Meet Chelsea, our red wolf caretaker intern!

 Chelsea with a captive red wolf behind her.

 

Please help us welcome our most recent addition to the Red Wolf Recovery Program, Chelsea!  She is the red wolf caretaker intern from January to April 2013. Chelsea was born in Connecticut, grew up in Florida, and attended Unity College in Maine, receiving her Bachelors of Science in Wildlife Conservation in December 2011. 

Chelsea comes to us with a lot of wildlife conservation experience already under her belt.  Some of her previous work includes volunteering at Busch Wildlife Sanctuary, a wildlife rehab center, and researching piping plover and oystercatchers as an endangered shorebird intern at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Assateague Island. Last summer, she was a seabird researcher for Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge and lived on the remote islands of Metinic and Petit Manan Island surveying and studying many different types of shorebirds including common, arctic terns, and Roseate terns, Atlantic puffins, razorbills, common murrs, common eiders, black guillemots, Leach’s storm-petrels, great black-backed gulls, laughing gulls, and herring gulls. From there, she continued on to the Loki Clan Wolf Refuge in the White mountains of New Hampshire, where she cared for 66 wolf hybrids, and participated in education and outreach.

We are very lucky to have her part of the program as Chelsea’s interests in wildlife conservation and wolves began long ago—she even wrote her first book about wolves when she was four (!) and has been following wolf recovery efforts for years. Her long-term goal is to find a permanent position with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, a non-profit, nature center, wildlife rescue, or other facility that will allow her to continue to educate others and conserve wildlife. Together with her family, Chelsea has also created a non-profit organization, Balloons Blow, whose central goal is to bring awareness and educate others about the effects balloon releases and pollution has on the environment and wildlife. On her days off, you can find Chelsea cleaning nearby the beaches and removing washed up debris.

  Chelsea and a captive pair of red wolves.

Welcome, Chelsea!