27 May Just a girl, ready to start her LHIP wilderness adventure!

Being a Colorado native, I was born for adventure and exploration. Coming from a Cuban-American background, my older brother and I have always had the support and love from an amazing set of parents. Although I grew up around the metropolitan area of Denver, the mountains have always called to me. I answered this call by moving to Durango, Colorado to attend school at Fort Lewis College. I recently earned my Bachelors of Science in Biology after four years of hard work and amazing experiences living near the heart of the Four Corners area. My senior thesis work focused on butterflies as an indicator species in specific restoration treatments used on Middle Mountain in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. The benefit of going to a small liberal arts college in such a beautiful area are the amazing connections to very established Ecologists that I had the pleasure of learning from as a student. These connections allowed me to present my research at two amazing ecological conferences; one being the 13th Biennial Conference of Science & Management on the Colorado Plateau & Southwest Region in Flagstaff, Arizona. The other being the 22nd Annual Front Range Student Ecology Symposium at the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins, Colorado. Pictured to the left is a fellow senior researcher and I celebrating after presenting at the 13th Biennial Conference of Science & management on the Colorado Plateau & Southwest Region in Flagstaff, Arizona. Personally, I would love to go into the wildlife rehabilitation field and work with National Parks on how to reintroduce wildlife populations that had been either endangered or in need of veterinary care. Before I go into this field I need to get my bearings on what working for a National Park is like and expand my ecological knowledge and work experience. In the meantime, I am soaking up the much needed post graduate family time and finding new ways to explore my Rocky Mountains. In my spare time I am either sun bathing while binge-reading another sci-fi novel or watching adorable sloth videos.