First Encounters of the Marsupial Kind
Print
EmailAdd Summary
Blogger: Abigail Lynch, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and a CSIS member, blogs from Down Under -- she's in Australia to build a framework for her dissertation research. She's interested in developing a decision-support tool to regulate harvest management strategies for lake whitefish in a changing climate.
First Encounters of the Marsupial Kind
Saturday, June 25, 2011
“What a perfect day!” By the end of it, I’m sure I sounded like broken record to Laura Russo. I replaced my adjective with the likes of “beautiful,” “pleasant,” “amazing,” “wonderful,” etc. but my meaning was clearly still the same. We went to Brisbane Forest Park for a 20 km hike and a short visit to the visitors’ center. Tucked at the edge of the Great Dividing Range (which separates the outback from everything else), you’d never guess that the park is a mere 30 minute bus ride from Brisbane.
Though the trail was woefully unlabeled and the park maps were equally “easy” to read, we miraculously had a great day hike through the eucalypt forest with lots of bird sightings, a few herp sightings, and even enough time to visit the visitors’ center before it closed. The visitors’ center is a curious place. It’s in the basement of the building and it hardly advertizes the treasures it holds -- the most exciting of southeast Queensland’s native wildlife: a quoll (cat-like carnivorous marsupial), a wombat, wallabies, pademelons, a whole host of birds and herps, lungfish, and even a platypus. Australia’s animals are so foreign and so exciting!
Monday, June 27, 2011
Ha! The epiphany came with the car honk. I was biking in this morning on a busy road that links Taringa (my neighborhood) to St. Lucia through Toowong (another neighborhood). It took me a second to realize that the car wasn’t honking at me (not that that’s happened before…). I was just amid the hub and hubbub of morning traffic. Somewhere between being learning how to dial a local phone number and remembering to look right then left before I cross the street, I had settled into a routine. I might even be able to give directions! (Ok, maybe that’s one step too far.) Regardless, my epiphany was quickly followed with astonishment that my first two weeks here have passed in what feels like a blink of an eye and that my last two weeks are likely to do the same. Especially when I have weeks as full as this one!
Lynch's studies are supported by a William W. and Evelyn M. Taylor Endowed Fellowship for International Engagement in Coupled Human and Natural Systems, an International Studies and Programs Predissertation Award, an Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior Summer Fellowship, a Graduate School Research Enhancement Award, and a travel award from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
