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<\/p>\nLake County has three main species of interest: the endangered Blanding’s turtle, the common snapping turtle, and the painted turtle. We work closely with Lake County Forest Preserves to monitor these populations and their health. Common field activities for us include trapping and sampling turtles, tracking nesting females via radiotelemetry, and doing our work at our lab, which we affectionately refer to as “Turtle Town”!<\/p>\n
My name is Jenna and I couldn\u2019t be more excited to start another field season with WEL and Lake County this summer! As one of last summer\u2019s fellows, I am looking forward to jumping in and putting everything I learned last year into practice, and expanding on it even more with each turtle we find.<\/p>\n
I am a member of the class of 2028 with a potential interest in zoo\/wildlife pathology. Conservation is at the heart of many of my career goals and I am so grateful that WEL has given me the opportunity to start working towardsthem during veterinary school.<\/p>\n
Before WEL, my fieldwork experience was exclusively with mammals. Adapting to reptile work, and their wetland environments, has been a major learning curve but a very rewarding one. I have found these charming chelonians to be far more charismatic than I could have ever thought! Here in Lake County, we often track down the same females each week, meaning that I get to know them and the quirks of their personalities. These blogs will be a fun way to share those personalities with everyone in the coming weeks!<\/p>\n
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My name is Sathvik and I am excited to be a new WEL summer fellow for the 2026 field season! Though I am new to WEL, I am not new to Illinois, having grown up in the Chicagoland area. It will be really cool to go back to the ecosystems I’ve visited as a kid, this time working to help protect them!<\/p>\n
I am a member of the veterinary class of 2029 with an interest in free-ranging wildlife or zoo medicine, though I am open to many other routes. I always wanted to be a conservationist first, and I think veterinary medicine and WEL may be my avenue to achieve that. At school, I also help out with the wildlife medical clinic in my free time.<\/p>\n
Before WEL, most of my experience was based around mammals, birds, and necropsies so I’m excited to get in some waders and check turtle traps! I am especially excited to spend some time outdoors and work on new skills with the Lake County team. I’ll be learning all I can from Jenna and the rest of the team, bringing you along for the ride as well!<\/p>\n
Stay tuned for our adventures through the wetlands this summer! \ud83d\ude0a\ud83d\udc22\ud83c\udf3f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lake County has three main species of interest: the endangered Blanding’s turtle, the common snapping turtle, and the painted turtle. We work closely with Lake County Forest Preserves to monitor these populations and their health. Common field activities for us include trapping and sampling turtles, tracking nesting females via radiotelemetry, and doing our work at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1591,"featured_media":6653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1591"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6561"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6672,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions\/6672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}