Capturing the mission

Young N’ Wild brings us on a journey through the lens with Beth Decker. Whether documenting the plight of endangered species or creatively conveying the message of conservation through video, Beth works to help show our mission in action.

For the past two summers, I have been working at the Service’s Northeast Regional Office in Hadley, Mass. in our broadcast department. We’re the side of the Service that most people may not know about- we work with our public affairs team to tell our stories using multimedia. I have had the privilege to see conservation in action, and document it so people are aware of the work we do. All along the way, I get to meet some amazing people.

Usually I’m filming or editing a video after getting the chance to visit one of our national wildlife refuges or field offices. I’ve had some great experiences here:

• I worked on a project to document red knots, migratory birds that travel from lower South America to the Artic Circle for their migration. I met bird surveyors from New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom, who monitor a different subspecies of these birds at other times of the year.
• I’ve filmed endangered Karner blue butterflies that are about the size of a quarter and have beautiful blue wings. I witnessed biologists releasing them into their natural habitat and learned how their numbers were increasing in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve because of these releases.
  

  Here, I was filming Karner blue butterflies at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in New York.

• I also got footage of the endangered Puritan tiger beetle that lives on these huge cliffs that are continuously falling into the ocean. These continuous falls help the beetles because they need the fresh sand and require small amounts of vegetation.
  

  We were headed out to get footage of the Puritan tiger beetles and the beaches they live on.

• As part of an effort to document old remnants that were washing ashore the beach at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, I helped to film a wreck tagging training so that Service staff and volunteers would know how to document old objects that are found on the beach from ship wrecks that happened hundreds of years ago.

I enjoy all of the work that I do, whether its out in the field amidst all the action, or at my computer screen trying to make a video that will convey the importance of our conservation mission. I’m always excited to start my next project and show our mission in action!