Since my last post, I have been staying busy as the end of my internship with WWF inches closer and closer and I begin finalizing my project deliverables. Between all the reading, research, and scripting for the MOOC, I was able to enjoy a lovely Swedish Midsummer celebration with new friends, participated in an exciting global forum with policymakers at the Resilient Cities 2019 Conference in Bonn, Germany, and have begun to see my scripts come to life in initial filming for the MOOC. It’s been a pretty laid-back month, to say the least.

I wanted to wait until my last day as a Conservation International (CI) Global Strategy Intern (wow, that went quick!) to make my last post because we also launched my main deliverable, the strategic planning resource hub, on Friday. Many coworkers expressed how huge of an accomplishment and useful this would be for the organization, so the launch was pretty exciting for my supervisors and I!

About two-thirds of the way through my stay at Koh Yao Yai (KYY) has seen me comfortably settled in island life, interacting and learning about current affairs and attitudes of the community. I was specifically observing what people would do with their waste – finding myself highly aware of my own waste generation – since that is the focus of my project. With just over 2500 people to figure out in the sub-district I’m staying in (also called Koh Yao Yai), I found myself wondering what I could do and how I could help make a difference in short time I’m here for.

Now that I am halfway through my field season of surveying for rails and bitterns, I can definitely say that this experience has been wild. Pun intended. Traveling across the state in search of elusive King Rails (KIRA), Yellow Rails (YERA), and Least Bitterns (LEBI) has lead to a number of eBird checklists, many long hikes at night, very few observations of my focal species, but some amazing views of nature and sunsets.

It’s the second week of June and school is out! It is also a busy time along the Ice Age Trail…

The past three weeks have been full of “last week of school” outings, as well as Saunters programs in the first week of summer. While Waukesha, Lodi, and Sauk Prairie schools were all involved in their own Saunters programs this past week, I spent the whole week sauntering with the students and teachers of Sauk Prairie.

I always had a very romantic idea about the Amazon. The Amazon for me was an untouched nature with an immense forest and huge trees. Very much the classic thought of wilderness of Cronon (1995) that we have discussed during our course. Last week, I had a unique chance to experience the center of the Amazon rainforest in Para state for one week. CI organized an internal workshop to strengthen efforts to promote the Amazon restoration program. Is there better motivation to restore the Amazon other than experiencing the rainforest yourself? This workshop was a great opportunity to understand the magnitude of the program being proposed, to know CI members from all over, and to feel how it is to live in the Amazon.

Honestly … there are A LOT of moving pieces with my placement currently. Last week there was a four day long Y2Y board meeting that jump started my placement and gave it a full-on power boost!

So, in the spirit of cultural immersion and a nod to the title, I started this post yesterday and decided to complete it tomorrow (or today rather). When in…Iceland, right?

I left off in my first post pre-placement, hesitant but with great anticipation of what was to come. I’d be hard pressed to say that both the hesitation and anticipation weren’t both warranted and underrepresented. I made it to the island (thank you mother nature) and I am now two weeks into my placement. When I get asked how it’s going my response is, “Definitively a learning experience”.

It has been now over three weeks since I started the summer leadership placement at the Evaluation Unit of the UW- Extension Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and I must say, it has not been easy. As I mentioned in my first blog, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information I needed to process to accomplish my original goal of developing logic models for each of the Natural Resources Institute’s environmental programs, including an integrated logic model for the Institute. I spent a lot of time thinking how to begin, I made at least three different frameworks to organize data so it could be easier for me to integrate them into a final model. None of them was making sense and I was not feeling very optimist. I took a deep breath (or maybe five) and decided to stop thinking about the final result and just going step by step. I met with my host supervisor and he agreed that I should focus on the “land and water” program area of the NRI, and set aside other programs, centers and reserves. The “land and water” program area includes seven NRI branded programs: the Aquatic Invasive Species Program, the Water Action Volunteers Program, the North Central Region Water Network, the Regional Natural Resources Education Program, the Conservation Professional Training Program, the Wehr Nature Center Outreach Program and the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program.