By rachels522
One of my favorite parts of my study abroad program is that we spend a month on internship projects. This week we started internships and I could not be more excited about my job. The official title of my internship is Creator and Promoter of Wildlife Passages. Wildlife passages are used to aid animals in crossing human barriers that fragment their environment. Roads are the most common cause of this fragmentation. In Monteverde many sloths and monkeys are run over by cars when attempting to cross the street. These arboreal (tree dwelling) mammals will often try to use wires to cross the road. Wires are often electric and the animals cab be electrocuted. The first sloth that I saw in Costa Rica was unfortunately a dead sloth; it had been electrocuted on a wire. My job is to work with two other interns to create prototype passages for monkeys, monitor sloth passages, and promote and educate the Monteverde community about this project.
My favorite part of the internship so far is monitoring the sloth passages. The fieldwork can be tedious at times, but it can also be extremely rewarding. Today was my first day in the field. My partner and I saw two sloths! One was amazingly mobile, and much faster than I expected. Not slothy at all. The other looked like a ball of fur in the trees. Next week my partner and I are setting up camera traps and going on night hikes. Hopefully we will have some exciting finds!
When we are not in the field my partner and I are working on promoting the idea of wildlife passages. We hope that by making people aware of the passages they will consider their use of the roads and be aware of potential animal crossings. People drive extremely fast in Monteverde. In fact, while on site this morning we witnessed a head on collision between two vehicles. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. However, this scene enforced the idea that drivers in Monteverde are driving too fast to stop in the event of an animal crossing.
I am extremely excited about this internship and can’t wait to see what future observations will hold. While I’m not in the field I will begin studying for midterms… which begin Monday. Yay!