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The Nature Conservancy depends heavily on the efforts of volunteers like you to make our conservation efforts successful. Volunteering with us is a great opportunity to meet new people and learn more about your natural world.
Prairie Restoration/Management Internship
Are you looking for on-the job experience in the fields of grassland ecology, restoration and stewardship? The Nature Conservancy’s Eastern Nebraska Project Office (ENPO) can offer you a wide-range of hands-on training in seed harvest, plant identification, invasive species control, fire/grazing management, and research through a summer internship. This position is appropriate for students, recent graduates or others interested in conservation.
The ENPO is engaged in two major project areas, the Central Platte River and the Southeast Nebraska Prairies. Along the Central Platte River, the Conservancy owns and manages approximately 4,000 acres of restored and remnant prairie adjacent to the Platte River. We harvest seeds from up to 200 or more prairie species each year for our prairie restoration work and have multiple research projects that are evaluating the methods and results of that high-diversity prairie restoration. That research is looking at the relationship between plant diversity and ecological resilience in a number of ways, and evaluating the effectiveness of various restoration techniques in creating that resilience.
In 2009, ENPO will be hosting the annual workshop of the Grassland Restoration Network — a group of large-scale high-diversity restoration sites that meet annually to share lessons, provide input on projects and strategize about the field of prairie restoration. In addition to prairie restoration, we have been experimenting with prairie management strategies aimed at increasing and maintaining plant diversity in both restored and remnant prairies. Chief among these strategies is patch-burn grazing, a system that combines fire and grazing in ways that provide historic patterns of intense fire and grazing disturbances and recovery periods. Finally, we have an active invasive species control program that uses grazing, selective herbicide application and other innovative techniques to suppress and/or control invasive grasses, trees and forbs in prairies and the Platte River.
In the southeast corner of Nebraska, the Conservancy heads up a research program investigating the impacts of fragmentation on tallgrass prairie biological diversity and resilience. Southeast Nebraska has hundreds of high-quality prairies intermixed with CRP fields and cropland. All of the remaining prairies are somewhat fragmented, but the degree of fragmentation and prairie size varies greatly across the landscape. This provides an excellent laboratory in which to study the thresholds of fragmentation beyond which the biological diversity and ecological services/resilience begins to diminish. In 2009, there will be two graduate students investigating the impacts of fragmentation on pollinators and other invertebrates in fragmented high-quality prairies.
An internship with the Conservancy’s Eastern Nebraska Project Office will expose the intern to all of the above activities and is flexible enough to allow the intern to spend the most time on the projects of most interest to that person. We are willing to work with students to help them receive college credit, where possible, and are happy to help set up individual research projects for those interns who are interested.
There is no salary provided for these internships, but we can provide a place to stay and may be able to help defray other expenses. This is not a position that will pay off your student loans, but it is an excellent opportunity to invest in your future. Start and end dates are flexible, and could include any time between May and October.
Interested applicants should contact Chris Helzer to receive more information.
Photo credits (left to right): Prairie seed harvesting for conservation and restoration purposes at Caveny Tract, Nebraska. © Chris Helzer/TNC; Hand collection of native seeds for grassland and prairie restoraton work in Nebraska. © Chris Helzer/TNC
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