Hello! My name is Cami Vanderwolf, and I am excited to be working as a Fall 2022 Biological Intern here at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge! I grew up in Silver Spring, MD, where I found my love for the outdoors from a young age. As a girl scout for over 13 years, I spent my childhood camping, kayaking, and learning about plants and wildlife all around me. Participating in, and eventually helping run, outdoor summer camp programs taught me that pursuing an environmental degree and going into conservation was the right path for me.

I attended the University of Delaware and graduated in Spring 2021 with a B.S. in Honors Wildlife Ecology & Conservation and Agriculture and Natural Resources, with minors in Biological Sciences and Statistical Data Analytics. During my time at UD, I learned a lot about GIS and spatial analysis as a GIS analyst for the Center of Applied Demography and Survey Research studying traffic accessibility and hurricane emergency management. I also had the opportunity to study abroad in Tanzania and discover more about African wildlife conservation and community-based conservation methods by conducting daily faunal surveys and meeting with members of local tribes. 

After graduating, I moved to Reno, Nevada and worked as an AmeriCorps member and  Biological Science Technician with Great Basin Institute and the U.S. Forest Service. Here, I was part of the invasive plant and rangeland management team. My days in this position consisted of hiking throughout the Sierra Nevada Mountains inventorying invasive plant species and conducting health surveys on livestock-utilized meadows and streambanks. This summer, I became a Plant Ecology Technician with the Jones Center at Ichauway, helping conduct research on rare and endangered plant species of Georgia. As part of this position, I contributed to the Jones Center’s seedbank program by collecting, storing, and germination testing rare plant seeds. I conducted my own research project spatially analyzing a Schwalbea americana, or American chaffseed, population using terrestrial based LiDAR scanning. I really enjoyed working in a longleaf pine ecosystem over the summer, and I am excited to continue exploring the plant and animal species within this environment here at St. Marks. 

While most of my field experience is in plant ecology, I am looking forward to gaining new familiarity with Frosted Flatwood Salamander conservation efforts and other herpetology projects here at the refuge. I hope that this experience will broaden my skills in wildlife field work and help focus my interests as I prepare for graduate school in the future. I can’t wait to explore all that St. Marks and Northern Florida has to offer in my free time and doing some of my favorite things: hiking, paddle boarding, and reading.