CLIP Week 12: And it’s a wrap!
From the interns:
As our internship comes to an end, we wanted to say thank you to Kathryn, Daniel, Kevin, and all the other staff at TLC. Thank you to the volunteers who make it possible to do workdays and accomplish so much on TLC properties. Thank you to all the people who volunteered their time to teach us about different careers in conservation and ecology.
From Kathryn:
On Monday, Denver helped out with the stewardship team and came back to the office to work on the research presentation, and he got started on analyzing our data from bumblebee monitoring this summer.
Tuesday, we all reunited. The three interns plus Daniel, Kevin and I drove through some pretty extreme weather to get to Nachusa Grasslands. We trusted the van with our lives, and it paid off: we made it safely to see the bison, and it turned out to be a beautiful day. Tyler from Nachusa showed us around their amazing facilities, and we got to drive into the bison enclosure to see the beautiful creatures from a safe distance. We helped the staff collect some seeds, and had a great time being driven around the incredible grasslands.
Wednesday, the interns started the day by putting the finishing touches on their presentations. At our staff meeting, the interns presented their research findings: invasive species removal at our workdays DOES increase species diversity!
Our main takeaway was that the hard work our volunteers do at our brushing workdays pays off in ways that are actually measurable. The interns also presented their hard work bumblebee monitoring. We found rusty patched bumblebees at some of our sites, along with a ton of other bumblebees that everyone is telling me are very cool (I’m more of a plant person, but the bees are VERY cute, and I learned a lot about them this summer). We finished off the day tying up any loose ends with the internship.
Thursday, the interns went with Kevin and Daniel to do some final chainsawing at what the interns called a “mini work day.” When it started raining, they came back to the office, and we spent the rest of our time filing some old documents and listening to the music we’ve been jamming out to together all summer.
Friday – the REAL Final Friday – we finished our filing tasks in the morning, and I gave them some farewell gifts (so as to never forget TLC, or more importantly, Spock). We shopped for some groceries on empty stomachs (which was a mistake) to prepare for the pool party Sarah was hosting to send the interns on their way.
We celebrated with some of the awesome people who have guided the interns this summer, ate some good food, saw a bunch of cool plants in Sarah’s yard, hung out with her foster kitties, and swam to our hearts’ content. It was a lovely way to end the summer.
… And that’s a wrap! We had such a wonderful summer with the interns. It was a first for the CLIP leadership staff to run this program this year, and we couldn’t have had better interns to be our guinea pigs. We laughed, we cried (but not too much), we sang in the car. I learned so much from each intern and from the program as a whole, and I’ll be looking back at the memories for years to come. To the interns: don’t be strangers!! You’re now a part of the wonderful TLC community 🙂
