Sharing Experiences in Conservation

Audible gasps could be heard from the hardy group of hawk watchers, both seasoned and beginners, as the third golden eagle of the day passed in front of a vibrant rainbow on its way south. It was a windy and cloudy day in late October at the Sanctuary, with northwest winds creating perfect conditions for a memorable eagle flight. 

This day was the best kind of day for me at North Lookout, with a steady stream of birds and people; hardly a minute went by without someone calling out a passing raptor or migrating shorebird. In that moment, I remembered describing Hawk Mountain to people before I left Massachusetts, gushing about how excited I was to see the raptors streaming down the ridge (some even at eye-level!), quoting migration statistics from the website and describing the different species I would see. It turned out to be everything I hoped it would be and more, because the knowledge I had gained during my time as a Conservation Science Trainee had forever changed the way I perceived raptors and the world around me. 

Even before I arrived at Hawk Mountain, I had been learning about raptors and conservation science, but it all intensified as soon as I arrived on the Mountain. Rather than spending my senior year of high school taking the only three classes remaining after my 60+ credit junior year, I had decided to follow my passion for conservation to a place where I could actually learn how to contribute to it.

As soon as we arrived, that goal was met. The next four months were filled with books, papers, seminars about different research techniques and statistical analysis software, and a lecture series with speakers from all around the world. 

At first, I was intimidated by all I had to learn, but then I figured out one of the biggest advantages to the interpretation aspect of the traineeship: being asked to answer questions about any and every facet of what I was learning. This allowed me to think critically about all of the information I was learning and ultimately to understand it better. I had heard before that the best way to learn something was to teach it, but this experience really made that lesson take on a life of its own for me. Guests would ask me questions that were more in depth than I had considered, and this often made me think about things from a different perspective. I would end my days on the Lookout by rushing down the Mountain to immediately look up some fact that I had not considered before. 

I could not have hoped for a more comprehensive learning experience, or an experience that would truly show me the importance of education in conservation. 

Due to the lessons I learned at Hawk Mountain, I now know from first-hand experience how crucial it is not only to get local people involved in your conservation effort, but to get them invested. If people do not care about what you are doing or why, they will not continue to help you. Being able to education people on the importance of raptors and help them to see what people who spent their lives trying to conserve them were seeing, was an experience I feel very grateful to have had.