Survey Assistant and Habitat Restoration Helpers

I like to say that while I can't do everything with kids that I could do without them, I can still do everything I need to in order to excel at many field jobs.  One of my favorite field activities with my children is checking wildlife cameras.  It is exciting for me to see which wildlife came by, and the children are as excited or more.  There are also many parts of the activity that they can help with, even from a young age.  The following photos are from some work we did on the River Otter Ecology Project.

At the time, this project was just starting to document the return of this species to the region.  The work involved driving to beautiful locations in Marin County, California, hiking into a survey site, and setting up cameras or downloading images.

Here are some photos taken by the Executive Director of the organization, Megan Isadore, of me and my youngest son setting and checking cameras.

Setting up a camera station

Reviewing images in the field

Most of the sites involved short hikes, which the kids are great at and enjoy.  This photo was taken at a beachside field site.  The children just played nearby in the sand while I set the camera.  My older boy was fabulous at pretending to be an otter, to check if we had set up the camera properly.

The logistics of doing the camera trapping work were fairly easy.  I was able to get a child carrier backpack with space for gear in a lower compartment.  If I needed more space, I used a large hip pack, worn in the front.  Plenty of the child carriers are now made for people doing backpacking trips with their children, and doing a lot of fieldwork is really not all that different.  I found bringing a sarong was very useful for multitasking as a field changing table, sun shade, and wiping sand off of the camera lenses.  

  
I have also had the boys with me during habitat restoration work.  Thank you to Jude Stalker at the Invasive Limonium Removal project for this photo of my assistant during invasive species removal.

Removing Invasive Plants

And Jude also took the photo below of my older son helping with oak tree plantings at a restoration site.  He eventually got a shovel and started digging the holes in the soft dirt to put the acorns in.  Kids are great at digging in the dirt.  We need to go and check on those oaks.  This little boy is 10 years old now, and I bet the oaks may have outgrown the both of us.

Planting Oaks

Here is that same little boy 10 years later, taking a chorus frog from a pitfall trap 

I have found participating in citizen science field days is a great way to introduce kids to field work and get them experience with data collection in a low stress (for me!) situation.  We helped out in a Bioblitz, which was documented for a PBS special, shown here.

And this now budding wildlife biologist assisting with roosting bat surveys, part of the Great Causeway Bat Count, at nearly 12 years old.

And doing cast net surveys at 13 years old. 

and, at 16yo, starting to launch on his own beyond working with Mom - here he is participating in a Field Research Course, his first college credits.  

Working with Dr. Rosemary Smith, dye marking rodents as part of a study. 
Photo Credit: Kierstin Thompson

Value of Child in the Field During Survey - Nature Conservancy Report

The Nature Conservancy co-organized an “Expert BioBlitz”, similar to the public BioBlitzs, but using professional biologists, to explore a 26-mile stretch of the Amargosa River, located in the Mojave Desert.  One of the researchers brought their child.  The organizers of the event found the child to be such a valuable addition to the effort, that they included the following paragraph in the official report.

Section VII. e. Inclusion of Children "BioBlitz events are sometimes organized to involve children and families, with the goal of increasing science literacy and public engagement. In contrast, the Amargosa River BioBlitz included primarily adult experts, and the invitation list was restricted to small group of well-trusted individuals. However, one of the participants during the Amargosa River BioBlitz was a seven-year old child. While our event was not geared towards children, we discovered that judicious inclusion of this one, very well- behaved and field-ready child allowed for survey work to occur unimpeded while providing a set of eyes closer to the ground. This facilitated discoveries that otherwise would not have been made."

https://www.scienceforconservation.org/products/amargosa-bioblitz-2017

Multiple Situations, Multiple Solutions - Nature article

This article, work–life balance: Kid-friendly digs, by Kendall Powell was published in Nature in 2014.  It shares the stories of multiple researchers, in many different science fields, and how they all manage different types of fieldwork and travel with families.  

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v513/n7519/full/nj7519-575a.html

International, Tropical, Treetop, Single Parenting

Meg Lowman is an american-born international biologist and ecologist, with expertise in tropical rainforest canopy ecology, canopy plant-insect relationships, and constructing canopy walkways.  She is also an educator, author, editor, adventurer, public speaker, AND single mother of two boys who she brought with her in the field.  Those two boys have since both graduated from Princeton in the sciences.

This is a great article, talking about her accomplishments and how she managed this - http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2006/09/case-study-mom-scientist-canopy-meg

Here is an excerpt from the article "...Lowman's most important innovation was this: she turned longer field expeditions into family trips, taking her two sons to remote regions of four continents. "We have shared adventures in the Amazon, dangling from trees together, walking on canopy bridges, learning medicinal plants from a shaman, eating insects, spotting scarlet macaws, and just getting muddy," she writes in It’s a Jungle Up There. "Experiencing the world through three pairs of eyes has enriched my life far beyond relying on my own view alone."  The article itself talks about more of the logistics.

I have had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Lowman speak twice, and read her first book, "Life in the Treetops".  I found the stories shared very inspirational, and I often reflect on them as I am trying to navigate research and parenthood myself.  I highly recommend the book, and It's a Jungle Up There, written in collaboration with her sons, is next on my list.

Dr. Lowman is currently the Director of Global Initiatives, Lindsay Chair of Botany, & Senior Scientist in Plant Conservation at the California Academy of Sciences.  In 2014, she joined this organization as the Chief of Science and Sustainability, and was responsible for the programs of scientific research and exploration.  She was previously a Professor at North Carolina State University and the founding director of North Carolina’s Nature Research Center at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.  Her list of nicknames is almost as impressive as the list of honors, including “Mother of Canopy Research”, “Canopy Meg”, “real-life Lorax”, and the “Einstein of the treetops”.