Eight School of Natural Resources students are benefiting from Cabela’s Experiential Learning apprenticeships this summer. More than $20,000 has been earmarked or distributed among them for their work in fisheries and wildlife fields.
The students’ work is taking some of them around the state and others around the globe.
“It is providing financial support to students to gain experience,” said Mark Pegg, SNR fisheries professor. “They are imbedded with folks – in Game and Parks and more – doing field work.”
The program is an indefinite proposition between SNR and Cabela’s, which has put an emphasis on conserving fish, game and habitat. The goal is provide undergraduate students with opportunities in one of three locations: animal management; people and resources; or animal habitat.
“Each part is equally important to properly conserving and managing a sustainable approach to ensuring fish and wildlife populations persist,” the agreement states.
At the end of their apprenticeship, students will be required to develop an outreach document of some kind, such as an article, blog post or radio sound bite, that summarizes their experience and show the greater impact their apprenticeship had on supporting outdoors activities.
So far this summer, apprenticeship earners are:
• David Burbach, senior fisheries and wildlife major: Management of grassland habitat at Nine-Mile Prairie
• Jazmin Castillo, senior fisheries and wildlife major: Estimation of distribution and abundance of the spotted hyena in Botswana
• McKenzie Hauger, junior fisheries and wildlife major: Sportfish telemetry in the Red River of the North and Lake Winnipeg
• Tim Lambert, senior fisheries and wildlife major: Population dynamics of channel catfish in the Platte River
• Chrissy Peters, senior horticulture major: Horticulture internship at the UNL Panhandle Reasearch and Extension Center
• Chance Vorderstrasse, senior grassland ecology and management major: Habitat management to support nature-based entrepreneurship
• Ann Wilton, junior fisheries and wildlife and water science major: Using new unmanned aerial vehicle technology to enhance conservation biology research
• Charrissa Zuerlein, senior environmental studies and fisheries and wildlife major: Painted turtle population dynamics
"This program gives our faculty another vehicle to fund undergraduate research and management internships," said Larkin Powell, SNR wildlife professor. "It builds on the success we have had with UNL's UCARE program, and we are now able to support more stipends for student research with the support from Cabela’s."
Students with interest in future apprenticeships should talk to their advisor and watch early in Spring 2017 for application directions for the second year of the program.
Find photos from these students' adventures on the SNR Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/UNLSNR.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/gii6