Throughout the internship with US Fish and Wildlife Service's Department of Bird Habitat Conservation, Helen worked directly with project partners such as Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, and Pheasants Forever, in order to coordinate geospatial data exchange with the NAWCA/NMBCA grants office. Once project files were received from the various organizations, Helen was responsible for entering the project specific data into a geospatial database. Data quality was examined for the various grants, in order to ensure accuracy and compliance with statements in the granteeí¢â‚¬â„¢s final project reports. In addition to this, Helen helped to create standard operating procedure documents to explain the steps involved in creating geospatial data for grantees with varying levels of technical capacity. The NMBCA program, in particular, works with smaller organizations across Central America oftentimes with limited technology. Helen was able to work with a translator to develop a document in Spanish to aid in the creation of geospatial data via Google Earth, a widely available free tool. This document will be useful in helping the NMBCA program track and identify tracts of land in Central America that have benefited from grant funds. At the end of her internship, Helen held an informational meeting with the NAWCA/NMBCA grants branch office members to discuss the progress of her internship and the successes to date of the newly developed geospatial mapping application. Helen was able to present her suggestions for future project development.

Internship Details