*Josh Rohrer is one of five interns working on ecological restoration at Madison Audubon’s Faville Grove Sanctuary this summer.*

Madison Audubon is just one of the 450 chapters of the National Audubon and I am proud to be a part of it. Their mission statement is as follows, “Madison Audubon works to protect and improve habitat for birds and other wildlife through land acquisition and management, education, and advocacy.” During my several weeks as an intern for Madison Audubon, I truly can see the work being done to satisfy this mission.

Prior to the internship my knowledge about south-central Wisconsin native and non-native plants, birds, and conservation techniques was very limited. Now, several weeks in, I have learned a variety of prairie, woodland, savanna, and wetland plants. Naming and identifying plants are skills that needs to be practiced over and over to eventually be engraved into you.

By asking questions and taking pictures of plants, birds, and anything else that you are curious about helps not only you retain an image of that, but also helps with later identifications! For example, golden alexanders and wild parsnip look very similar, yet parsnips are very aggressive invasive plants. Drew, Roger, and David have been extremely helpful when I ask questions and I feel that we have only barely tested their knowledge! The other interns are also extremely intelligent and are a very helpful resource as well.

A typical day working at Faville Grove Sanctuary starts off with a morning meeting. We all drive separately in the early hours from our houses to Faville as a precaution during a pandemic — during a normal summer we would be able to carpool. As Drew explains the plan for the day to everyone, many of us enjoy our daily cup of coffee, spread out enough to pull masks down to sip from our thermoses. The mornings will always be the most bracing part of the day, which makes it the best time to get the strenuous work out of the way.

We begin the day doing more intense invasive control typically, with the backpack sprayers. By doing this work in the morning it not only spares us from doing intense work in the afternoon heat, but also allows us to reserve space in the afternoon for more educational opportunities and fun work activities.

In the afternoon, we most recently have been doing a lot of seed collecting, plant identification, birding, and many other fun things. I really enjoy this part of the day because it feels very relaxing as well as rewarding, but we also get to test our knowledge of these south-central Wisconsin plants and birds. Getting quizzed on plants can be quite intense — the pressure and expectation to know all these plants makes the quiz difficult, but it is satisfying when you do get it correct! It is exciting to find a new species, especially if it is native and good for the ecosystem! When we are seed collecting, I’m not only looking for seed, but I am also constantly looking at all the different plants I recognize and new ones I do not so I can get and identification!

Once we finish up our work for the afternoon, we gather and reflect on what we did that day, where we went, what new plants we saw, what plants are in bloom, different animals we see, and anything else that comes to mind! I feel that is important to do that reflection at the end to clearly show what we retained throughout the day and what we will carry on with us.

Photos by Josh Rohrer

Faville Grove Sanctuary has changed drastically since I first arrived. The prairie plants used to be nearly ankle high, and now many reach waist heights or higher! Seeing the changes in the sanctuary, especially the prairies, is astonishing. It is beautiful seeing the different plants flowering every week and filling the prairies with different colors! Most recently one plant in bloom is wood lilies! One of my favorite places to work on the sanctuary is Charles Prairie. Charles is a very well restored prairie, and has lots of birds such as bobolinks which fill the prairie with bubbly robot-like songs.

The work being done is truly satisfying because you know that you are making a difference in the environment and can visibly see it through the diversity and growth in native plants, return of native birds, and many others! This is my first internship ever, and I was excited before it started and still am excited to be a part of it!

The job may not seem exciting to many, but if you can get excited about little things such as hearing a rare bird, seeing a rare plant, or just appreciating everything around it makes it really exciting! There are only a handful of aspects that make the job difficult and those mainly correlate to the physical labor, weather, or terrain. Overall, I really value and enjoy the experience this internship has given me.

Written by Josh Rohrer, Faville Grove Sanctuary summer intern