Snowy Plover Monitoring Program Community Recreational Use Intern

About Audubon

The National Audubon Society is a leading nonprofit conservation organization with 120 years of science-based, community-driven impact, dedicated to protecting birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow. Birds are powerful indicators of our planet’s health, acting as sentinels that warn us of environmental change and inspire action. Audubon works across the Western Hemisphere, driven by the understanding that what is good for birds is good for the planet.

Through a collaborative, bipartisan approach across habitats, borders, and the political spectrum, Audubon drives meaningful and lasting conservation outcomes. With 800 staff and over 1.9 million supporters, Audubon is a dynamic and growing force committed to ensuring a better planet for both birds and people for generations to come.

The Snowy Plover (SNPL) Monitoring Program and Community Recreational Use Intern will assist in implementing surveys of human recreational use on and near SNPL habitat of the South Shore of Great Salt Lake, Utah. Audubon Rockies and Saline Lakes of the National Audubon Society and Tracy Aviary initiated a pilot breeding SNPL monitoring project during the summer of 2023. The ongoing project includes camera trap surveys and surveys to quantify the extent and type of human-related disturbance to the birds.

Interns will work closely with the Sr. Associate of Community Building, Gillmor Sanctuary, to maintain trail camera installations, image analysis and data management, and help conduct two types of recreational surveys, and with Audubon and Tracy Aviary staff throughout the study.

Three months

Offsite at the south shore of Great Salt Lake, and onsite at the Audubon Office, Salt Lake City, Utah

27 hrs per week

$19.00 - $20.00 per hour

• Conduct and quantify in-person and remotely acquired surveys of recreational use of South Shore access points of Great Salt Lake by diverse groups of community members.
• Place and retrieve nesting site cameras.
• Retrieve and replace SD memory cards from nesting sites and other area trail cameras.
• Analyze nesting site images for anthropogenic or predator disturbance and hatching results.
• Log image analysis to program database.
• Interact with the core research team at regular weekly meetings to share observations and troubleshoot any issues.
• Equipment management and inventory, maintenance, storage.
• Prepare a summary report of seasonal disturbance survey data by the end of internship.

• Mentorship from trained and skilled scientists
• Participation in a scientific study
• Conducting in-person surveys
• Operating and maintaining scientific equipment
• Working independently in the field with partner
• Large dataset management
• Basic data analysis approaches
• Scientific reporting
• Learn how the intersection of biological monitoring and recreational use surveys are used to co-create conservation actions
• Collaboration and communication skills

Flexible schedule of up to 27 hours per week. The project team will coordinate on the schedule to align all field visitation to nesting areas to minimize disturbance to nesting birds and to achieve a subsample analysis of visitor use during various times of day (day/evening, weekends/weekdays, holiday/non-holiday). Interns will work as a team for field safety. Interns will spend approximately 75% of their time at research sites, accessed primarily from the frontage road and Saltair off Interstate 80, and 25% in the office or on computers.

Project orientation and equipment training will be provided. Carpooling to sites will be coordinated.

May 26th through August 26th, 2026

• A Bachelor of Science, or currently enrolled in wildlife biology, conservation biology, environmental science, or related field.
• Excellent communication skills and technical capacity to operate and maintain equipment such as geo-locators and remote trail cameras and download data and images to user-interfaced platforms (Qualtrics, ArcGIS, Survey
  123, Excel, etc.).
• Have good data management skills and be able…