The Game of Conservation

I'm exhausted. Texas is hot in the summer. And it's not hardly summer yet! Our field trip of the day today involved going back to the Texas City Prairie Preserve and basically learning the simple tasks of an ecologist and conservationist. The atmosphere for the animals is just as important as the people surrounding them, and habitat loss, so that is just as important a topic in conservation as poaching and hunting.

We learned to water sein, which was basically fishing for a bunch of fish and crabs and whatever you caught was dumped in a bucket. At the end of the hour, we poured out the buckets onto a strainer and looked at all we caught. It showed us biodiversity and indicated that the habitat was healthy. We found all kinds of crab; blue crab, hermit crab, etc. We also found some fish and shrimp, which was equally exciting. It was fun because it was an active learning activity and it showed us how much we can find of the wild if we just take our time and look.

Our next topic was water quality, our supervisor taught us all the ways that we can test water quality and see if it is healthy for the fish and other animals to live in. There was a dissolved oxygen test that involved a mini-chemistry experiment, temperature in the water and outside, and a pH test along with various others. It taught us the safe kind of environment that the many animals that live in and off of the lake need to survive. Luckily, since this habitat was on a preserve, it was indicated as very healthy, despite the pollution plant just across from it.

We took a nice lunch, and stared at the surrounding prairie and lake as we talked and got to know more about each other. After lunch we went on a nature walk, which became more of a scavenger hunt, searching for specific types of native plants that indicated that the prairie was healthy. We found most of the things we were searching for and also discovered some scat, some of an owl, some of possibly a coyote and possibly a bobcat. It was an interesting jump into how to learn about the ecosystem and environment and took me right back to high school. I'm almost surprised I wasn't interested in this field earlier, because everything connects so well. Isn't it just wonderful when things finally make sense?

The environment is here for us to utilize as resources, it is a source of jobs for a lot of people and it provides all of us with our food. But when we overuse and abuse the land, it stops giving, it can't give anymore if we don't let it grow and sustain itself. The game of conservation is a game of balances, trying to figure out how and where to fit in our natural habitats to make our ecosystem and environment more friendly to all creatures, including us. So while we can't completely restore all of the environment to what it used to be, we can re-establish it in some places and remember our role in it all. It's really a unique lesson and one that not everyone knows, so maybe our jobs as conservationists are two-fold; education and research, and possibly even more than that. Either way, I had no idea what I was getting into when I started this internship and I think it's given me a slice of my future that I need in order to plan to be more affective and efficient in my conservation efforts.

(This blog was posted as if it was Tuesday May 22, 2012)