Main content

Westmoreland Sanctuary Internship. By Tiffani Rushford

May 17, 2021

In Spring 2021, I had the opportunity to have an in person internship during the  COVID-19 Pandemic. On my first day at Westmoreland, I got to assist the Director of Wildlife Management, Steve Ricker, with setting up trail cameras and bait to monitor carnivore populations that utilize the sanctuary. This was great because it gave me hands-on experience with fieldwork. The trail cams got great shots of coyotes, foxes, hawks, owls, deer, and flying squirrels.

I was grateful enough to be there for sugaring season. Sugaring is essentially making maple syrup from the sap gathered from tapped sugar maple trees. I got to tap, gather, and boil the sap to make my own maple syrup.

As the weather started to warm up, more animals started to appear around the sanctuary. Mid spring the amphibian population was booming at the 3 vernal pools at Westmoreland. For Vertebrate Zoology, I had to do a lab where I had to look for amphibians during migration and breeding, luckily I knew a place! I caught many frogs including Spring Peepers and Wood Frogs. I also caught some salamander larvae which look a lot like axolotls. The vernal pools that these amphibians reside in are important, without these pools these populations cannot reproduce. Vernal pools are declining because of land development and fragmentation. Sanctuaries like Westmoreland are important because this land cannot be developed on and these amphibians will always have a home.

The sanctuary also serves as an outside laboratory. I had the opportunity to assist high school students with their study of stream invertebrates. We found caddisflies, stoneflies, and mayfly larvae, and some worms. The presence of these flies in this stream indicated that it is a healthy ecosystem, and the water is clean of any pollution.

Overall, I had a great experience with my internship at Westmoreland. I learned a lot about the local Westchester wildlife and conservation efforts to protect them. I expanded my knowledge of animal care. I’ve added knowledge of pond/stream ecology, vernal pools and the animals that utilize them, and conservation techniques to my ever growing understanding of nature.