“Blogging From the Bayou” – Refuge Update article ft. Garrett Wilkerson

Refuge Update is a publication produced by the Refuges communications team at U.S. Fish and Wildlife headquarters in Arlington, VA. There are six publications per year, and a copy is mailed to every refuge and regional office in the USFWS.

For the November/December 2010 publication, Bill O’Brian wrote a fantastic article feating Black Bayou Lake Youth Ambassador, Garrett Wilkerson. I was absolutely thrilled to see Garrett’s hard work and impressive resume featured in a national publication. I’ve copied the article below and will also post a copy of Refuge Update to Garrett’s profile on the Youth Ambassador website. Congratulations, Garrett!

Alligator at Black Bayou Lake. Photo by Garrett.

“Blogging From the Bayou”

As soon as wildlife refuge specialist Brittany Petersen saw Garrett Wilkerson’s application, she knew the search for Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge’s first youth ambassador was over. The 19-year-old had it all.

He wrote a persuasive essay. He was his high school class of 2010 valedictorian. He came recommended by his biology club faculty adviser. He was savvy about new social media. He was entering the University of Louisiana at Monroe as a bio major. He had lived near the northern Louisiana refuge all his life. And, in the grand tradition of his home state, he loved to hunt, fish and be outdoors.

“There was no need to look much further,” says Petersen.

Since August, Wilkerson has been one of a handful of young volunteers blogging from and about three southeastern wildlife refuges and several other U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service units as part of a pilot project known as the Youth Ambassador Program (YAP).

YAP is designed “to create opportunities for youth around the region to connect with nature, the work of the Service and each other,” its Web site says. The Southeast Region provides the youth ambassadors with a camera and $1,000 for gas and incidental expenses. In exchange, the ambassador is required to commit to a year of volunteering 20 hours per month at the refuge or hatchery, regularly blogging about the experience at http:// usfwsyouthambassadors.wordpress.com and promoting the station’s work by posting the blog, photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

Black Bayou Lake Refuge is a 4,600-acre unit established in 1997 to, among other things, protect and enhance habitat for endangered species, waterfowl, neotropical migrants and resident wildlife. Petersen’s goals for Wilkerson’s YAP work are: to introduce a new generation to the Refuge System; to involve young people with nature and expose them to conservation careers; to dispel a common misperception among local people of all ages that hunting and fishing are not allowed on the refuge; and to use social media to promote the refuge’s trails, wildlife and beauty.

“I like telling people all of the stuff we’re doing,” says Wilkerson. “It feels good when people ask you about it – like you’re accomplishing something.”

Wilkerson has blogged about banding birds on the refuge. “I’ve never been able to get that close to birds before and actually see how they look up close, to see the colors, to see what complex creatures they are,” he says. He was impressed by the ability of refuge staff to identify birds by sound before they could see them. “I want to be able to do that,” he says.

He has blogged about Black Bayou Lake Refuge’s fall celebration, which attracts 2,000 to 3,000 people and includes an alligator snapping turtle hatchling release. The turtle is a species of concern in Louisiana, Petersen says, and each year eggs are collected on the refuge, incubated artificially and, at the fall celebration, released into the lake. This year, Wilkerson conducted the release, filling in for the herpetology professor who could not attend.

Wilkerson has begun to address the hunting and fishing misperception, too – among young people and even his

father’s friends, who recall the lake as a great fishing spot of their youth. “Once the [federal] government took it over [in 1997], they thought it was off limits to everything.” So, Wilkerson is publicizing the opportunities to fish for largemouth bass, bream (sunfish) and crappie and to hunt for deer (with a bow), waterfowl, raccoons, squirrels and opossums on the refuge.

That is important because, as Petersen says, “hunting in Louisiana is more than a pastime. It’s a livelihood. This is the Sportsman’s Paradise – it’s our state motto.”

While YAP requires Wilkerson to put in 20 hours a month on the refuge, he expects he’ll average more than that because “you get to do more interesting things, the longer you’re here.”