©Pasani Dharmasena
December 12, 2017
Discover a Warbler, Inspire a Generation
- as seen by -
Jason M. Aloisio
@TRUEcologyNYC It’s an early, yet bustling, Saturday morning in the Bronx and 17 sleepy-eyed New York City high school students sloth into the seats of a couple idling vans. The students know they are bound for Fordham University’s Louis Calder Biological Field Station, but they don’t yet know what they will discover 25 miles north of the Bronx Zoo.
Upon arrival, the students are greeted by a verdant landscape sprouting dollops of yellow, purple, and orange made ever more tranquil by a cool breeze and the scent of damp soil. The omnipresent sounds of urbanity are replaced by buzzing insects and fluttering tree leaves.
It’s here that the high school student participants of Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology) begin their summer of discovery under the mentorship of the Wildlife Conservation Society conservation educators and Fordham University students.
Graduate student Kevin F.P. Bennett displays a yellow warbler caught during a morning mist netting survey while teaching bird ecology and sampling methodologies to the budding conservation scientists. They will go on to conduct and present original scientific research after exploring the wildlife and wild places of NYC.
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