Hello all! It has been a wild time working with Boone County this semester. We hit the ground running with the development of our mussel surveys in Gunpowder Creek. If you don’t know much about mussels, they are a great bio indicator and help keep our waters clean! While we snorkeled in the creek looking for our beloved mollusks, we stumbled upon a lot of cool and exciting macro invertebrates like crawfish and water pennies. Little guys like these are great to see in our waterways. We also have been having great success with our bat monitoring. Many bat species are listed as federally endangered so it’s always an exciting day when we identify them on our recording devices. Beyond our research projects, we’ve been kept busy with weekend events such as salt fest which displayed the rich history of Big Bone Lick State Park. Lastly, we welcomed our junior board and took them on a plant survey. It was great to see the enthusiasm these kids share about the environment; I can’t wait to see where they go next!

The last two months have been amazing, despite being busy as well! From hiking in Dinsmore Woods, Conservancy Park, Middle Creek, and Boone Cliffs to Creeking for mussel surveys in Gunpowder Creek, there has certainly been no shortage of nature lately! 

While the mussel surveys yielded little results, the bat data has been phenomenal! Not only have we monitored nearly all bat species that are found in Kentucky (11/16), but we have caught all 3 federally endangered bats in Kentucky on the monitors. The Virginia big-eared bat, the Indiana bat, and the gray bat were all found at both Dinsmore Woods and Boone Cliffs. We are currently working on lots of data from the semester and preparing to teach the Junior Board some techniques for research! 

I’ve learned so much so far in this internship – from plant identification to bat and mussel research techniques, my tool belt is growing in both size and strength. I cannot wait to see what the remaining half of the internship brings! 

Welcome to my final blog post of the summer! My last day is next week on the 28th, and I can’t believe how fast time has flown. It’s crazy that this time next week I’ll be done! I got so many fun experiences in and they’ll forever be some of my best memories!

We had our second LEAF Academy and it went so well!! The kids were so kind and I got to see a bunch of kids from CKC! It was so nice to see kids stick with it for this long. I’m gonna miss goofing around with a bunch of conservationists in the making, but I’m super excited to do it again next summer!

We also have gotten SO MUCH bat stuff done!! We found proof of Indiana bats living in Boone County through our detection software which was crazy cool. That same week, we ran into a group of people mist netting for bats and invited us to join! It was so cool to see bats that up close! One of the groups that we met with to mist net even CAUGHT Indiana bats which means that our audio was right!! IDK about Jaron but I certainly feel like a celebrity now. 

I’ve learned and grown so much this summer conservation wise, and this internship really changed me for the better. While I’m gonna stick with my Music major (sorry), I’m certainly much more keen on the idea of conservation being in my future. Thanks for being with me all summer and watching me grow!

Mackenzie 🙂

These past couple weeks have came and gone faster than I can wrap my head around. I have kept busy with some very exciting work regarding bats. My month started with a audio recording indicative of the presence of Indiana bats in Northern Kentucky! For those who are unaware Indiana bats are a federally endangered species. With this information we can start doing more work to protect these super special mammals that are so great for our forest’s health. I have also gotten the opportunity to be involved with some mist netting for bats with Kentucky Game and fish and Stantec, which has been a very rewarding experience. The reason they’re mist netting is in regard to some stream mitigation work happening here in Boone County. For those unaware of what mist netting is, it’s a live capture technique where large nets capture flying bats. Once captured the bats are recorded and if they’re a endangered species they are tagged with a tracker so they can find where they roost. I’ve also been able to participate In some hydromod surveys with SD1. Its been fun to work with the SD1 staff and assist them In there stream monitoring work. Along with the bat work I have been researching how to do mussel surveys in Boone County. It will not be long before we start said surveys in which I will update all yall about in my last blog. I am loving this internship and wishing I could slow down time to keep this summer from ending.  

– Jaron

Hello all to the chaos that is my first blog post! I’ve been working at BCCD for about a month now and it’s been the most fun I’ve had in a super long time! I’ve gotten to experience a bunch of new stuff and gone on a bunch of adventures. I’ve been outside more since May than I did probably the entirety of 2021 (please judge.) I am the conservation education intern so I’ve been helping a LOT with the camps we do! (This includes researching Lewis and Clark for 4+ hours, it was worth it though.) We’ve done Conservation Kids Camp and Leaf Academy and I’ve been the ‘manager’ of the crafts we’ve done in the office I like to think, haha! It’s super fun to watch the kids learn new things about nature, and sometimes I’m learning along with them!

Follow along with my blog to watch the journey of this Music Education major learn about nature.

– Mackenzie Clere