¡Hola, me llamo Brianna! Hello, my name is Brianna!
I have loved animals since my father first pushed me around the zoo in my stroller. I chose my college, the University of California, Davis, based on the opportunities it offered to learn about wildlife conservation. In Davis (which is about an hour and a half east of San Francisco), I volunteer at the California Raptor Center, where I help nurse injured birds of prey back to health. I also help a professor of primatology (that's the study of monkeys and apes) with some of her data. Once or twice a week, I go into her office to organize and analyze numbers related to her studies on capuchin monkeys. In June 2017, she asked me to give her a hand in the field by collecting some of that data myself in Panama! Six months later, here I am.
I will be living on Barro Colorado Island for three months, during which time I will venture into the forest six days a week in hopes of finding some of the animals we have fitted with special data-collecting collars. These specially-designed collars record location and movement data, which allows my team to know what each individual has been doing and where it has been going. I'm the one who gets to follow the animals through their forest habitat to download the data from their collars! I can't wait to share my stories from the Panamanian rainforest with you.
