Happy New Year!  I hope everyone reading this had some happy holidays!  Here at BCCDKY, we are starting this new year strong!  As promised, I wanted to update you all on the independent project that I have been working on and will continue to do for the next two months.  My super-secret project is (drumroll please) . . . A bird inventory of the restored wetland at YMCA’s Camp Ernst. 

As part of BCCDKY’s Gunpowder Creek Watershed Plan, an old horse pasture at Camp Ernst was converted to a wetland which was finished in 2017.  This wetland is approximately 5 to 7 acre-feet of land in the floodplain of Gunpowder Creek which provides stormwater retention and wildlife habitat.  The wetland consists of a large retention pond surrounded by a native shortgrass prairie and a riparian zone along Gunpowder Creek. 

For my independent project, we determined that doing some sort of bioassessment of the wetland would give us an indication of how the restoration project is influencing the native wildlife in the area.  The thought is that this assessment can later be compared to other restoration projects or to intact wetlands to determine the level of success the restoration has reached in terms of biodiversity.  I chose to do an inventory of birds at the wetland for two reasons.  First, I am familiar with identifying many local bird species from taking ornithology at NKU.  This makes my task much easier than studying other groups of organisms.  Secondly, birds are an excellent indicator of the health of an ecosystem.  Various bird species rely on a combination of insects, fish, trees, shrubs, water, and other organisms for their food and habitat needs.  Without a large biodiversity in other organisms, there cannot be a large diversity in bird species.  Therefore, we can indirectly measure the biodiversity of this restored wetland by measuring the diversity of its avian inhabitants. 

For this project, I have been and will continue to make two hour-long observations of the wetland each week.  By the end of the project, this will amount to approximately 20 hours of live observation to catalogue the diversity of the birds at the site.  I am using the free application eBird to record these observations.  This allows me to keep track of how many different species I have seen as well as the number of individual birds from each species.  At the end of the observation period, I will analyze my findings to determine the richness and evenness of the bird community, as well as the importance value of each species.  For native birds seen in the winter, click here!

The findings from this project will give BCCDKY and our partners an opportunity to examine our restoration efforts in the Gunpowder Creek Watershed Plan.  This project can be replicated in the future to see how biodiversity at this watershed changes over time.  The project can also be used in other locations as a way to compare different sites.  In all, I aim to create another tool we can use in our continued effort to conserve our wetlands, watersheds, and other natural areas.

I do apologize for this being a factual blog post.  It is my sincere hope that my regularly scheduled misadventures will continue shortly.  Thanks for sticking with me for this and, as always, let me know if you have any additional feedback!

– Kevin

            Welcome back to part two of my BCCDKY internship blog!  I know everyone is looking forward to a nice few days off for the holidays, so I’ll keep things brief and hop straight into what I’ve been doing around here. 

            In my last post, I mentioned that I would be helping with an animal tracking course for a group of girl scouts.  We ended up hosting 14 girls and a few parents.  The girls were able to see some tracks in the mud, find various bugs under some logs, identify interesting plants, and learned how to use binoculars.  Everyone had a blast, but I can safely say that hiking around with over a dozen young girls ensures you will sleep great that night.  The event was so successful, we actually ran the program for a second time for the general public and served an additional 18 people including some Cub Scouts from Campbell County. 

            Toward the beginning of December, I slowed down here to focus on my final exams at school (scary, but I survived).  As soon as those were done, I was summoned to my first board meeting.  I’ll admit that I was nervous to introduce myself in front of the people that decide my fate here, but everyone was genuinely happy to have me on board and were even more interested in what I have been learning and doing.  It helped that the board meeting doubled as the office holiday party – delicious tacos put everyone in a better mood.  All the board members here are great and truly care about what we are trying to accomplish.  Everyone here – staff, board members, volunteers – makes it obvious that they care about the environment and doing our part to make things better. 

            The last big project that I have been involved in came just earlier this week.  According to Mark (BCCDKY’s longest-tenured staff member), it was also one of the funniest things he has witnessed.  As part of an ongoing project, Mark and I went out to a large property (305 acres) with a few members of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife to survey streams on the property for possible mitigation efforts.  To do this, we hiked the entirety of the stream system and scored each section.  This job took hours, but it was a lot of fun to get out into the woods and just hike to see what was around.  However, almost as soon as we got there, I found myself in a literal sticky situation.  Mark will be glad to share the details if you ask him, but I’ll simply say that this silly intern got himself stuck in a wetland and had to wait for Mark to stop laughing to come rescue me.  I looked like a giant mud ball the rest of the day.  It was very much a rookie moment for me, but I have since learned that getting stuck in the mud is a bit of a rite of passage in this line of work.  So I’m sure the sound of Mark and the Fish and Wildlife guys laughing was just them welcoming me to the club. 

            The rest of my time here has been split between a variety of things to help with my learning.  I have helped prepare educational material, done rapid stability assessments of streams with SD1, worked with Boone County Parks to remove some invasive honeysuckle, and continued my wilderness first aid training.  I am doing something new and useful almost every day I come in to work.  With the holidays upon us, I don’t have much information on what to expect in the next few weeks, but I am sure there is more mud in which to get stuck.  Also, be on the lookout for a post about my internship project coming shortly after the new year!  In the meantime, I sincerely hope that you all have a wonderful holiday season in whichever way you choose to spend it.  And here is to a happy, healthy, and successful 2019 for everyone!

– Kevin

Hi everyone!  Welcome to my first little blog post updating you about the life of an intern here at BCCDKY!  This is the first time I have ever written anything like this, so bear with me while I learn how this should go over the next few months.

            My first few weeks at the Conservation District have been hectic to say the least.  I spent the majority of the first week learning the names of what at times felt like an endless number of new coworkers.  The rest of the week was spent touring Boone County and getting familiar with the areas in which we work. 

            So far, I have found that we do a lot at BCCDKY to help clean up our communities.  I, along with Megan and Susan from the Conservation District, volunteered to help out at the Hazardous Household Waste Cleanup Day.  This event was massive, and I spent most of my morning and early afternoon trying to make sure no one – including myself – got run over.  People from all over NKY dropped off everything from old paint to even older televisions (seriously, I saw some ancient televisions).  I still don’t know how much waste was collected at that event, but I know that over 2,700 cars dropped stuff off throughout the day! 

            The very next time I came in to work we received a call from a community member wondering if we could come clean up trash from a small stream next to his house.  We said yes, and that ended up being a long and exhausting day.  We ended up hauling seven garbage bags full of trash, 5 or 6 tires, and even a patio umbrella stand from this stream.  A note to anyone who wants to do trash cleanups: prepare to be tired and smelly afterward and expect some muscle aches the next day.  However, it is rewarding work and you can actually see the difference you have made over the course of the day. 

            One thing I have to share about this internship is the amount of training I am receiving.  I have already gone through some GIS program training, CPR and wilderness first aid class, and daily quizzes on tree identification (thanks Megan!).  These trainings are awesome for me professionally.  I can’t imagine not being able to use this training – which I’m getting completely free – further along in my career. 

            I have no idea how long this little blog should run, so I will stop before I bore everyone.  In the upcoming days and weeks, I will be working on animal tracking and helping some girl scouts get some outdoor badges, removing some invasive honeysuckle from a local park, and starting my super-secret super-awesome internship project!  I will be sure to keep updating this as I go along, and please let me know if you have any recommendations to improve this blog or if you have any specific questions about what I have been up to! 

– Kevin

Kevin Black is an Environmental Science major at Northern Kentucky University. He is gracing us with his knowledge and presence for the next 12-16 weeks to be our Conservation Intern! We are so lucky to have him on board and can’t wait to throw all of our natural resource conservation knowledge at him.