Adriane Mason, a CAS ENVS major and RSENR Wildlife Biology minor, was featured in local media for her work installing and monitoring game cameras for VT Fish and Wildlife. In this interview, she gives amazing insight and provides us with some hilarious memories of her experiences studying abroad as well as her time working in Vermont setting up trail cameras.
Khai: So where are you from?
Adriane: I’m from Boulder, Colorado.
Khai: And how’d you end up at ¶¶Òõ̽̽?
Adriane: I wanted something with similar vibes to Colorado and Vermont seemed like a perfect fit. I toured a bunch of schools out west and in the east and ¶¶Òõ̽̽ was a good match.
Khai: And you’ve enjoyed your time here?
Adriane: Yeah, oh yeah.
Khai: I know you’ve had some experience abroad as well, where have you gone?
Adriane: So, I actually went abroad, technically, three times. I did a semester with Round River in Botswana and then I did a summer program with the School for Field Studies in Cambodia and Thailand. And then I did one of the ¶¶Òõ̽̽ travel study courses which they do for spring break in Ecuador.
Khai: Do you have a favorite?
Adriane: Definitely Botswana. It was a very small group. There were only eight students and three instructors. And we lived in the wild for four months. Out in the field, doing fieldwork, sleeping in tents.
Khai: Access to nothing? Sleeping with lions and elephants roaming around? Have you done much camping before then? Or living in the wilderness?
Adriane: Not a ton. Just little backpacking stuff. But my mom's from South Africa. So, I've gotten there every other year since I was born. And that's what made me choose Botswana. Because I want to be in the African bush. And that was the best program for me.
Khai: Can you get a little more into some of the things you did when you were in Botswana?
Adriane: Yeah! So, my semester project was creating a comprehensive bird guide for the 100 most common birds in northern Botswana. And yeah, that was my main project with somebody else. We would just do different types of fieldwork every day, which was mostly like herbivore studies, and we do that through landline transects. Every day, your goals can drive around and, do whatever research we were doing. So we do like where were endangered birds such as vultures. We were studying elephant behavior, and their reaction time to vehicles and stuff.
Khai: What was your favorite animal to study while you were there?
Adriane: I mean, I love elephants. But I have always loved leopards, they have always been my favorite. I love big cats.
Khai: Who doesn't? Do you have a specific memory that you can draw on from your time there?
Adriane: Well, I got really close with one of my instructors who was a local for Botswana. And I'd say I learned like 90% of what I learned when I was there from him. His name is Dix. I was always in his car. We were always doing research together. From the very beginning, I was like, I want to see a leopard. We didn't see Leopard for two months. One morning, it was just me and one other student handler on a game drive. We were 10 minutes into the drive. And he convinced me to do this one route that one day, and we come around the corner. And there's the most massive male leopard you've ever seen just sitting in the row, staring at our cars. Oh, my God, it was crazy. We followed it for a while and then, 20 minutes later, we come around another corner, and there's a female leopard with her cub in the road.
Khai: What?? On the same day?
Adriane: The same day! Within 20 minutes. Like, within 20 minutes, you're like, Okay, huge male leopard, and then on the same road, 20 minutes later. female with her cub.
Khai: That’s amazing. Kind of off-topic but did you happen to see any African Painted Dogs while you were in Botswana? They are my favorite animals.
Adriane: Yeah, actually, that just reminded me of the coolest sighting in the entire program. It was with wild dogs. We were at this camp in the middle of nowhere. And we were staying with some local guides. I was sitting at this communal table. I was just with one other girl and I heard something going on in the bushes 20 yards away. Suddenly, three wild dogs come sprinting out of the bush and they're chasing an antelope called the red lechwe.
Khai: That’s insane.
Adriane: I was like wow.That's crazy.
Khai: Yeah.
Adriane: We're running through the camp down towards the river, because everyone's in the kitchen area. We run through the camp telling everyone. ‘Oh, my God there are wild dogs in camp’ and everyone gets down to the river. There are so many, around 20 wild dogs chasing this antelope, into the water. They were all standing around the water. Like right over her (the lechwe). The lechwe was surrounded by these wild dogs. We stood there for probably 45 minutes just watching while they were just waiting for it to get tired. Eventually, the sun started going down and the sunset was insane. At one point the lechwe tried to make a break for it and they all just pounced on it. Killed it right in front of us and ate it within 15-20 minutes. It was completely gone.
Khai: Wow that’s insane. Wild dogs are such a cool animal, and don’t they have a really high success rate when hunting?
Adriane: Yeah, they are also such a communal animal and fun fact, they will do this thing where they regurgitate food to other members of the pack like the sick and the young.
Khai: Crazy. So, what were some of your takeaways from your experience in Botswana? How did it inform what you want to do in the future?
Adriane: It definitely made me sure I wanted to do fieldwork in some way. But it really showed me that I can live in those conditions for a longer period and, yeah, it made me really interested in community-based conservation and anthropology.
Khai: That's amazing. Okay, so next do you have stories from Cambodia or Ecuador that you want to talk about? Do you have a least favorite experience?
Adriane: That's so hard. I enjoyed them all for different reasons. But the longer the program, the better. So, Ecuador was only a week because it was spring break.
Khai: Oh, so you don’t get the full experience?
Adriane: Yeah, Cambodia and Thailand were six weeks. We started in Cambodia. We're there for two weeks in Siem Reap, and then just going to different areas. It was counted as a class and was one-four-credit class called Conservation of Southeast Asian elephants.
Khai: Oh, so you were mainly working with elephants?
Adriane: Yeah the whole program basically drawn around that. We'd spend time at sanctuaries, and we went to this one place that had retired working elephants, where they could live out their days. And that was really cool. Then in Thailand, we stayed in a community for three weeks and did homestays. We were working with a nonprofit, they're doing their own research, and we got to do some preliminary studies with them. Mine was assessing invertebrate abundance, on alternative and nonalternative crops. Because elephant raiding crops, like elephant raiding in Southeast Asia is a really big problem.
Khai: Do you have some examples of the crops that were being eaten by elephants in Southeast Asia?
Adriane: Yeah, there are fruits like pineapple which elephants love. But yeah, it's really messed up the farmers have to sleep in their farms at night and use non-lethal modes to try to get them away.
Khai: What are elephants most scared of?
Adriane: There's a bunch of different methods but, firecracker-type things that make really loud noises. There’s also a smelly deterrent. We made this vile concoction. We had this giant thing of rotten eggs that had been rotting for two months. It was so bad. And just, the most vile things you could ever imagine.
Khai: So elephants are disgusted by the same smells that we find disgusting?
Adriane: Yep, pretty much.
Khai: To move on, I heard that you did a wildlife internship. What was that like?
Adriane: Yeah, so last semester CAS offers an internship class. They have different versions of it, but mine was the stewardship one. And so, all these organizations that they match kids with. And at the beginning, we would submit this thing that is talked about us and what we're interested in. My vision was to work with fish and wildlife doing fieldwork. And that's exactly what I got. So that was last semester. I was their wildlife camera intern. I would go to different wildlife management areas around the state of Vermont, set up the trail cams, and try to get just cool footage of different kinds of species. I ended up getting some really cool stuff. I was interviewed by the news last week about it and posted it last night. So that's kind of fun. Yeah, I got like all this crazy footage and videos of Moose, and Moose sparring.
Khai: That’s awesome, it sounds like you’ve learned a lot outside of the classroom. How do you feel about experiential learning, as well as ‘Western approaches’ to restoration versus using traditional ecological knowledge?
Adriane: This is like one of the biggest things that's been on my mind lately. Like I said, from Botswana, and my abroad experiences, I've gotten interested in anthropology. So, I took cultural anthropology last semester, and I'm taking environmental anthropology this semester. Same professor, he's great. It's totally messing with my head. I'm like, oh, my God, everything in Western science is wrong. But yeah, I just feel like I have all my values and thoughts about science and what I've been taught because my minor was wildlife bio. And just from the more scientific side, I'm questioning all of that right now.
Khai: Do you think there can be a mix of the two? Or which is the best approach?
Adriane: I think there yeah, there can. It's just hard because it's like, around every corner. It's like another ethical concern pops up and, especially with like, conservation abroad, people just have different conceptions of like, what is right, what should be done. It's just different conceptions of nature.
Khai: Yeah, very true. Jumping back to your wildlife internship, just to reorient myself. When did you do this?
Adriane: Last semester.
Khai: Last semester? Okay, so, it was it was a full semester thing of going to school and then after school, you go to this internship?
Adriane: Pretty much on my own time. It was agreed on eight to 10 hours a week. It's equivalent to a three-credit class. So, every week I'd meet with my advisor and kind of discuss what the plan was for that week. Was I going to drive to a wildlife management area to set up cameras, or go retrieve cameras? A lot of times I would choose a place based on a species I wanted to get pictures of. It was super fun. It got me out in these wild places that I have never been.
Khai: Yeah, it was all Vermont, right?
Adriane: Yeah. So, there are over 100 wildlife management areas in Vermont. A lot of people just have no idea that there's one attached to the Intervale.
Khai: Yeah, I’ve got to start exploring them. Do you have any plans for your future?
Adriane: I'm planning on going back to Colorado for the summer. I'm going to try to live there, work in the nearby town, and make some money and then I just want to travel for a while. Like I said, my family's going to South Africa this next winter. I might try to stay there and get a job or something. Hopefully, my next real thing will be fieldwork-based.
Khai: That’s awesome to hear, thank you for your time.
Adriane: No problem!