Natural Resource Management Interns
The Barataria Preserve Unit of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve is located just south of New Orleans, Louisiana. Its 23,500 acres of bottomland hardwood forest, cypress swamps, and freshwater marsh are 30 minutes and a world away from downtown. More information can be found here: http://www.nps.gov/jela/barataria-preserve.htm
The Natural Resource Interns will assist the park's Natural Resource Management staff with several projects at the Barataria Preserve Unit. Interns will undertake field work, lab work and office work in support of establishing environmental monitoring instrumentation (including water level loggers, surface elevation assessment installations, a weather station …), implementing natural resource assessment programs (including feral pig impacts, breeding bird monitoring, invasive plant species monitoring and management, and developing aspects of a ‘citizen science’ environmental monitoring program) and assisting with various research projects. In addition, these interns will play a key role in supporting the “science” field operations of the 2013 National Park Service/National Geographic Society BioBlitz which will take place at the Preserve on May 17th and 18th.These positions will entail field work across the matrix of coastal wetland ecosystems that comprise the Barataria Preserve, including off-trail work in swamps and marshes and travel by foot and small boat, during late Spring and Summer – times of high heat and humidity when biting insects are abundant. Field activities will range from low skill low expertise tasks like invasive species removal and basic sampling to high skill and/or high expertise tasks like datalogger communications, identifying birds by call and operating power tools in remote settings. Lab type work will include small scale construction, sample processing, some microscopy, instrument calibration and data acquisition. Office work will include data management, programming dataloggers and the like.Useful skills include the ability to navigate in terrestrial systems using a compass and/or a gps unit, experience working/playing in subtropical coastal wetland landscapes, familiarity with some of the biota of these ecosystems, work with simple dataloggers, power tool use, small boat operation, lab task skills, data collection &/or data management skills, and the ability to work in teams and independently. Interested interns may be able to complete the Department of the Interior Motorboat Operator Certification Course.
