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In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla provides an update on the podcast’s schedule.
Science Highlight: None
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Transcript (AI-Generated)
Kayla Fratt 00:09
Hey everyone, Kayla dropping in here with a bit of a micro episode for us this week. So as y’all may remember, I won a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to start a Ph.D. program. So I’m all settled in in Oregon, in lovely rainy, misty Corvallis, Oregon with the dogs and Norbert and Ellen who you may remember from our episodes with Guatemala. She’s now my roommate and labmate and kind of a mentor which is pretty cool. And I’m loving my new lab I’m in Tal Levy’s lab, quantitative molecular ecology. My lab mates are the coolest people in the world. I’ve got lab mates who are working on trying to cure white nose syndrome. I’ve got lab mates working on research showing how cell phone towers are allowing ravens to expand their range, which might be hurting sage grouse, which could have huge implications for the Western US, and how roadkill is artificially supplementing those Raven diets, which might also be hurting endangered species or imperiled species. People studying the endangered Pacific Humboldt Martin, it’s just it’s so cool, y’all.
And also, I am so tired, and I am so busy. So from here on out until further notice, the podcast is going to be switching to an every other week schedule. So this is your last two episodes in a row, at least for a while, you know, if things ease up for me, or I get really excited, you know, I reserve the right to publish more often again, but most likely, for the next five years or so while I am in school, we’re gonna be doing an every other week sort of thing. And there may be periods of time where I have long stints of field work, and it might drop off even more than that. I will try my best to let y’all know when that’s going to happen so you don’t think that anything has gone wrong. But yeah, so right now I’m just in classes, I’m taking GIS and R and then a bunch of seminars. So you know, I’m like learning to code and living to make maps. It’s all very important. And I’m very happy to be doing it. And then next summer, and spring, summer, fall-ish. I will be heading up to Alaska with Barley to be doing some wolf research. I’ll tell you more about that when we’ve got some more details. Niffler is going to be heading out to a wind farm with Rachel and Heather in Wyoming. This is our first actual wind farm contracts that we won, so we’re very excited about it. We’re going to be helping out on some studies, or a study looking at whether or not painting a turbine blade black reduces raptor fatalities. So I’m really really excited about that for Rachel and Heather and Ellie and Suki and Scottie and Niffler’s going to be going out, and then we’ve got a couple of subcontractors to fill in the gaps there as well which is super exciting. So yeah, lots of lots of good stuff.
But again, I just wanted to let y’all know that now we’re going to be an every other week podcast is very sad, but I figure better switching to every other weekend making my schedule manageable then canceling the podcast altogether. So yeah, as always, I hope you’re feeling inspired to get outside and be a canine conservationist in whatever way suits your passions and skill set. And apparently the way I’m doing that this term is by actually staying inside and learning how to code and make maps and that’s okay to you know, we, we need all sorts so I’m gonna go outside and play with my dogs now, but I will talk to you again in a week.