Last year, SELT welcomed two awesome Seasonal Land Stewards: Micaelie O’Hare and Kassandra Pearl. Micaelie and Kassandra joined the Stewardship crew of Deborah Goard (Stewardship Director), Parker Schuerman (Land Manager) and Amanda Hollenbeck (Easement Stewardship Manager) in June, deploying to SELT’s multitude of easements for monitoring duties and helped with management of SELT’s fee-owned lands.
“They are essential to the work we do and to the overall stewardship and protections of the properties,” said Amanda Hollenbeck. “They were with us during the height of monitoring season, in the field almost every day.”
A 2019 Plymouth State University graduate, majoring in Environmental Science and Policy, Micaelie jumped at the opportunity to join SELT and put her love of the outdoors into action. The outdoors have always been great for Micaelie, as she would spend all day in the woods behind her house as a kid. Nature called to her in college and, later, with AmeriCorps, where she spent a summer term with the Lakes Region Conservation Trust.
Another environmental science major (with a focus on ecosystems), Kassandra Pearl graduated in 2017 and brought with her not only a wealth of experience to SELT (she did a stint at the National Ecological Observatory Network working in the plant diversity field) but more than a few stories of intimate entomological encounters, thanks to some quality time hanging out with wasps and beetles at UNH.
“I was always interested in assessing forest health and ecosystem management,” she says. “I love seeing how everything works together.”
Obviously, 2020 was not a typical season for anything. For Micaelie and Kassandra and the rest of the monitoring group, the steep drought changed the landscape considerably for their expeditions; while some previously wet areas became more passable, much of the aquatic glory of SELT’s easements was strictly diminished.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t still cool stuff to check out – Micaelie spotted a handful of black racers in her travels, and Kassandra saw some gorgeous barred owls. These prime sightings joined the endless array of turtles, frogs, and other species that your average easement monitoring may reveal.
While their SELT tenure may be seasonal, for Kassandra and Micaelie, their SELT experience was indelible and eye-opening:
“It was cool to see how much goes into conserving and upkeeping these beautiful lands,” said Kassandra.