Well, dear friends, I come bearing good news! Many of you
know from the mass email I sent out already…but I will be headed to Nevada this
summer… and I cannot wait! It will definitely be unlike most places I’ve visited,
but I’m looking forward to experiencing a new place, meeting new faces, being
in the field, and being able to explore other places on my days off. I’ve
already got visions of Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Redwood, and Sequoia National
Parks in mind…
The other part, going along with being out west for the
summer, is that I’ve decided to reactivate Facebook for the summer, mostly to
post pictures, but also to send notes here and there when I can. I’ve no idea
how often I will be able to do so, but I’ll do my best to try :)
As if going out west for the summer wasn’t good enough, I’ve
also been fortunate to have quite a few eye-opening, educational, and character
building experiences in the last 10 days or so. Sounds a bit like I went to a
boot camp of sorts. Well… no, not really. The first couple of experiences were
through a few different field trips and the last through a Leave-No-Trace
training workshop I participated in this past weekend.
The first trip I took
on my own with a friend. We drove to Poynette, Wisconsin where the State Game
Farm is located. They are currently in the throes of hatching and rearing
thousands of pheasant chicks to be released in the fall and we made it for the
first hatch of the season. In one of my classes, we recently had a guest
lecture from the director of the game farm. I guess you could say, I was
intrigued by the operation.
 |
| Basket o' chicks |
We spent the morning
sorting through 6,300 chicks, separating males from females. It was a blur of
stripes at every turn of the head! They were pretty cute. Their peeps reminded
me of the Crested Wood Partridges chicks I helped raise at the Minnesota Zoo
last summer.
If you look at the incubator, it’s amazing to think that
just over 3,000 eggs fit in something the size of your refrigerator! Not only
that, but that are rows of them at the game farm. And even before the eggs are
placed in the incubators, they are collected, washed, checked for cracks, then
sorted into baskets of about 150 – 200 eggs each, before laid in trays.
And after hatching and sorting, the chicks are brought to a brought
to a brooder barn where they spend their first 20 days or so before moving in a
larger room and then finally outside to finish maturing. It’s quite the
process! Once the chicks were released, we had to shuffle back to the door without
making a peep, or else risk having them swarm us as they are doing to the feed
pan in the middle of the picture!
The other two field trips that were part of class were just
as interesting and fun. For these trips we ventured to Raptor Education Group
Inc. (REGI) and the International Crane Foundation (ICF), both of which were
great! REGI focuses on wildlife rehabilitation and is well-known for the number
of Bald Eagle they care for and release and well as their focus of wildlife
education. ICF focuses their efforts on education and conservation of all 17
species of cranes around the world, especially with attempting to establish
another migratory population of Whooping Cranes in addition to breeding all the
species.
For me, it was interesting to compare and contrast the
propagation aspects between ICF and the Game Farm, especially because their
focus on breeding and chick production vary so significantly. This is not to
say one is better than the other, because the Game Farm also focuses on
pheasant conservation (and wildlife conservation to an extent) by promoting
ethical hunting techniques, especially for youth hunters. Come fall, I’m toying
with the idea participating in one of those hunting workshops…and perhaps after
graduation, considering an internship with ICF. Who knows, the opportunities
are endless!
As for the Leave-No-Trace (LNT) workshop, I’m still coming
down from the high of spending the weekend hiking, sitting in front of a campfire,
sharing different ideas related to the Leave-No-Trace ethic, playing Hillbilly
Scrabble and managing to keep clear of them Gnome…People. Ok, so we took the
Hillbilly Scrabble a bit far and for whatever reason, tree gnomes entered the
picture and stayed for the rest of the night! Oh, and just so you know, the
phrase “What happens in Vegas…” doesn’t apply only to Vegas. It is completely
transferrable, and last night is one of those major you-had-to-be-there moments
and as such I will leave it at that :)
The bottom line is that the weekend was great, the weather
was great, the people were great and our ride up to Tomahawk, complete with bluegrass interludes…bomb! We got a lot
of envious looks at our Volkswagon Kombi…
With that, I will leave you for now and with the promise that
my profile of Sigurd Olson will be up soon. It is still going through the
editing process! There will also be some photos of our LNT group, once I
receive them. I forwent the camera this weekend at the risk of most likely
losing it in the woods!
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