Week Three: September 8 - 14

Monday was mostly focused on environmental policies - the history of them, how they've developed and changed in response to (always in response to, never in advance of) major conservation/ecological disasters, and which departments handle enforcing the different laws. It was neat, in some ways, especially to try and see the patterns of policy formation. Not super exciting, though.

Tuesday was our next journal club, which was surprisingly controversial within our group; I think the article left a lot open to interpretation in ways that made it really easy for us to see each of our opinions as the ones being endorsed by the text. It essentially made a case for recognizing wildlife as a high-value natural resource, similar to diamonds or oil. Personally, I agreed with it - wildlife are already treated like a resource by the people who exploit them, and legally/intellectually acknowledging this would mean that we can make use of pre-existing frameworks for handling high-value natural resources to regulate and protect wildlife. That being said, the way the article was actually written felt a little vague in some places. I should probably look into whether or not it actually influenced any change in policy...

But the rest of the day was far more exciting! We took a trip to DC to visit the office of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)! It was super cool to get to speak with people who have been involved in so much conservation work, from helping lobby for the Big Cat Public Safety Act to studying opinions on wildlife trafficing in Latin America and creating a whole tool to use to analyze it. And, because they're international, they have an office in Australia (I think somewhere in New South Wales, but their website wasn't super clear) that was involved in recovery from the wildfires a couple of years ago. So, obviously, they don't just do policy work - they do a bunch of outreach and education, as well as more direct action sorts of things. It really seems like the perfect sort of place for me, even before I realized I would probably be able to start working for them in the USA and then transfer to Australia if/when I move. I'm going to be looking into an internship with them, hopefully!

Wednesday was mostly just working on our ivory ethics arguments.

Thursday was our trip to the US Fish and Wildlife National Conservation Training Center (NCTC). They have a gorgeous campus, so many cool things (a confiscated narwhal horn! An ivory dagger that was a gift to a President! Rachel Carson's personal library!!), and a phenomenal dining hall. And the best gift shop ever. The actual tour was pretty fun, too - I enjoyed meeting their video team quite a lot. One of them made some really good points about how cooperating with the media is much more advantageous for scientists than viewing the media as something that warps and misrepresents your years of hard work. I'm not sure which aspect of sci-comm I'll end up in, but if I do end up in a position where I'm re-framing scientific articles for public understanding, I think it would definitely be nice if the scientists in question didn't see me as the enemy! My one disappointment in the tour was that I didn't get to meet any of their graphics people, which I think could have been really cool. The posters and stuff that they had up around the campus were all so well done, and I would've loved to talk to their team about how they create those designs.

Also, I got to try a pawpaw for the first time! Our hike after NCTC took us through the absolutely lovedly Yankauer Preserve in West Virginia that was just full of pawpaw trees. I think I'm sold on them as a concept, and I'm definitely going to try to grow some from the seeds I kept! Hopefully the fact that they're native means that once they start growing, I can just chuck them outside and let them do their thing with minimal maintenance on my part, because I am... not great at keeping plants alive indoors.

Friday was a big day - we found out what our practicum placements are! I was lucky enough to get my first choice, so I'll be working on a multi-year red-backed salamander survey taking place on campus. I'm so excited!! And I'll be working with my classmate, L, which is just extra cool. Besides that, we met one-on-one with Stephanie to discuss our plans for our case study project (I'll be focused on monarch butterflies as a flagship species and how they became so popular, and how that plays a role in their conservation efforts) and we got to talk with Dr. Jamie Reaser about prevent the spread of zoonoses. I found it super interesting, especially when she was talking about OneHealth stuff, because when I interviewed with Dr. Jenn Malpass for a different prac placement (working with the USGS) I got to hear about the work that she's done with OneHealth outreach materials. It was cool to hear about the same project from two different sides! And of course, the actual nature of the project Dr. Reaser is doing was fascinating; working to determine the potential threats exotic animals pose to human health, making use of the Lacey Act's legislative powers in a way that has always been within the scope of the law but never actually utilized, is so neat! It was so weird to learn that so much of the data that I feel like we should have on imported animals, we just... don't. Or at least, not collected and sorted in the ways that it should be. That's got to impact policy, surely. If we don't have a complete view of the information, how can we make informed decisions?

Honestly, it kind of reminded me of the article that I read for next week's prep page, which was talking about how non-native species should be included in things like biodiversity indices. The author made a really good argument in favor of creating a more complete dataset so that we can make more informed decisions, which I think makes perfect sense. Even the IUCN doesn't account for populations outside of a species' natural range (though really, what a "natural range" is feels a bit arbitrary at times...) and that probably leads to situations where the species with large non-native populations are having their numbers underestimated. To me, that feels like a major oversight in terms of both data gathering - because in many cases, we just don't know how many invasives are even present in a given area, because we don't include them in general population counts - and conservation policy. If there are non-natively placed populations of a threatened or endangered species, that's really important data! We could potentially use those populations as genetic reservoirs to help avoid bottlenecks if the species needs breeding programs or similar things. Even for dealing with invasives, we're potentially ignoring so much data on where they are and how they're surviving, just because we don't tend to consider non-natives as a part of the ecosystems which they are very much participating in the biodiversity of (for better or for worse, yes, but still). It was a really interesting article, and I can't wait to discuss it in class.