdoor activities including skiing and snowboarding, wildlife and nature photography, and a variety of outdoor sports including soccer, track and sand court volleyball. I also participated in science club in junior high and in high school I took an elective class called Environmental Field Work in which I was introduced to identification of common trees, performing forest stand assessments and gained experience with water quality sampling.

After graduating high school I attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst and studied Natural Resources Conservation with a concentration in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation and minored in biology. While at school I took a variety of valuable field-based classes including Ornithology, Fish Sampling and Identification, Wildlife Sampling and Identification and Forest Tree and Shrub Identification. These are the classes that initially introduced me to field work and gave me the experience I needed to realize that I wanted to work in the field in the future.  

While at school I also had two internships. The first was at Cronin Aquatic Resource Center in Sunderland, Massachusetts. I worked at the resource center for one semester during my sophomore year and while there I contributed to an endangered freshwater mussel rearing program by cleaning and feeding juvenile mussels and learning to build enclosures for juvenile and adult muscles using power tools. I was at my other internship at UMass for four semesters, the entirety of both my junior and senior year. At this internship I worked with a Ph.D. candidate on a climate project analyzing the effects of snowpack density on predator-prey relations in mountainous regions of New Hampshire and Vermont and how this relationship is being impacted by climate change. While at this internship I organized data sheets, cleaned and entered species and snow depth and occurrence data, assisted with the transfer of the 130,000 photo camera trap database from Camera Base to CPW Photo Warehouse and went out in the field to check and set camera traps. I was also given the opportunity to design and implement my own senior independent research project in which I used existing camera trap data to identify individual bobcats using unique inner leg patterning and used this data to look at individual movements and residency. My time at UMass was incredibly valuable and rewarding and I believe it prepared me to take on a wide variety of challenges in the future. I graduated with honors this May and can’t wait to see what the future has in store! 

In addition to the experience that I gained while at school I also had the opportunity to work with USGS on a long-term marine turtle tagging study last summer in Cape San Blas, Florida. During this internship I performed nightly beach surveys in search of Loggerhead sea turtles coming up on the beach to nest. We tagged all turtles that we encountered with PIT and flipper tags and took morphological measurements. We also did morning survey on one of the beaches, checking the nests daily to monitor their health and implementing screens and stakes to protect the nests from predation. I also had the opportunity to go out on the boat to capture and tag turtles in St. Joseph Bay and also searched for and tagged Diamondback Terrapins on small grassy islands off the coast of the bay. 

So far at St. Marks I have already gained so many valuable experiences that I know will help me immensely in future positions. I got to see the process that goes into the captive breeding of Frosted Flatwoods Salamanders and was taught how to tag them before release. I have also learned so much about avian biology while helping Jonathan on his work with Red Cockaded Woodpeckers. I got to band some of the chicks and even learned to use the ladders to climb up to nest cavities and retrieve chicks to band. I have also had the opportunity to visit St. Vincent Island National Wildlife Refuge and assist with morning sea turtle nesting surveys and radio tracking the resident pair of Red Wolves. These were incredibly amazing experiences that I know I will never forget. I am so grateful to have been selected as an intern at St. Marks NWR and want to thank everyone who has made this internship possible and who has supported me up to this point. I am grateful to be able to work with such a supportive and professional group and am already looking forward to the rest of the summer!