Eslie King
Reflection of my Internship with Minnesota Valley
Back in May, I completed my bachelor's degree in Environmental Science from the University of Idaho and moved away from my hometown in Wasilla, Alaska, accepting an internship with the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Bloomington, Minnesota, as a Community Engagement and Visitor Services Intern.
Now having been here in Minnesota for almost six months, it is hard for me to say that I will be approaching my last day as an intern.
It feels like it was just yesterday that I started my internship, met the refuge staff, completed my trainings, and walked the Long Meadow Lake path for my very first time, in awe of the beauty of Minnesota’s nature and filled with excitement for what the next six months might bring.
Working at Minnesota Valley, even for a brief amount of time, has really impacted my life.
Having the opportunity to come to work every day at a wildlife refuge, wearing my maroon printed Minnesota Valley sweater, and work with a whole team of incredible staff has been just the foundation of my experience here.
Over the course of my internship, I have had so many meaningful opportunities.
Learning about and becoming familiar with the wildlife, plants, and vegetation in Minnesota has been one of my favorite experiences I feel I took away from this job. Achieving a point in my internship where I could bring groups of participants on hikes and walks and point out different plants and flowers is a skill that has brought me closer to my love for nature and wildlife.
In the early summertime, I spent weekdays often assisting biologists traversing the trails and collecting data for different research projects. Some of these included collecting and identifying bees for the Bumble Bee Atlas, tagging monarchs for our Monarch Watch project, prairie restoration and seed collection, bird and duck banding, and surveys at Louisville Swamp where I participated in the observation and collection of various plants and species of vegetation.
In July I assisted with the Visitor Services front desk during the Latino Conservation Week Festival, answering questions during the event to visitors in both English and Spanish. Shortly after came the Fish and Wildlife MidWest Intern Conference, where I participated in several workshops and panels, as well as connected with other interns and Service staff.
Delivering and creating educational and nature based interpretive programming is where I started to really fall in love with the work I do.
There is something special about human connection, that, and human connection with nature. At our very core we are social beings that depend on each other. Being able to give programming's and connect with the people that make up the Twin Cities has been the highlight of my time at Minnesota Valley.
Hikes through refuge trails, fishing programs, and bird walks have given me insight that there is something beautiful about being able to work for an agency that pays me to promote and enhance human connection to nature. This teaching is very important. Teaching kids how to fish, and inspiring young adults and people of all ages to get outside and learn about wildlife has been really exciting and enjoyable.
Aside from programming's, I often had the chance to assist educational professionals with our Nature In your Neighborhood programs where we visited local libraries in the Twin Cities and put on engaging activities for youth to inspire them to get outside and explore wildlife through scavenger hunts, arts, and activities.
Working with our partners and diverse groups of individuals have also played a huge role in my internship.
During August I co-led a river paddle with Luella's Latinas down the Minnesota River, participated and co-led several Meet Minnesota Valley meet and greet's at Old Cedar Avenue, coordinated and led two successful pop-up fishing programs with partners Trout Unlimited and St Paul Parks and Rec, and participated in a Paddle with a Purpose with Our Saviors English Language Center.
The fishing programs I led at Powderhorn Park were another highlight to my internship.
I really have enjoyed my time in community outreach and engagement. This position has inspired me to talk and interact with people in the public, where on several occasions, I regularly find myself setting up a tent and inviting people to interact with nature, which has allowed me to become more comfortable and social in both my personal life and in the field.
There was one fishing program in particular in August that reached about 100 people. Several of these participants had just been walking by the pier dock, and I invited them to fish. What started as an empty pier dock eventually transitioned into 100 people and families fishing, filling up the entire pier dock and both the right and left stretches of water. Running around fixing fishing wire, exchanging poles, handing out bait, and seeing families and kids laughing and catching fish was something that really stuck with me and made me proud to work for Minnesota Valley.
Several of these participants had mentioned it was their very first time fishing, and even caught their first fish too! To see kids leaping in the air with delight and their parents smile was something that really made me happy. The program was initially scheduled to go until 7:00, but I had ended up extending the program to 9:00 p.m. because everyone was having so much fun. It was a nice reflection to make that this program was doing exactly our intentions, connecting communities with nature and inspiring the public to get outside.
After the summer months concluded, I spent time on bird walks with our volunteer, Craig Mendell, learning about the various birds and wildlife that pass through the Minnesota flyway.
I spent time tagging monarchs during migration season with volunteers at the Bloomington Education and Visitor Center as well as participated in a tabling event with our friends group in the Monarch Festival held at Nokomis Park.
Much of my fall was spent painting, you could probably find me most of the time in the office either holding a canvas or covered in paint. My supervisor, Oscar Hernandez, put me in charge of our refuge Nature Novice, a program series with efforts to inspire participants to get closer to nature. I had decided to do Painting In Nature, held at Old Cedar Avenue, in Bloomington. This program consisted of organizing and setting up a bunch of paint, tables, and canvases in our Nature Play area where I laid out tarps in a grassy area and invited participants to come paint with me! The series included three programs featuring a black bird at sunset, green caterpillar, and an abstract grasshopper.
Happily, each program had a full sign-up list weeks before the date of the program and participants really enjoyed them!
During my internship I had several opportunities to write social media content for the refuge Facebook page, create weekly digital displays in our Bloomington Visitor Center featuring refuge events and activities, as well as a Wildlife Watch article for the Refuge website titled, “A Walk-Through September”, with focus on prairie vegetation and wildlife in September highlighting goldenrods, aster, white snake root and hoary vervain.
On a monthly basis I was productive in attending VSO Meetings, informational sessions, networking picnics, and coffee hours. During my internship, I felt inspired to find every opportunity I could to fill every hour of my day with Fish and Wildlife.
Once October and November came, I helped put together a Walk and Chalk Party on Urban Wildlife Conservation Day at our Bloomington Visitor and Education Center, attended the Minnesota Naturalist Association Conference in Duluth, where I networked with other conservation professionals and explored and identified lichen along the North Shore, as well as assisted staff with educational field trips on native and nonnative plant identification.
During my internship, I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to roam the trails during trail checks. I led a beginner hiking series along our Long Meadow Lake trail and our Bluff Trail. In preparation for these hikes, I met with senior biologist, Faye Healy, and scoped the trail for plants and flowers as well as collected historical documents to ensure an informational and enjoyable program for our participants. Along these hikes I was quick to point out different plants and even took one group out to a viewpoint of the Minnesota River, where I spotted a wild grape tree and invited the group to indulge in a quick snack.
In my last weeks at the refuge, I drafted and designed templates for exhibits in the Middle Atrium at the Visitor Center, assisted staff with a remodeling project, drafted a few more social media posits for our Facebook, and said my goodbyes.
Looking back I can confidently say it has been a wonderful and enjoyable time working for the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge and the Hispanic Access Foundation, and I look forward to continuing work in the service.
I wanted to take a moment to reflect and thank the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the Hispanic Access Foundation, and the Fish and Wildlife Service for the amazing work they do and for allowing me the opportunity to be an intern for a brief moment in time. I would like to also express my appreciation and gratitude for these organizations and their willingness in funding opportunities for young professionals in the field.
I would like to also give a very special thank you to my supervisor, Oscar Hernandez, for providing me with unconditional support every day of my internship, mentoring me through my programs and supplying me with an abundance of resources and professional development opportunities, and making each and every day of my internship an easy, educational, and enjoyable experience.
Thank you to everyone and see you soon :)
Wood Ducks, Trout and Waders
There is something special about the work we do at with the USFWS and Minnesota Valley NWR. Where park rangers, biologists, realtors, firefighters, mechanics, visitor services, and education experts come together to serve a common goal of conserving, protecting, and enhancing our community, nature, and wildlife.
Something I have found quite fascinating is the work that biologists do on our refuge. As I start my mornings heating up my coffee preparing for my next assignment, a biologist passes me in waders and boots holding a data sheet and jar filled with specimens as they greet me with a smile. I get a brief glimpse into this interesting reality by these small encounters, but I have eagerly wanted to know more.
So, I took the last few weeks to meet with both urban and wildlife biologists, tagging along on their surveys and gathering data from their research this past summer and I am excited to share with you a small glimpse into their work and share how their research contributes to Minnesota Valley.
Along the Mississippi flyway, several species of waterfowl and waterbirds can be seen on the refuge. During migration season, biologists at Minnesota Valley work to band several songbirds and wood ducks by placing aluminum bands on a bird’s legs. Each set of bands has a unique combination of colors and numbers that records the location and date as well as the bird’s species, gender, age and other features.
This data is sent to the USGS lab and is used to understand a birds’ behavior, migration, lifespan, population, diseases and levels of environmental contaminants. This information helps experts make important management and conservation decisions, which is important for the protection and recovery of endangered and threatened birds.
In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more specifically, the Migratory Bird Office, work to analyze banding information from game bird species each year to help set hunting regulations. This helps ensure healthy populations while allowing sustainable hunting opportunities. With Minnesota being a significant stopover and destination for many birds, bird banding has played a huge role in the biology department.
Bees are another hot topic of conversation. The Minnesota Bumble Bee Atlas is a public-participation science project aimed at tracking and conserving Minnesota’s bumble bees. Bees play an incredibly important role in sustaining the health of our environment by pollinating flowers in natural and urban areas, as well as by contributing to successful harvests on farms.
Minnesota is one of the few places where we still find the federally endangered rusty patched bumble bee. A recent study has demonstrated that one quarter of North America's fifty species of bumble bees are experiencing dramatic population declines. The causes of these declines are likely caused by habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and the introduction of pathogens through commercial pollinators.
Biologists work to protect and manage existing habitat or create new habitat to conserve these important pollinators. Surveys are used to assess species distribution, population shifts, habitat associations, and more. Understanding how species distributions have changed over time, in conjunction with habitat change, can aid in helping biologists form accurate predictions as to what we should expect in the future, and help design effective conservation measures.
The Monarch Watch Tagging Program, a large-scale community science project to help understand the dynamics of the monarch's fall migration through mark and recapture, is yet another focus of our biology department.
Each fall more than a quarter of a million tags are distributed across North America. Once a monarch is captured, scientists record the tag code, tag date, gender of the butterfly, and geographic location and then apply a lightweight, circular tag to their wing. At the end of the tagging season, this data is submitted to Monarch Watch and added to its database to be used in research.
Tagging helps answer questions about the origins of monarchs that reach Mexico, the timing and pace of their migration, mortality, and changes in geographic distribution. While feeding on nectar, monarchs pollinate many types of wildflowers and plants that humans and wildlife depend on.
At the refuge, biologists conduct surveys not only on monarchs, bumble bees and waterfowl, but they also conduct population surveys on trout streams as well as threatened, northern long eared bats, too.
In bat survey’s, biologists use acoustic monitors and mobile route detectors along the Mpls parkway to track bat populations. This information is further used for conservation and restoration efforts. Biologists are also often spotted along trout streams electrofishing, a fishing technique that uses electricity to temporarily sting fish, to collect and measure Brook Trout and Northern Redbelly Dace, and record data that is later used to determine species abundance, density and composition. These efforts, in partnership with the Minnesota DNR, are further used to understand the ecological makeup of the trout stream and form a restoration plan.
Aside from duck banding, monarch tagging, and bat and bumble bee surveys, biologists at our refuge are often busy working to restore the Oak Savannah by conducting vegetation surveys, monitoring plots, planting trees and native plants, and removing invasives. Biologists also collect and harvest native seeds at Hennepin County and Eden Prairie that are later used towards restoration projects along the Long Meadow Lake.
This coming year the Minnesota Valley Wetland Management District plans to work with partner, Minnesota Valley Trust, to complete 18 projects across the refuge and district to enhance 995 acres of land, with focus on wetland restoration, prairie and oak savannah restoration, aerial herbicide application, woody removal, interseeding and invasive species control.
Some of these projects include tree removal, construction of a water control structure and dike, a water management plan at Eagle Creek Spillway Maintenance, beaver dam management, native seeding and mowing at Strom Lake, woody removal and invasive species control of the Barn Ruins at Rapids Lake, and fuel reduction and management projects on Howard Farm WPA and Lincoln WPA.
During these restoration projects, the refuge works to support an abundance of opportunities to engage youth and underserved communities such as the Minnesota Valley Trust Inc., Conservation Corps of Minnesota, and the American Conservation Experience High School Youth, in their conservation efforts.
During these past few weeks, I have had the exciting opportunity to participate in some of these surveys and research projects. It has been rewarding to further understand how we are making an impact in our community on both small and large scales and get the chance to share this research with our community.
Eslie King
Eslie King is a senior at the University of Idaho, where she is completing her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science. Born and raised in Wasilla and Palmer Alaska, Eslie grew up dip-netting with her family on the Kenai Peninsula. In college, Eslie is a member of several student clubs and organizations and enjoys volunteering for the Student Sustainability Cooperative on campus. Eslie enjoys her classes and is very passionate about biology and natural resources. In May of 2022, Eslie interned for Senator Risch during the summer session in Washington D.C. where she conducted legislative research, attended natural resource committee hearings, and assisted staff with natural resource related projects. In school, Eslie gained experience conducting research on several different projects, and collecting data at the University of Idaho Experimental Forest. In her classes she gained knowledge and expertise in environmental science, renewable energies, and climate change. Eslie is looking forward to pursuing a career in the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service after she graduates.
Meet Minnesota Valley
In June I started my Visitor and Community Engagement Internship with the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife refuge in Bloomington, MN.