As an intern at Jason Tesauro Consulting, LLC, I completed one hundred and fifty hours working on four different projects geared towards the conservation of bog turtle habitats. 

The first project that I helped Jason complete was a survey of four different potential bog turtle habitats in Putnam Valley, New York, where the New York Department of Transportation wanted to build a road. They legally could not build the road until Jason, the wetland environmental consultant that they hired, confirmed that there were no active populations of bog turtles in the area.

The second project that I worked on with Jason was a series of rapid assessment surveys that we completed alongside the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. These surveys included travelling to different known bog turtle habitats in Dutchess County, New York, and spending a pre-calculated amount of time looking for bog turtles in order to assess population statistics.

The third project that I did with Jason included setting humane traps in two historic bog turtle habitats in Dutchess County and checking them for a period of two weeks to see if any bog turtles wandered into the traps.

For the last project, Jason and I transplanted vegetation from known bog turtle habitats to a man-made wetland on a client’s property.  This was to ensure that over time, the wetland would be equipped with vegetation that bog turtles would gravitate towards, making it a safe environment for them.

My learning objectives for this internship included acquiring as much knowledge about bog turtles and wetland ecology as I could, as well as learning new field skills and methods for data collection. I completed these learning objectives through the conversations that I had with Jason in which he taught me about how the presence of bog turtles in a wetland can help scientists determine the health and status of a wetland. I also completed my objectives through learning new field skills, such as radio telemetry and the process of data collected from turtle captures.

I am confident that I will continue to use all of the skills that I acquired during this internship in my professional career. I learned how to use radio telemetry, a technique used in the field to locate organisms that have previously been identified and tagged with a radio transmitter. This technique is used on many different species for conservation purposes. I learned how to set up and check the traps that we used to try and catch bog turtles. I also learned how to process the bog turtles that were found during the rapid assessment surveys, meaning that I was trained to be able to take the turtle’s measurements and assess the turtle’s health. Additionally, I learned quite a lot of valuable information about the nuances of the bog turtle’s behavior and habitat preferences. 

This internship is an incredible opportunity for acquiring field skills and learning a lot about wetlands and how the presence of bog turtles affects them. My advice to future interns would be to ask Jason and the other wetland environmental consultants as many questions as possible, because these conservationists have decades of experience in the field and are a great resource moving forward with your education and eventual career.