Greetings, my name is Ian Snyder – FOMR’s new Stewardship Technician. I am excited to share my experiences moving into the refuge and beginning stewardship work.
Before my first day of work, I arrived for the Harney County Migratory Bird Festival. I spent Friday and Saturday volunteering at the Bird Crawl stops, where I greeted visitors and participants of the festival. I learned that people had come from Bend, Boise, Seattle, Portland, Eugene, and the Bay Area to visit our slice of Oregon. I met young adventurers traveling solo, devoted friends traveling together for the love of birds, and families of grandparents, parents, and children all journeying together. I shared my knowledge of birds, wildlife and the natural history of the area with them. For my own experience with the festival, I spent my free time photographing and birding all over the refuge. Just before sunrise each morning I embarked up and down the Center Patrol Road. The short-eared owls really made an impression on me, with their effortless and elegant fluttering over the meadows and sagebrush in the golden rays of the morning light. As I drove through the Blitzen Valley, I was continually awed by the spectacle of Spring Migration. The booming trumpets of sandhill cranes, the giant flocks of white-faced ibis flying overhead, and our yet unnamed ospreys fishing high above the ponds and rivers all heralded that spring was in fact in full swing.
As I begin my stewardship work here, I’m especially excited about projects that help connect people to the refuge while also supporting wildlife and habitat conservation. I’m looking forward to helping inventory and assess our hiking trails and then identifying areas that need maintenance while thinking through ways to improve visitor access and protect sensitive habitat. I’m also eager to work on invasive weed identification and mitigation, which is an important part of caring for the refuge’s native plant communities and wildlife habitat. My goal is to integrate GIS and other mapping tools to assist in these stewardship projects. These projects are practical, hands-on, and directly tied to the long-term health of the landscape. I have also had the opportunity to work directly with the wildlife on the refuge. I assisted our staff biologists tagging redband trout and identifying other fish species. I have also been helping to rescue grebes and other waterfowl around Malheur Lake. I look forward to doing more of this work around the refuge.
As I write this at the end of my second week, I feel very invigorated and ready to continue this work.
This position is funded by Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and offers direct support to the Refuge’s biological program needs including lake restoration, Blitzen River monitoring, and the integrated wet meadow management study while offering early career experience and training! Please consider supporting FOMR’s Seasonal Technician program: DONATE HERE!
