Abby Case

I have an Honours BSc in Conservation Biology and a passion for preserving and conserving the wilderness of Scotland. 

In April of this year, I was an RSPB residential volunteer at Loch of Strathbeg. During this time, I got a small insight as to what it's  working on a reserve and loved every day of it. Whether it be interacting and working with local volunteers, talking to guests, completing bird surveys, rebuilding boardwalks, trail maintenance - every day was enjoyable, and I really valued the warden's attitude, company, and knowledge. This required daily filling up of bird feeders, daily recording of weather, vehicle checks - cleaning of interior/exterior, checking all lights, power steering fluid, oil level, brake fluid level, checking tyre pressure, etc. I would help with daily tasks - trail maintenance, working with local volunteers, rebuilding boardwalk, marsh harrier surveying, setting up habitat, cleaning out hides (once a week), cleaning visitor center (at least once a week), and helping with the ponies.

Last summer, I spent 4 months working and travelling in the Balkans working with natural building materials such as cob and clay. This July and August, I will volunteer in southern Chile at a National Park called Reserva nacional Alto Biobio. Here I will help with trail building and maintenance, guiding walks, preserving native plant and animal species, working with local communities to conserve and preserve the land, and taking care of livestock that live within the national park (primarily horses).

My dissertation in university revolved around population modelling of water voles – an ecosystem engineer in the highlands of Scotland. This involved 8 weeks of intensive surveying and trapping fieldwork in Assynt, requiring knowledge of flora composition - primarily in riparian habitat, navigating using a Magellan GPS and map, and the use of ArcGIS, R, and Excel for data collection and organisation. I helped set up for the season of field work by preparing all required equipment – such as traps, field kits, and map annotations, as well as participating in training and data collection.

When I left high school, I spent the 3 months on the Juneau Icefield in Alaska conducting expedition-based Earth science. I was digging ice cores, using radar to create imagery of bedrock interface, and illustrating plant succession in progressively deglaciated areas (my individual research topic). For my project, I set up transects at different elevations down the side of a mountain and took randomised 1mx1m quadrats along each transect. In each quadrat, I used a soil core to measure O, A, and B horizons of soil, took plant abundance measurements and differentiated between primary soil developers (moss and lichen), primary non-soil developers, and secondary successors, all relative to time since deglaciation. I used Photoshop to create scientific drawings to better explain my work, Excel to create graphs to display data, and PowerPoint to create a presentation. At the end of the summer, we gave presentations about our research topics in front of 100+ members of the public, which I found quite fun.