Bobcat Stories

The CEBRIN Field and Community Science program, led by teachers Kim Fike and Dan Shaw, had a busy summer, including three overnight research trips and collaborations with city and state agencies.  

In June, when the river was still high, Ms. Fike and Mr. Shaw traveled with sophomores Esme and Lola up to the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, a two-night, three-day river trip, with the intention of continuing 2025 graduate Sophie Griego's research into the diet of the otters that have been reintroduced into the area in recent years. As part of her research in the field science program, Sophie had developed a novel hair snare. Esme and Lola timed their trip for when the water was high enough to remove Sophie’s snares, and were disappointed to find no hair samples had been captured. They successfully collected samples of clams and crayfish, which they believe are part of the otter's diet. Eventually, if otter hair is captured in future snare retrievals, the students will use stable isotope analysis to determine whether the clams and crayfish they sampled are part of the otter diet.  

Last year, students collected fish and preserved samples for the same purpose. There is some controversy around the reintroduced otter because local anglers worry that the otters would deplete fish stocks. However, it appears, from the evidence in the latrines that the otters use, that their diet is primarily composed of crayfish.

Students on the second and third trips of the summer worked with Leland Pierce of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, who assisted student researchers in finding, collecting, and swabbing pond amphibians to determine whether they had the chytrid fungus, which is decimating amphibian populations both regionally and worldwide. Ms. Fike and Donny Kelly-Currens, a field science educator as well as Bosque School graduate from the class of 2018, took Audrey ‘28, Lelia Yane '25, and Eliot Patton '24 to ponds in the Jemez, and later took Audrey along with Akash ‘30, Julius ‘26, and Pieter Anderson, a college intern from BYU, to Lagunitas Lakes, where they found Tiger Salamanders and Boreal Chorus Frogs. For their diurnal and nocturnal swabbing expeditions, the students used nets, lights, waders, and gloves for handling the animals, sanitizing all their materials between uses to prevent the spread of the disease. They are currently waiting on lab results from the swabs, which may help the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish verify the presence or absence of the fungus, data that may inform their decision on locations for a possible reintroduction of the endangered Boreal Toad.  

In July, Dan Shaw took students to conduct the quarterly jackrabbit survey at the Petroglyphs. Participants included graduates Stella Hautau '24, Ada Kieweg '25, Eliot Patton '24, and Gwen Copland ‘23, as well as two rising sixth graders from Mountain View Middle School. They counted only three jackrabbits and zero cottontails. Rabbit populations have declined since a hemorrhagic fever outbreak reduced their numbers a few years ago, so those low numbers are consistent with other recent surveys. The hope is to start to see stability or modest increases despite the population encroachments, such as ongoing residential building and the growth at the Double Eagle Airport, on the jackrabbit mesa habitat.

A wonderful new collaboration with Winrock Mall was also developed over the summer. One of the generous funders of the CEBRIN Field and Community Science program is Goodman Realty. Gary Goodman has revitalized the Winrock Mall area, featuring a community area and park with a pond. Bosque School students and teachers set up a program called the Park Explorers. Every Tuesday and Saturday during the summer, our students worked with children on environmental activities, which included programs about birds, fish, invertebrates, and mammals. The students even showed the children how to do some water quality testing. As the summer program coordinator, Eliot organized the volunteers and developed the programming.

On campus, Field and Community Science students collaborated with Horizons and Bosque Summer students, leading activities such as turtle trapping, pitfall trapping, bird identification, and birdwatching. On a couple of rainy days, they found some toads and were able to swab them for chytrid fungus. This is an extension of a project Eliot began when she was in fifth grade. She continually improves capture and swabbing protocols to obtain better samples and minimize the impact on lab results. For example, they’ve learned that hand sanitizer and bleach can both affect the sample, so the challenge of how best to sanitize equipment has been refined.

Conservation of the bosque environment has long been a part of the school’s mission, which has led to a collaboration with the City of Albuquerque Open Space Division. One important activity students did over the summer was to conduct woody debris piles surveys, determining what’s in them, what animals use them as a habitat, and how they are used by both local resident and migratory birds. One thing they measured is temperature—it’s cooler inside the piles—so the city can make informed decisions about which piles are used more heavily by wildlife for temperature regulation and which can be removed for reducing the fuel load in the bosque, a concern for fire management.

The BYU intern and bird expert, Pieter Anderson, spent the summer participating in all the summer activities, including leading the bird surveys in the woody debris piles, small mammal trapping, and hair snare collections—beaver, porcupine, javelina, coyote, and rabbits— on the Poole property south of campus.  

This great work is a reminder that the science our Bosque School students do matters beyond the classroom. From the rivers and ponds of Northern New Mexico to the woods right behind our campus, Bosque students and their many partners collect and analyze data that helps state and local leaders preserve and protect these precious ecosystems.