Mission

“Ensuring excellence in Education, Resource Stewardship and Visitor Experiences at Pinnacles National Park”

The Big Idea

Funding will allow us to collect essential data from approximately twenty condors for a full year to assist in identifying range and monitoring behavior to enhance our understanding of this endangered species. Our Condor interns will provide assistance in tracking, feeding, and releasing condors to the wild, as well as capturing the condors for medical analysis. Not only will this program help the condors come back from the brink of extinction, but will instill love and respect of the environment in our interns.

My internship with the Pinnacles Condor Recovery Program gave me a fantastic introduction to the inner workings of an endangered species recovery program. This knowledge is invaluable in the wildlife conservation field. My confidence has grown thanks to this internship; I am often faced with tasks to effectively communicate with scientists, zoos, and park visitors, create daily plans for volunteers and other interns, and troubleshoot problems arising in the field. Working as a Pinnacles National Park intern, I feel supported in acquiring new skills and ample opportunities to participate in other Resource Management projects (i.e. raptor monitoring, butterfly census, pig fence repair). I believe the experience I gained with this year-long internship is equivalent to working multiple years as a technician in other places; I know this experience has greatly prepared me for graduate school and all my other future endeavors.

- Kaitlin Lopez