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View Winners → Two Local Teenagers Assist in Climate Change Field Study in French Pyrenees
Arcadia Weekly Jul 29, 2015
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Audrey Chen, 18, of Arcadia, changes batteries for a camera trap. Chen, along with six other high school students, assisted with a climate change field study research in the French Pyrenees as part of the Duttenhaver Animal Conservation Field Study through the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA).
By Joyce Peng
Monrovia resident Isabelle Panza could not believe how calm the French Pyrenees were. The lack of people in the small towns she passed by was apparent, because it contrasted with the bustling city of Los Angeles.
The 17-year-old Arcadia High graduate was on a recent field research study in the French Pyrenees as part of the Duttenhaver Animal Conservation Field Study. Through the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA), the field study sends high school upperclassmen around the world to assist with field research with Earthwatch, an international research institute striving to create a more sustainable environment.
Earthwatch is a respected institute that the zoo trusts in terms of its high quality of research work and safety, Genie Vasels, Vice President of Institutional Advancement for GLAZA, explained. Duttenhaver Conservation Field Study Program grant covered all travel and meal expenses.
In previous years, students had studied wildlife and the environment in countries like Peru, Brazil, and East Africa. Only students who are enrolled in the North Hollywood High Magnet School, whose campus is adjacent to the LA Zoo, and GLAZA student volunteers, can qualify.
Panza, six other students, and three LA Zoo mentors stayed at Aspet, France, from July 9-July 17. From there, they drove to the mountains for the field study. The group assisted the work of three Research Scientists affiliated with the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Lead scientist Bernat Claramunt-Lopéz and biologists Irene Figueroa and Jana Marco are studying the effects of climate change on the French Pyrenees ecosystem for Earthwatch.
“The researchers talked to us and wanted to know us as people,” Panza said. “They could have just told us what to do and then ignored us.”
Not only were they friendly, the researchers were passionate about their research.
“I am not the kind of person who would touch rodents or frogs, but being there with them and the energy they have made me want to try everything,” 18-year-old Arcadia High School graduate Audrey Chen voiced.
The student assisted on five main tasks for the study. First, they changed batteries and switched SD cards for camera traps used to capture animal movement. Second, they put bait for small mammal traps, and checked them twice a day. If a newly captured animal was caught, they tagged and measured their weight and identified their gender, before releasing them back into the forests. Third, students counted and measured seedlings and identified scats during forest plotting surveys on mountain slopes. Fourth, they identified and counted the flowers and the pollinator bumblebees along transect surveys in Alpine meadows. Lastly, small nest box birdhouses that were hung from tree branches in March were re-checked for animals. In addition, wildlife and signs of wildlife (scats, feathers, paw prints in mud) seen during the hikes to and from the study sites were identified.
“They are very strict with their research, such as labeling the SD cards and putting them in specific boxes,” Panza explained. “It’s interesting because they seem so fun during the day but they are also serious about their work. Their intent is to not make a mistake.”
From these researchers, mentor Neal Ward, graphics manager of the LA Zoo and Altadena resident, said he learned about the planning of the field study project. Claramunt and Earthwatch began working on the project over a year before any field study work started.
Ward, along with fellow mentors Andrew Lyell and Dorothy Belanger, assisted the researchers alongside the students and handled the trip’s business aspects.
“It was a great trip,” Ward commented. “All of the students were engaged on the projects. They all volunteered for tasks that needed to be accomplished and no one shied away.”
In addition to assisting, the students formed close relationships with the researchers. The two exchanged parts of their culture: the researchers taught the students Spanish and Catalan, and the students made them peanut butter jelly sandwiches. The students want to work with the researchers next year and have the researchers’ addresses to send them care packages.
Chen, an Arcadia resident and incoming UC Berkeley applied mathematics major, said the trip changed who she was as a person.
“I had to put myself out there and work with people that I didn’t know before,” she voiced. “I mainly got more independent and open to new things. The trip made me want to take classes in biology and environment in college.”
The trip encouraged Panza to learn more languages and opened her eyes on the processes researchers go through during field studies. Panza will attend UC Santa Cruz majoring in environmental studies.
“I know what I am setting myself up for,” Panza noted.
