This spring our Director of Education and Director of Conservation wrote a grant for a brand new collegiate level internship program at the Houston Zoo. ExxonMobil generously donated the money needed to fund this comprehensive conservation-education program. It is an 8-week long internship granted to 10 deserving college students.
On May 16th we began our first of eight weeks. I am lucky enough to coordinate this program with Elizabeth Fries (who you may have read about here) under the supervision of our Director, Chance. We furiously started working to put together 8 weeks of meaningful educational and conservation opportunities for the interns.
Looking for an osprey at Armand Bayou
Each week has a different theme. Our first week concentrated on the coastal prairie. We spent our time at the Texas City Prairie Preserve planting native prairie grasses, visiting the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge removing fences, and learning about field research techniques.
Week 2 was centered on community education. The interns took part in on-grounds interpretation, Zooper Challenges, Conservation Stations and even attended an amphibian workshop! They also worked at the Katy Prairie and with the Hermann Park Conservancy.
Week 3 was spent in the Big Thicket National Preserve. We stayed for 3 days and 2 nights in their field research station doing a variety of work. We constructed a bridge, cleared Chinese tallow (an invasive tree), and completed several mussel surveys.
Constructing a bridge at the Big Thicket
Last week we spent the majority of our time with the Galveston Bay Foundation. We harvested marsh plants for their Marsh Mania event and staged the plants at various sites. We then went back and planted the cord grass during a Saturday Marsh Mania. If you haven’t yet helped out at one of these events you definitely should. The staff is outgoing and friendly and the work is fun and well worth it!
All 10 interns with our friends at Galveston Bay and NRG
This week we are learning about some of our international conservation projects including the Painted Dog in Zimbabwe and various projects in Borneo. The interns are learning how to use a camera trap and identify species in time-lapse photos from around the world.
The next 3 weeks will be very busy as we wrap up the internship. Our interns will work on a variety of different projects from sea turtles to amphibians as well as complete a conservation project proposal by the end of their time here. They will pick a regional conservation need and address it with a solution in a lunch-and-learn presentation with Zoo staff and ExxonMobil representatives. This will be the culmination of their time spent here at the Zoo and throughout the Houston area.
Hard at work on their project proposal
As our Education Department partners with our Conservation Department in programs like these we can only hope that the participants will take what they’ve learned and become conservation heroes in their own right.
