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Rubenstein School students spend their summers in countless ways: some take courses, some conduct research, other travel, work, or simply relax and recharge between semesters. Not many students spend the summer living in almost complete solitude down a dirt road in a house with no service or WiFi. But that’s exactly what Lauren O’Malley, a junior studying wildlife and fisheries biology (WFB), did with her summer—all to work with loons. 

Lauren spent her summer in Berlin, New Hampshire, working as a field biologist for the . “I found the job on the ornithology job exchange board,” Lauren said. “I saw it and thought, ‘I like loons. I’m from Vermont, so I’d be a few hours away from home. I’d get to kayak every day and look for loons.” When she was offered the job, Lauren was quick to accept.  

Lauren’s interest in birds dates back to early childhood. While she was growing up in Richmond, Vermont, she had plenty of exposure to birds and ornithology thanks to programming from the Green Mountain Audubon Center and the Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington. “I spent my whole childhood at Audubon,” Lauren recollected. “When I was little, my parents would take me to the Birds of Vermont Museum every weekend. That was a huge part of my childhood.” 

Those early experiences with birds and conservation biology confirmed her passion. After her first year at UVM, she interned at her childhood haunt, the Green Mountain Audubon Center, as a conservation technician. In 2023, she applied for a US Forest Service internship in Macdoel, California. As a USFS intern, Lauren worked as a Northern Spotted Owl surveyor, which solidified her interest in surveying. These skills transferred beautifully to her LPC job, where she was often traveling and surveying loons across vast swaths of northern New Hampshire wilderness.  

Lauren’s time in California wasn’t entirely dominated by owls, however. She met a local graduate student who broadened her horizons to other birds. “I met someone who was doing her masters at Cal Poly Humboldt—she took me along to help conduct diet surveys of raptors and band baby raptors,” Lauren explained. “It was the coolest thing ever. I realized how much I love birds.” 

That love was strengthened, if sometimes tested, by Lauren’s time working for the LPC. “At times, the job was very freeing, and at other times it could be isolating,” Lauren recollected. Her employee housing was on the grounds of a USFWS fish hatchery in Berlin, New Hampshire. She lived alone in the house with no service or WiFi, and no one else around for miles.  

Most days, she completed her work alone, traveling to remote lakes and conducting surveys. “Being alone was often really great, because I was able to do my own thing and work how I wanted to,” Lauren explained. “Other times, if I was lost, or unsure about a survey, or missing home, it could be difficult. It was a season of ups and downs, but it was still awesome.” 

Lauren’s duties as a field biologist were numerous: she conducted surveys, banding, rescues, maintained artificial rafts (floating platforms for loons to nest on) and signage, and made data-backed budgetary recommendations regarding lake management and disbursement of grant funds. But the experiences that stand out the strongest were the hands-on moments with loons, either through rescues or banding.  

Her first rescue was relatively tame: a volunteer at a well-populated lake contacted Lauren and told her that she’d found a beached loon. “Loons beach themselves sometimes to nest or mate,” Lauren explained. “When they beach themselves for no other purpose, it’s probably because they’re going to die. That’s a huge signal that we need to help this bird.” 

After attempting to rescue the loon twice unsuccessfully, Lauren returned later in the day and completed her mission. “It took an hour to untangle the loon,” she recollected. “It was dragging thirty feet of lead core fishing wire, and it couldn’t open its wings at all while it was stuck. We finally saw it open its wings, and it was the best feeling. It was surreal.” 

Success stories like that are what WFB students in the Rubenstein School dream of—using their skills, expertise, and determination to save an animal’s life. “I’d only been on the job a month and a half. It was my first time coordinating something of that severity, and it felt like so much responsibility,” Lauren said. “It felt incredible to be able to make a difference. I was crying after we rescued it, because we’d made such a profound and meaningful impact on the bird’s life.” 

Rubenstein School coursework is designed to be interdisciplinary and to prepare students for real-life experiences like this. Lauren believes that the course that best prepared her for her work with the LPC was dendrology, a forestry course. “There’s hours of time outside, looking closely at things, observing, monitoring,” Lauren explained. “When I worked at LPC, I would go sit on a lake for at least an hour and monitor a loon.” That focused practice of stillness and attentiveness proved invaluable to her as she completed surveys.  

Lauren’s passion for birds and her desire to continue working with them motivates her work in the classroom. “After working outside so much for jobs, I really appreciate the class structure in Rubenstein,” Lauren said. “Classes with labs, especially wildlife classes are really appealing to me. Those classes let me get out and do things that directly correlate with my career interests. The way I approach opportunities like that has really changed with time and experience.”  

While a large part of her work for the LPC was hands-on field work, Lauren also advised the organization on how to best use grant money to manage lakes and loon habitats. “There’s a specific five-year grant program that gives money to loon habitat restoration,” Lauren said. “It was my job to recommend artificial net raft placement and water body classification based on the data I collected. It was a really interesting part of my job.” 

Lauren hopes to continue working seasonal jobs until she transitions to a full-time wildlife job after gaining more experience. Her advice for other students who are interested in fieldwork jobs like hers is to know their worth. “Look for roles that are actively advertising their benefits and that talk about role responsibilities in a reasonable way,” she advised. “Look for roles that treat you like a human, not a workhorse.” 

Rubenstein students often have incredible stories to tell about their work in the field, but one of Lauren’s is an all-time great. She was rescuing an injured loon about three hours away from the veterinary care that the bird needed. The bird arrived safely at the rehab center and received great care, but it didn’t get there without some drama. “I had the bird in a cardboard box in my car and I was going as fast as I (safely) could down the road,” Lauren recollected. “I thought, ‘well, if a police officer pulls me over, I don’t know what I’m going to say. All I know is I have the permits in here somewhere.”  

Lauren said that’s how she’ll remember her experience with LPC—burning rubber down a dirt road with a loon pecking to get out of its box. “That was not what I was planning to do with my day,” Lauren laughed. “Every day at that job was different.” 

All photos courtesy of Lauren O'Malley.