Conservation Intern – Boone County Conservation District

Parker’s July Blog

Parker's July Blog

This month has been a very busy one. I finished my independent project (see it here!), helped with both weeks of LEAF Academy, tabling at Raising Hellbenders (a concert for conservation), helped with hydromods, and Pre-K lessons. I am deeply grateful for all of the support and new skills that I have gained while being an intern at the Boone County Conservation District (BCCDKY). Since my time with the BCCDKY is coming to a close I would rather dedicate this blog to my wonderful coworkers.

James:
James is a font of information. Whether it's his specialization (in forestry) or in misc skills I have valued his advice and dedication to conservation. I have enjoyed his can-do attitude and help with whatever task I have had to do. He is a great teacher in helping me understand the native forest species. His willingness to help has no bounds.

Mark:
Mark has a tender heart especially when it concerns those of the younger generation. He has an eagerness to pass on his skills and knowledge to them. His passions for local history and Native Americans has helped me to appreciate all those that have come before me and to build on the foundation that is left behind by their legacy.

Pavla:
Pav is a fun soul to be around. She is very protective and kind hearted. She posses a foresite to see what is needed, when it is needed, and formulates a plan to get whatever it is to where it needs to be at the time that it's needed. You bring a liveliness to the office and have a keen intellect.

Ashton:
Ashton has been a fun co-worker. They make it so much fun and work more enjoyable. It has been an awesome summer. I know you will go far and we will both continue to grow. Thank you for your hard work, passion, and the many laughs we shared. I have full confidence that you will do well in whatever endeavor you find yourself in.

Thank you for an awesome summer! I couldn't have asked for better mentors!

Parker Loertscher, signing off

August 8, 2025

Conservation Intern

Ashton’s July Blog

Hello Boone County, Parker and I are in the home stretch of the internship! July was a productive month for us interns, which consisted of several educational programs, hydromods, and working heavily on our independent projects. 2025 L.E.A.F. Academy was a wonderful time, and we had great, involved kids! Even at their young age (13-15) these kids learned many leadership, teamwork, and conservation skills that they can take with them for their future careers. I am proud of them and glad to have worked with them! Other educational programs that took place were pre-k lessons. The goal of these lessons is to get kids thinking about habitat and local wildlife, even if they do not retain everything, at least it gets them thinking about these important things! As usual, we did hydromods at a few different sites with SD1, helping us refine our knowledge of the hydromod process.

I also spent the past few weeks gathering information and data to complete my individual GIS project. My project focused on locating potential wetland mitigation projects within Boone County using OKI's Greenspace Environmental Mitigation Mapper (GEMM). Wetlands provide incredibly important habitat as well as several ecosystem services (stormwater collection, groundwater recharge, filters pollutants, wildlife reintroduction) that Boone County needs. My goal was to identify potential areas for environmental mitigation programs that would provide the most efficient mitigation process, since these projects are costly in both time and money. After Parker and I completed are posters, we presented them at the Thomas More Field Station. You can view a preliminary version of my poster here - I hope that you guys will find my project interesting and that it opens your minds up to new conservation techniques!

Overall, I had an amazing time working for the Boone County Conservation District and will always remember the Summer of 2025 ! The BCCD staff have given me so many new experiences that I will cherish forever and skills that will help in my future career! Thank you BCCD staff and thank you for reading Boone County Residents!

-Ashton Baxter, Summer 2025 Intern

August 8, 2025

Conservation Intern

Parker’s June 2025 Blog

This past month has been an absolute blast! There has been so much going on.

Kids Camp:
Conservation Kids Camp has been a blast. It has definitely kept me busy during the weeks the district held it. This year's theme was birds. My group's mascot was the Great Blue Heron. Some fun facts
about the Great Blue Heron is that on the front of it there are special feathers that do not ever stop growing. They often fray these feathers and use them to apply/make themselves waterproof. They eat
anything that can fit in their mouth to fish, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals. In total they weigh only about 4-5 pounds despite their large size. This is due to their bones being hollow. They also roost very high up in the tree tops (up to 100ft) in the air. Recently
when Susan and myself were exploring the creek we went all the way to the end of our property and discovered a Great Blue Heron rookery. Normally Great Blue Herons are solitary especially when hunting but
when it is time to build a nest they nest together.

There were a huge variety of birds that we saw and heard during camp. We set up several bird feeders. Some of the highlight birds that I saw were the Red Bellied Woodpecker, Ruby Throated Hummingbird, and
Goldfinch.

Independent Project:
There was so much I got done for my independent project. One of the major obstacles was understanding where (geologically) the layers on the property belonged. I am deeply grateful for Dr. Hunda who is the curator for the invertebrate paleontology at the Cincinnati Museum Center. She told me (after sending many photos) that my suspicions of the Fairview and Kope formations are present on our property. She also narrowed down what grouping the Kope/specific rocks on the Earl and Hazel Jones Center for Conservation.

Something pretty awesome that I learned about was what BioHerms are.
They are a concentration of Bryozoans or another creature that
dominates and takes over in a specific spot. Their fossils dominate
the area and since these layers take thousands to millions of years to
form it's pretty incredible that they dominate for so long in a
specific spot. Even though we don't have any on the property I did
find one nearby.

Finally I measured the entirety of the siltstone/kope formation that is present on the property. I included areas of groundwater coming over the rock, notable fossiles, and old and new landslides. I will also be measuring the height of the more notable limestone layers on our property. What I find amazing is that in the Kope/Siltstone each
layer of limestone (where most of the fossils are found) are formed by massive storms mixing up all the silt and creatures living on it.

Hydromod/Macro/Electrofishing:
This month in doing several hydromods helped Thomas Moore by taking several macro invertebrate surveys. I held a hellgrammite for the first time and it was interesting to watch it move around. It was a good growing experience. I am still working on my courage to grab a crawdad. For electrofishing we went to Gunpowder where we had a
backpack that put an electrical charge into the water. This would stun the fish and it is a great tool to find out what kinds of fish are in the creek. Besides some catfish we got a lot of sunfish, stonerollers, some shad, spotted bass, and more. After we snorkeled around the property and found a dead but intact Fat Mucket Mussel (both shells
together). I gotta bring it home and now I'm going to clean up its shell.

July 2, 2025

Conservation Intern

Ashton’s June 2025 Blog

Hello everyone, Parker and I cannot believe that June has already passed! We were super busy with Conservation Kid's Camp, hydromods, electrofishing, trail management, and independent studies. Conservation Kid's Camp was super fun and taught me a lot about working with kids. Since we had a bird-themed camp we spent our mornings birdwatching, discussing bird adaptations, bird sketching, and watching live bird presentations. Other than that, the second week of camp we were fighting the crazy heat wave which left us with lots of creek time and eating lots of refreshing snacks! I had a great time getting to know the kids and sharing their fascination with nature!

Electrofishing was really fun and allowed us to look at the different species of fish within Gunpowder Creek. I will admit that catching the fish was a lot harder than I thought- next time I will bring my polarized sunglasses! Our independent projects are slowly coming together, and we cannot wait to show the public what we have been working on. Other than that, it was a normal month full of learning and new experiences! I cannot wait for what July holds in store for us!

-Ashton

June 30, 2025

Conservation Intern

Parker’s May 2025 Blog

Hello everyone! I am a new intern with the Boone County Conservation District. I am close to finishing my bachelors degree in Environmental Geoscience from Brigham Young University Idaho. I grew up in Colorado and moved into Boone County very recently. Besides getting to know the area it has been overwhelming with the amount I have learned since starting my internship. Every day has been different so far. My first day was assisting in performing a hydromod on Gunpowder Creek. This included measuring riffles, elevations, and taking a survey of how large the stream gravels/rocks are. The following day was touring the property and learning tree identification. Since I am from the West the plants, especially the species of trees, are very different then what I was used to growing up and the biodiversity of Kentucky is overwhelming and amazing. Learning tree and plant ID has been very useful in assisting in taking tree surveys throughout the property. Helping in this survey every year helps the county understand not only the tree types and how they have grown over time but the amount of invasive species that are prevalent. This information can be used to measure how effective the county's environmental plan to get rid of these invasive species is going.

My independent study preparation has been stressful and rewarding. Recently I have better understood what exactly I wanted to do for it. I have decided that I am going to map the hazards of Gunpowder Creek, also other creeks within Boone County, involved with mass wasting, plant hazards, and other hazards. I will be looking at how the local geology, which is dominated by limestone, affects stream pH (concentration of Hydrogen in the water) and how it compares to other streams that do not have limestone. Finally, I will be mapping the bedrock layers that are on the Earl and Jones Center for Conservation land and research their formation names and where they can be seen.

Overall this summer is looking to be very busy and full of fun times, learning experiences, and lots and lots of research!

June 2, 2025

Conservation Intern

Ashton’s May 2025 Blog

Hello all, I have had a very eventful May with BCCD! My first day started out with a hydromodification survey, where we looked at the changes in slope of Gunpowder creek and the different pebble sizes. We also spent the week preparing for the Open House event by maintaining some trails, working on plant ID, setting up tents/tables as well as educational material.

Open House at the Earl and Hazel Jones Center for Conservation had a great turnout and the people that showed up had a great time viewing the property! The rest of May consisted of continuing are knowledge about the property, bat ID, tree plots on the property, and mostly preparing for kids' camp. I am very excited to meet the kids in a few weeks, I hope to have plenty of fun and learn lots about nature with them!

June 2, 2025

Conservation Intern

Jaron – August 2024

The summer has been hot and humid, but it has been great. My internship with the county is coming to an end and I am about to start my last stretch of undergraduate at Eastern Kentucky University. While down at school I’ll continue progressing my degree and duties as the president of The Wildlife Society at EKU. I will also be working as a resident advisor.

I’ve finished up the first stretch of my summer research and I will be presenting it at the Thomas Moore Biological Field Station tomorrow morning. We had some interesting results from it, it seems big brown bats are more active on nights where it is hot and humid. When I get back to Eastern I will continue my research and expand upon it to other species and add more climatic variables.

I’ve really had a great summer and loved working with all the different people of the county. From collaborating with parks and SD1, teaching kids about the outdoors and working on research it’s all been kind to me. I’m not great at expressing gratitude, but I will try. I’m thankful for this learning opportunity, I’m thankful for the great new friends and mentors, I’m thankful for being able to make a meaningful impact on the earth and I’m thankful for being wrapped up with this conservation district!

Goodbye everyone!

August 1, 2024

Conservation Intern

Ilys – August 2024

These last few weeks have been jam packed with finishing my research and learning new skills!

This summer has been so much fun and incredible!! I’ve learned so much from my time here and have experienced so much that has prepared me for future job opportunities in the conservation field that I can’t thank BCCDKY enough for giving me this opportunity to do.

My research was a camera trap survey of mammals in a riparian zone along gunpowder creek on the Earl and Hazel Jones Center for Conservation property. It was interesting to not only see what mammals are in the riparian zone but what their behaviors were without the presence of humans. Plus, this data that I have collected will be used by BCCDKY for land and wildlife management purposes for the property and for use in future educational programs for the public. This was so rewarding to do and I’m very excited to present this at the Thomas More Field Station to share on a poster.

August 1, 2024

Conservation Intern

Jaron – July 2024

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone has had a very enjoyable summer so far! I know I am.

June and July have been busy as it is this time of year for so many people. We have had conservation kids camp and leaf academy all in the time of my last post. I always enjoy these summer camps. It's always a great time. It's hard work planning, preparing and watching all the kids but I truly think we are able to get a lot across to them!

Along with education programs I have also been working on my research project on the activity patterns of bats.I am going through a ton of audio files manually vetting the auto identification. The Identification of bats based on the recordings has been a unique challenge that I have enjoyed figuring out. Each bat species has different characteristics that can give away what type of bat they are. The software we use for identification will show a representative image of the frequency of the call. This can provide different shapes and measurements that we can use for identification. Some bats have bouncy calls, some have long stems, some are really low frequency, some high, etc. There are a good handful of different species but primarily I have recorded a lot of big brown bats, which makes sense since they are very common. This project has helped teach me some really great skills and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do it!

Below is an image of a Brown Bat call on the identification software Kaleidoscope.

July 18, 2024

Conservation Intern

Ilys – July 2024

The last month and a half has been jam packed with so many different things!! I’ve done multiple hydromodification assessments with SD1 and learned how to properly collect macroinvertebrate samples from either doing a square plot or from seining. I’ve also partially gotten over my fear of chainsaws from learning how to properly use them from a small workshop with the Boone County Parks department. Additionally, I’ve learned how to use other forms of equipment such as using the weed whacker and driving the quad around the property.

I also assisted in two educational camps that we hosted on the property. The first one was the Conservation Kids Camp (CKC) that we hosted two sessions for, one during the first week of June and the second in the last week of June. This was more geared towards kids ages 9 to 12 which was super awesome being a counselor and teaching these kids the importance of conservation and the environment on the property. Some topics they learned included how to look for macroinvertebrates in Gunpowder Creek, how to identify different types of animals and plants, and how to identify invasive plants such as poison hemlock. The second camp we hosted was the Leadership, Exploration, and Fun Academy (LEAF) which was really fun. This camp was geared more towards teens ages 13-15 to get them more interested in conservation and its importance. Some topics and activities they got to do include electrofishing, learning telemetry, how to conduct a forest health survey, visiting the mollusk conservation center in Frankfort, and learning leadership skills while also kayaking a section of Gunpowder Creek.

I have also continued my research on the property using trail cameras in three spots along Gunpowder creek to observe the mammals that live and are around on the edge of the riparian zone. It has been really fascinating to see what we see on the cameras and the behaviors that are exhibited. We’ve seen everything from a little mouse scurrying around finding food to an otter exploring the creek bank and sliding into the water to swim away. It’s also been really awesome learning different tactics in data collection, plus not only learning more about what I’m researching but also learning about what Jaron is researching and the methods he’s using. Overall, it’s been such a fun and insightful month and a half and I can’t wait to see what else is in store as we get closer to the end of the summer.

July 18, 2024

Category: Conservation Intern

Parker's July Blog