An internship with nature
Students tackle environmental conservation with program
Summer in Wisconsin offers a wealth of opportunities for enjoying the outdoors. There are lush parks, wooded and sandy beaches that stretch along Lake Michigan and thousands of inland lakes.
Immersed in their grandeur, it’s easy to overlook the people who dedicate themselves to managing and preserving these natural landscapes. Ecologists, land stewards, natural resource managers and a host of others work to ensure our green spaces remain havens for plants and animals as well as humans.
Now, six Wisconsin students have gotten a firsthand look at what these occupations entail, thanks to paid internships organized by The Nature Conservancy, Milwaukee County parks department and La Causa Inc.
“They’ve been fantastic,” said Billie Harrison, the interns’ mentor with the Nature Conservancy. “They’re really curious and very flexible.”
The Nature Conservancy has recruited summer interns for the past 20 years to work in its preserves. But this was the first year it included students from a Milwaukee school — three are graduates of La Causa Charter School — and added activities in Milwaukee County parks.
A key goal is to instill an appreciation for conservation by giving students a peek into “the tiny universes” animals inhabit and showing them how humans and the environment affect each other. Over the course of the summer, the interns performed dragonfly and snake surveys, monitored water quality, removed invasive plants and built trails.
Tuesday morning found the interns along a tree-lined stretch of the Mukwonago River with cool, clear water gurgling around their knees. Guided by Lisie Kitchel, a state Department of Natural Resources conservation biologist and mussel expert, the group was slowly scouring the riverbed for mussels.
This portion of the Mukwonago River just before it joins the Fox River is an aquatic treasure chest with an exceptionally diverse collection of mussels, from the palm-sized pocketbook to the smaller spike, which conceals a pearly, purple interior. And it’s also one of only three in Wisconsin that hosts the endangered rainbow mussel.
The interns were tasked with taking inventory of the native mussels in the area and removing invasive species, specifically zebra and quagga mussels.
Fortunately, they found only one zebra mussel, and it was promptly crushed by Kitchel. “The only good zebra mussel is a dead one,” she said.
Intern Seraphim Yang said hunting mussels was her favorite activity this summer. Before the internship, she said, “I didn’t know that many things about plants and mussels.”
“But now that I do, I can tell my friends and family that I know what this plant is and whether it’s bad or not.”
That’s one of Harrison’s hopes, that her interns will share their newfound knowledge, creating a kind of ripple effect.
“It’s hard for most people to understand and care about what they don’t know exists,” said Harrison.
Interns Madi Hollman, Connor Sullivan and Karina Cruz said they were surprised by how much effort conservation requires.
Hollman loves to go hiking, but she had never before considered the maintenance trails require.
And removing invasive plants from Grant Park is a never-ending process because they keep growing back. Regardless, Cruz said that she found the labor rewarding because it allowed sunlight to reach native plants and help them grow. “It takes a lot of work, what we’re doing here. Not a lot of people know how hard it is,” said Cruz.
Dante Sosa, who will be a high school junior this fall, said the internship opened his eyes to the many forms conservation takes.
“Everyone knows you can help clean up garbage,” he said. “But not everyone knows what else you can do . ... Like taking out the invasive (plants), I didn’t know that was a thing until I came here.”
Hollman, who will study mechanical engineering and environmental science when she begins college in the fall, said she came away from the internship with the understanding that “every little bit helps, even though it seems small.”
“If everyone were to volunteer one day to remove invasives or to plant native plants at their house, if everyone does that, it becomes a large effort.”