Professional Musings

June is World Environment Month (and Environmental Month specifically in Australia). As part of the celebration, the Mt. Gambier Library is holding various environmentally-themed workshops and presentations throughout the month. I was asked to give a presentation about my Fulbright research and bats, so of course I agreed! My talk was titled “Bat Caves, Bent Wings and Missile Tracking Systems” and was the launching event of Environmental Month at the library. My talk was advertised in a short blurb in the Sunday Mail, a South Australian statewide newspaper, and the headline of the ad read, “Bat expert at library”. Wow, I was called a bat expert! It was quite strange to see that. My presentation was slotted for about 45 minutes, which is definitely the longest (non-school classroom) presentation I’ve given. There were about 10 people at the talk, which seemed small for what I was expecting but was actually quite nice and intimate. The time flew by and I had no trouble filling the time. 

That session was good practice for a conference I will be attending in Hungary in late September. Last year Deb, the manager of the caves, forwarded me an email about an international cave-roosting bat conference and thought I might be interested in attending. Of course I was! It will be held from September 20-24 at the University of Miskolc in Hungary and will focus on the biology and conservation of cave-roosting bats, including information on diseases like White-nose Syndrome, cave management issues, and cave tourism. In other words, a perfect forum at which to present my Fulbright research on the obligate cave-dwelling Critically Endangered Southern Bent-wing Bat. The problem was that flights from Australia to Hungary cost about $2000, and I definitely did not have that kind of money to spend on a conference. However, I wasn’t going to give up just because of that. I did some searching on Google for sources of travel grants. I didn’t qualify for most of them, but I did find one from the Cybec Foundation (http://cybec.com.au/) that was a possibility. The foundation is a charitable organization that encourages academic excellence, assists the less fortunate, cares for the environment, and supports the arts. I read through their website and found a page about some “Miscellaneous” grants they give out. Many of the grants were for people to attend conference and workshops in their field. The Hungary conference fit perfectly with that, so I contacted the foundation with information about myself and a request for information about how to apply for a travel grant. The reply I received stunned me. Roger Riordan, the co-founder of the foundation, replied asking how much I needed and that if it wasn’t too much they could do it. No application, no nothing! I couldn’t believe it: I was going to Hungary! I have submitted my registration and will submit my abstract for a talk by the end of June. Talks are 30 minutes long, which will be the longest conference talk I’ve ever given (usually they are 15 minutes (about 12 minutes for the talk and 3 minutes for questions)). I was quite nervous about the time length, but after the Mt. Gambier Library talk I’m not so apprehensive anymore. I am so excited about this opportunity and am grateful to Mr. Riordan and the Cybec Foundation for funding me. It will be my first international academic conference, and I’ll be by myself too! It will be a great opportunity to present my Fulbright research and to network with bat researchers from around the world. 

Speaking of professional things, I’ve been thinking a bit lately about my current career path and how it all started. I’ve decided that in graduate school I want to study the role of bats in providing ecosystem services in agricultural systems and how to best encourage farmers to incorporate bats (and other natural pest controllers) in their management strategies, with the ultimate aim to create more sustainable agricultural practices. Awhile ago my mom commented that I sure pick dry places in which to work. Thinking about it, that’s very true. I am most interested in semi-arid to arid landscapes, like the pecan agroecosystem in which I worked in Texas and now the heathland areas in which I am currently working. I don’t know specifically how or when this preference developed, but I do remember coming home from field work in Nebraska the summer after my freshman year in college and feeling claustrophobic in the forested area of my home. I longed to return to the openness of the Nebraska plains. When I arrived in Texas the following summer to work as a field assistant for a bat research project, I felt very at ease and very much at home. I have never really done field work in the tropics, although I did spend a month in Guatemala after high school. While I had a wonderful time and enjoyed experiencing the lush, beautiful environment of the rainforest, I definitely didn’t feel the same feeling of belonging that I did in Nebraska and Texas, and now here in South Australia. At the end of September Chris and I are going up to tropical Cape York in northern Australia to participate in a bat survey expedition with the Australasian Bat Society. This will be my first time doing bat work in the tropics, so I’m excited to see how it goes and how I feel about it. I have a feeling that I will thoroughly enjoy it, but it will confirm my desire to pursue work in more arid areas.

My interest in working in agricultural systems developed after working with Liz Braun de Torrez on her PhD study of bats in Texas pecan orchards. During the summers I worked with her, we lived in a small field house in the organic pecan orchard of John and Jimma Byrd. We worked closely with John and Jimma, as well as other growers in the area, to conduct the study, and through this interaction I realized how important it is to get the local people involved in research and conservation. It piqued my interest in working with farmers to incorporate bats in their pest management strategies and to get them involved with conservation efforts. There are so many intricacies in the study of “ecosystem services” and it’s definitely a complicated issue, but it’s something that I think is very important as we strive to maintain a balance between conservation and economic growth and development. I strongly believe that the two ends don’t have to be mutually exclusive; this is one of the ideas I hope to pursue further in graduate school.

 
Food for thought on the land-sharing versus land-sparing debate in agriculture