Ashton’s July Blog

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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.

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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
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