(birds chirpping, ducks quacking)
Today we're coming to you from the prairie.
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Hi, everyone.
Welcome to the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Conservation
Connect.
I'm Chelsea McKinney, and today we're
going to explore conservation careers, awesome animals,
and all kinds of technology that conservation professionals use
to study and help wildlife.
Today I'm coming to you from Sevilleta National Wildlife
Refuge in New Mexico.
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Joining us today we have Ariel Elliott,
a researcher at the University of Tennessee,
who is studying small mammals here at Sevilleta.
Ariel, thank you so much for having us
at this amazing refuge.
What beautiful prairie you have.
Thank you for coming down.
I'm wondering, what is the best part of your job?
The best part of my job is being out here.
This is my office.
And it's pretty amazing, expansive,
and I see new things every day.
What kinds of techniques are you using to study small mammals?
Can you show us?
What exactly do you do here?
Yeah.
I can show you out in the field.
Come with me.
All right.
Let's go.
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We started by checking some of Ariel's small mammal traps.
You can peer inside side.
A little pocket mouse.
You got one!
So cute.
So then I just usually get my bag out.
You have to wrap it around the corners
to make it tight so they don't escape out.
(crinkling plastic bag)
You just do a little swoop, and into the bag they go.
(crinkling plastic bag)
Twist it.
Weigh them.
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This one weighs 19 in the bag.
How much does the bag weigh?
The bag weighs eight.
And there's not a lot of food in here.
So you know that the bag would be minus eight.
I'm going to scooch him into the corner.
You just grab their scruff, like you would a cat.
Yep, like a kitten or a puppy?
And there you have it.
Ah, that's so cute.
It's a silky pocket mouse?
And I usually just mark them to show that they were captured.
Black is for the first night of capture.
The first capture, so you put that on the body.
Yep, I give them a little vest.
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So if we capture another one that has black,
that means you've captured it at least one other time.
And what does that tell us?
If you capture enough of the black ones
it means it was a recapture.
It means you can tell population size.
So I can estimate a population size
based on how many I have recaptured
that have the black markings.
Yes.
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What do we have?
We have a woodrat.
A woodrat?
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Whoa.
That thing is not small.
Refuge biologist John Erz assisted
in processing this woodrat.
Let's weigh it.
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168.
Yep.
A fancy new ear piercing.
You'll be really cool.
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Then we released this little guy.
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There he goes.
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Now it was time for me to get some hands-on experience
weighing a kangaroo rat.
All right.
I think I've got to weight it.
I'm going to weigh it.
I've got the scale.
Twist.
(music, crinkling plastic)
This one has a tail.
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What have we got?
Like 64?
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Once I finished my measurements, I set him free.
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Ariel, can you tell me more about small mammals,
what kinds of species you're finding in these traps,
and then why you find them so interesting?
I find them interesting because they're small
and they're really adorable.
And there's so many of them.
You wouldn't suspect because it's like nothing's out here.
But there is.
There's desert, but it's full of life.
And the types of species that I get
are kangaroo rats basically and the small pocket
mouse, which you saw earlier.
Now, you have the coolest job.
Students that are going into school, what kinds of things
should they be doing to get a job as cool as yours?
Get out there.
Go talk to your professors and your teachers.
Just go out for activities that are outdoors.
Thank you, Ariel, so much for showing us
around Sevilleta National Wildlife
Refuge and this amazing prairie that you have.
Thank you for coming.
But you haven't really seen it all yet.
This is just a small part of it.
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It's really amazing when we can combine our love of wildlife,
the beautiful outdoors and the techniques
of catching small mammals to help
protect our fish, wildlife, and our beautiful places.
We'll see you guys next time on the US Fish and Wildlife
Service's Conservation Connect.
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