Our Wild Lives

Our Wild Lives takes listeners into the heart of wildlife conservation, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. Each episode dives into the wild lives of diverse species, explores complex ecosystems, and unpacks the urgent issues facing wildlife conservation.

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Our Wild Lives

Montana’s Migration Marvel

February 27, 2026 • The Wildlife Society

0:00 | 34:49

For a few short weeks starting in late February, there is a window of opportunity to see an enormous congregation of geese, swans, ducks and other birds at a wildlife management area in Montana during their annual migration to northern breeding grounds.

In this episode of “Our Wild Lives,” Brent Lonner, a wildlife biologist with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and Ali Marschner, a farm bill biologist with Pheasants Forever, dive into the annual staging of hundreds of thousands waterfowl at Freezeout Lake Wildlife Management Area.

This episode tackles several issues, including the impact of drought, how a small-town festival built a tourism industry around the spring bird liftoff and the shifting uses of wildlife management areas.

“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s weekly podcast, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. New episodes are released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

Dawn Liftoff And Freezeout Lake

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Have you ever seen a hundred thousand birds lift off all at once? Before sunrise, Freeze Out Lake is quiet, and then the sound begins to build, almost like distant thunder. In an instant, the sky fills with wings overhead, and the horizon turns into what can only be described by one of today's guests as TV static. This week we're exploring Freeze Out Lake Wildlife Management Area in Montana with Brett Lawner and Allie Marshner to explore the science, stewardship, and community behind one of the most remarkable migration stopovers on the Pacific Flyway. From shifting uses for wildlife management areas to issues like drought to how a small town festival built around the spring liftoff brings tourism during the slow season. This episode explores a myriad of ways public lands can support wildlife and people. I'm Katie Perkins, and this is the Our Wildlife Podcast brought to you by the Wildlife Society.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah, so I'm an area wildlife biologist for Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks. My office is at Freezeout Lake. It's a wildlife management area that the state owns. Um, it's a big waterfowl wetland production area. And um, I've been in this position for about 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Awesome. Ali, what about you? Yeah, I am a farm bill biologist for Pheasants Forever. So mostly along the Rocky Mountain front. And my job is mostly to try to pair landowners with some kind of programs to help them on some kind of cost share to do conservation work on their property.

What Wildlife Management Areas Do

SPEAKER_02 1:55

So, Britt, can you tell me a little bit about wildlife management areas? I don't really know much about that. Can you kind of explain their background, what special productions they have, and kind of how they play a role in the bigger conservation space?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

That's a good question. Other states have similar type of areas or habitat. They're just called something different, not necessarily wildlife management areas. Um, on a federal end, the closest thing are like federal wildlife refugees. So that's similar in context from a state to federal perspective. For Montana, they're called wildlife management areas. I'm not sure how many we have across the state, but quite a few. A lot of them are geared towards big game management and a winter range, especially for big game winter range like deer or elk, maybe sheep. It just depends on the wildlife management area. Freeze out, the one that I'm based at, is more of a wetland type habitat, which is kind of unique for Montana. A lot of folks think that this is a federal wildlife refuge, and that's not the case. It's actually a state or undermanaged area. Um wildlife management areas in Montana have been around for, I think the earliest one was about 1940 that was created. And the bulk of them were created over the from 1940 to about 1980, over that 40-year time frame using Pippin projects and money.

Managing Seasons, Water, And Habitat

SPEAKER_02 3:18

So, what is your day-to-day management of that kind of area really look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

It really varies depending on the time of year. Wintertime right now is the quiet period for here. A lot of the migratory birds that use a place that freeze out have moved south. There's still some overwintering birds, but typically it's it's frozen. We're really low on water right now, so there's a lot of areas that doesn't have any water in it. But we do have some birds that overwinter in the area, but it's pretty limited just because the frozen conditions. So the bulk of the bulk of our work really, habitat work and waterfowl work and survey work starts in March, at least from my professional and through through November. And that's for me where the bulk of my activity works. Wintertime is a lot of other just maintenance of equipment, a little bit of habitat work when things are frozen and lack of birds, lack of people.

From Hunting Focus To Birding Boom

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Right. So do you see is it kind of a big destination for people to come and view wildlife and interact with them in that way?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, that's gotten that's grown more and more. Um when a place like Freeze Out, Freeze Out was established in the 1950s. And it was established for waterfowl, a waterfowl pro production area to include upland bird habitat and production too, um, such as pheasants and shark tails and Hungarian partridge, as well as other migratory seasonal birds. And it was really hunting. Hunting was the big thing back then. Um still is, but hunting from a public use perspective was the core uh part of what we really tried to manage for. And over the last um probably at least the last 15 years at least, it's really changed. And I'd say at least half of what we see for public use of a place like freeze out is more of the non-consumptive end of things, you know, birders, uh, tourism, camping in the summer, uh, folks just coming to see birds and take pictures and just you know, look at different activity going on during the spring and summer period. So it's changed a lot. It's just something that we balance as far as trying to figure out how we can manage a place like freeze out for the different users. You have the consumptive, the hunters versus the non-consumptive, kind of the non-hunting group. Some of those are one and the same. It's just a different type of management of public use of an area like freeze out compared to what it was 40, 15 years ago.

Balancing Use Without Overloving

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Yeah. How important is it for those kind of non-consumptive in this kind of shift in the values of like these wildlife management areas in the broader management of these migratory birds and such?

SPEAKER_00 6:04

All folks that use a place like freeze out and other public lands and wildlife management areas, they all have a lot of value for those problems. They understand what public lands are and what the value of is it or what the value of those places are, I should say. But it's trying to, just like we're seeing not only in Montana, but at a national level for the U.S., trying to manage not to basically love those places to death with too much use. Montana's different in places, especially you get out of the western third of the state. We don't have anywhere near the public use activity compared to other places. We've seen increases in time, but it's not been unmanageable by any means. But who knows what that'll be in 20, 30, 40 years. That could that could significantly change. And even in Little Old Montana, the western third of the state, like I said, that they're seeing changes pretty quick over the last several years. So trying to manage those different values of what people think places should be and how they should be managed for their perspective, knowing our ultimate goal and it's the wildlife management area. Wildlife habitat and wildlife presence and distribution on those places is the primary driver of what we do on a daily basis or weekly basis.

Career Paths Into Wildlife Work

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Definitely. So, Brent, is this kind of where you always wanted to end up, or what was really your path to finding this career you're in now?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I was born and raised in Montana, and I my dad was a wildlife biologist. So I've been around it kind of my whole life. It's fortunate that way. So I grew up around this type of work and activity. So when I started into college, I went straight into a fish and wildlife degree at Montana State University for my bachelor's. I thought that's what I wanted to do, but I wasn't 100% sure. I think just like all of us when we're young, we don't you might think you know what we want to do when we're 20 or 21 or 22 months old, but once I graduated, I stuck with it, I got the degree. Once I graduated, I didn't do anything remotely related to uh biology type work. But then it came full circle to me and started to do other work, led to a graduate degree, and once I realized what it was and how seeing what it was like when I grew up and what I could do to be what I thought, at least in my world, my personality and what I like to do, what could be most effective. That wildlife biology type work is certainly always to the top for me. So but that can change. I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years, and um seeing folks stick with a career that long anymore, I think is gonna be hard. I think there's gonna be a lot more folks just doing different sort of work. Um but it's a rewarding work. Working like with Ali and other groups on different projects, different agencies, different landowners, research biologists, management biologists, other states, with some of the other stuff I do. It's rewarding to try and hopefully leave things in a better place as you progress in your cooler compared to when we started, just like most of us want to do.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Yeah. So, Brent, how do you and Allie know each other and how does y'all's work connect?

Check Stations And Data For Management

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Well, so I think it was the check station work, uh biological biological check station that Allie helped me with.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

And so what is that?

SPEAKER_00 9:35

So in Montana, we and other states have them too. We have check stations during the hunting season. So during the hunting season, when hunters are successful or not, but we have these strategically based check stations throughout the state where we check hunters and check the animals that they've harvest to collect hunter information and biological data from the animals themselves, which feeds back into management.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Gotcha. So Allie was working one of those. You guys met there, and then what happened?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Well, Allie, jump in. You can say where you ended up from there.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah, lots of different places. Um, at the time I was working for some outfitters, which is mostly just summer work, and I'd only been in Montana maybe two years or something like that. And I really wanted to get into hunting, but didn't know anything about it. So I was really excited to end up working for Brent at the Czech Station because you just really get thrown into learning more than you could ever want to know about hunting, um, and about looking at the animals and what kind of data you get out of it. So that was great. From there, I've had a handful of different jobs, some with FWP, some partnering with SWP, lots of different seasonal stuff. Um, so that's kind of all over the place, but I've always been, at least since 2017, in Shoto, which is just one town over from where Brent is, and freeze out is right in between our two towns. So yeah, from there we've we both ended up on this Wild Wings committee that sort of started in 2019, um, and then took a couple of years of a break with COVID and then picked back up again in 2022. So we see each other at least once a month for that, at least for about fall to spring when the event happens.

Wild Wings Festival Origin And Growth

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Okay, so tell me about that, the Wild Wings event. What is that?

Experiencing The Liftoff

SPEAKER_01 11:22

So it's the light goose migration festival that we've put on. It kind of started out as just because, well, I guess originally it was because there was an interest in trying to get a little more tourism coming through our rural town at a time of year where there's really not that much of it. So I don't know who it was, but somebody identified that we have this really cool, amazing migration happening right next door that even locals that are here that have lived here their whole lives just don't really know that much about. So it started with just a handful of locals jumping in a van and going out to Freezo early in the morning during migration and just watching the birds do their liftoff. It's a super cool thing to see if you've never seen it. Um, people get really excited about, including myself. Um, I had never seen it the first few years that I lived here. And from there it has taken off into a little bit more of a festival. We usually have it's sort of a three-day thing on Friday. We have somewhere between 15 and 20 different organizations that set up booths in our local pavilion so people can go around and meet everybody and see what kind of things they're doing across the state. And then we usually do a freeze film that's some kind of conservation-related film at our local tiny theater. Saturday morning, we do tours at freeze out, um, which usually starts with the tour watching the lift off, and then we go over to Brent's office, and he usually does a little bit of a history of freeze out and then answers folks' questions. And then we'll usually drive out into grain fields that are just on the east side of freeze out and watch some of them feed. They might do another lift-off and take off, and then we bring everybody back to town, and then we'd have a couple of speakers, they're different every year that speak during the middle of the day, and there could be a couple other little events that we throw in there, but until we get them set in stone, we try not to do any false advertising.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah. So tell me about like the first time you experience the liftoff.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah. Looking back, you know, the first time I saw it, I think there was maybe like 30 to 40,000 birds on the lake, which is a lot of birds, but that's like, you know, less than half of what it could be at peak. And I just remember being absolutely blown away by like the sound, the way they take off. Sometimes they'll spiral in different directions. When they fly over you, it just feels like an endless amount of birds. A lot of the folks we have on tours describe that, especially with the yeast looking like statics because they're basically all white birds with black wingtips. Um, and it just looks like you're looking at a whole landscape of static. So it's really amazing.

The Science Behind Big Flocks

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Okay. Well, the fact that 30 to 40,000 is like on the lower range just baffles me. Um, Britt, can you go into kind of you know some of the science behind that of why are there so many birds congregating in this one spot and how do they all interact with each other when they're all kind of really tightly packed in one spot?

Drought, Water, And Migration Timing

SPEAKER_00 14:25

For freeze out, we sit in the Pacific flywing for migratory bird uh management. And so it's basically about the western, western quarter to western third of the US, probably western quarter of the US. So the birds, the bulk of the birds we're seeing are those birds tied to that flyaway. That's about, I think for the entire flyaway estimates right now are I think somewhere between one and one and a half million birds for Pacifica for light geese, mainly snow geese, lesser snow geese. And this flyway, you can get into the central flyway, it was upwards of 15 to 20 million birds a few years ago, several decades, and they've come down. I think estimates there are closer to six million. So there's reasons for that. But I guess just to be very simple or very brief, a lot of what what's going on there over 20 years ago, probably getting closer to 30 years ago, when numbers are really started to increase for light geese in the central flyway, they opened up cart what's called a conservation order. So basically meaning there were concerns about too many birds. Productivity and survivorship of these geese was getting to be to the point where there was concerns about habitat degradation, especially on their summary. And so the conservation order took place, and what that to some degree really meant on a management side was basically really wide open, liberalized hunting seasons, which really I don't think had a huge impact on birds, just trying to reduce adult survivorship to some degree. But when you're talking millions of birds, even with all the hunters on the landscape, you can only hover so many birds to really make an impact. So over time, though, what uh my understanding, what's going on, at least in the central flyway, and maybe to some degree in the in this flyway, because numbers have come down, is more tied to not necessarily adult survivorship issues, more tied to productivity. Somewhat meaning fewer birds are being produced. Birds might be arriving in somewhat less um ideal physical condition when they grow into the nesting period. So clutch sizes could be slightly smaller. Um, but then the other issue is timing related to weather patterns tied to when these goslings are hatched. Typically, for the long for a long time, the understanding was when these goslings are hatched, it coincides with timing with optimal and ideal greed up in the you know in the northern latitudes. And if that green up, which has changed, but now they're suspecting some of this green up, depending on the year, is happening earlier, and then these goslings are hatched, and they don't have quite the optimal conditions for forage. And so goslin survivorship is less. So if you get those, especially over subsequent years, then you're gonna get gradual population decline. And so that's what they're suspecting been going on the last several years is some less recruitment, especially at a very young age, it was less coming into the ranks, and then you have fewer beings over time. So um, I'm not by any means an expert on on waterfowl biology when it gets out of my little world and freeze out for sure. But that's my take on what's going on elsewhere. For freeze out, back to the original question on freeze out. What do we see on a peak year? When these birds, a lot of the birds we see are wintering down in Central Valley, California, a good percentage of them. And so when birds migrate, it all coincides with timing of when they're going to be nesting on the breeding and the nesting seasons, because all these birds have to start coming back through by early fall. So there's a reason why we see a lot of these birds come through at a time in March and early April is because they're trying to get to those nesting grounds and an optimal time to be able to have those nests. They nest in giant colonies, thousands of birds in a particular colony, uh, pairs. And then once those birds are those gods hatch, they're flightless for a while. And then they'll they have those skipping around here. But forage conditions can be such where they may or may not be ideal for them, and so then they have to grow up to a point within about a two to three month period where they can start flying a few thousand miles back south again. So it's a first year of these birds is is key as far as how how well they can survive. Once they can make it back, the first year or two the survivorship increases quite a bit. So um, again, back to freeze out. As far as the timing of when all these birds come through and the numbers of birds at a peak, we'll see anywhere from I think the most we've ever had at freeze out is about 300,000 birds, and that's a real estimate on a given day. Typically, an average peak is somewhere around close to 60,000, 60,000 birds. That's average. Last year, I think we peaked it close to about 90,000. I think the year before that we might have done just over 100,000. Those peaks don't last very long. They come and go come through pretty quick with those birds on that many birds.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

And then I was wondering, Brent, if you could touch on just because we get a we've been in a drought the last couple of years, and the water at freeze out was especially really low this year. So we've been getting a lot of questions from people about wondering if the birds are still going to show up with that low water.

When To Visit And How To Track

Beyond Geese: Diverse Migrants

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Yeah, and that can be that's a good question too, because that's not, I mean, that's definitely something happening at freeze out, but it goes on a lot of other places too, especially in our little world. So birds will still come through, they may or may not stop at freeze out in any significant number or duration, like the time, um, just because of the water conditions. We see that especially with like swans, some of the diving ducks that really rely more on the water on a more somewhat full-time basis. Because of the water conditions and drought, freeze out was built in in conjunction with the irrigation district, the Greenfield irrigation district here in the 1950s. So um, as irrigation water goes positive or negative, so does freeze out in large part, in addition to natural moisture. So if this spring coming into it, we're gonna have low water, unless we get a phenomenal amount of moisture here, and it's not shaping up like that right now, obviously. It's gonna be low water. We'll see birds timing might be a little bit different depending on weather patterns prior to birds arriving to freeze out. If it's very mild or very cold and snowy further south, that'll influence the number of birds timing when they get to freeze out, as well as if they run into two weather systems that are coming from the north going to the south. That can slow birds down too. We'll see those birds. We just might uh, especially like I said, the swans and some of the diving ducks might not see quite the numbers we normally see. Snow geese here, the light geese. Um, there's enough water where they can rest, arrive to freeze out, rest for a certain amount of period out in the water we do have, and then they feed in the fields. The impact of the numbers on light geese that freeze out. Tied to the water isn't as influential compared to other species. This fall, we had some of the better numbers of light geese we've seen in quite a few years, despite really low water. It's more of a weather pattern issue.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Yeah, that's so fascinating to think about all of the combination of things that can contribute to how these birds are migrating. And you just think like that's something that's so ingrained in their psyche, I guess you could say. But yeah, it's interesting to see how that might all play out. Would you do you have any um advice for people that like maybe if they did want to time it, not around a festival? Like, how can you kind of keep track of where birds are throughout the year?

Tourism’s Impact On Rural Towns

SPEAKER_00 22:43

There's certain birds that are marked with various collar technology, GPS type technology, where it was the public sites for people to go and watch. It kind of gives you a gauge of where some of these birds are. It's not like a population level. But if you see five snow geese that were marked in a certain area, there's probably a considerable number of snow geese that are actually in that spot. But outside of something unique like that, it's really gauged on timing tight of weather. We're pretty consistent where we can pretty well say that sometime between about the third week of March for us locally till about that first of April or so is when we're gonna see the bulk of our migration come through. Despite whatever the weather's doing. Because their whole biological clock is ticking and they're trying to get north. Um so they they're gonna commit one way or another. So and that's pretty true with a lot of places. The whole migration can extend anywhere for about a month and a half or more. But if you want to hit the peak, whether it's freeze out or some of these other places, there's a lot of information at these other refugees or other wildlife management areas in other states. Um that probably have pretty good information that speaks to, you know, if you really want to hit the peak timing, this is the window that you should really be targeting. And like Ali said, for us, we try and gauge when we're gonna do this event, um knowing that we might not hit it at all and we might have a pretty low number of birds. But it really varies, even even when it's lower numbers, it's still it's still a typically a good number of birds. And then like Ali explained, a lot of other good opportunities for other activities going on, educational things and other groups and the time of year in the Montana because it's winter people really start wanting to get out and just kind of be outside in the night.

Nonlinear Paths And Practical Advice

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah. I was just gonna say, we do um, you know, FWP's got a couple of folks that are out there every day counting, and we try to keep that updated on our Wild Wing Shudo website. I think it's on FWP's website. Um, there's a couple of like really high-level zoomed-out migration trackers that you can look up, but I I don't know that that would really help getting down to like actually going to a specific lake. Um, but yeah, there's counters that I'd probably add a handful of places like this. So um find out where they update them or just yeah, call the biologists in the area and see. And you know, our event focuses on these light yeasts, but freeze out. I mean, there's a ton of different kinds of birds that migrate through there. There's lots of different ducks, the swans, there's pelicans coming through there, there's bald eagles coming through there. So there's, I mean, that whole spring and fall window, there's always some kind of cool wildlife migrating through there.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

Yeah, cool. Well, so going back to the festival and this kind of wildlife tourism, how have you seen that impact your local community, like you were talking about earlier, trying to increase visitors?

SPEAKER_01 25:58

It seems like it's helped quite a bit. I mean, I know our local hotel seems to kind of sell out over that weekend. We actually try to bring in a couple of food trucks at the event because you know, we get two or three hundred people on each of these days, and our town is not necessarily ready for that, even if all the restaurants are open, which some of them do close that time of year. So it does seem to increase quite a bit.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Yeah, and I'd agree with Ali. It's and credit to Ali and the group of folks that really organize this from year to year. I mean, we're talking Show, Montana, and some of the surrounding communities collectively with everything. And uh, I think what's Show about 2,000 people or so, roughly. The next town, Fairfield, is about 700 people. So in our scale, it's very local. It's been very beneficial, I think. It's trying to tap into that tourism that's that's coming through. It's going to help the communities and help the businesses, but also show folks what wildlife habitat and public lands are and what wildlife um uses of these areas people gain an additional appreciation for it. Specific to freeze out, yeah. We go from kind of zero to 60. The crew we have here gets overwhelmed because it's dead quiet right now, and all of a sudden it's just constant traffic at freeze out um that weekend, and and then on the either end of that weekend, too. So but it's good. People are generally pretty good, they understand.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Definitely. I want to touch back on something kind of both of you hinted at was like your nonlinear path to your wildlife job now. And so, Ali, maybe you could start in kind of, you know, like out like guiding and backcountry and doing all that kind of stuff, and how those kind of skills and not wildlife-specific jobs kind of prepared you for the job that you have now.

Persistence, Community, And Opportunities

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah, um, I guess I always was somewhat interested in working in conservation, but I would say my idea of conservation when I was in high school is not really how it really works, which I didn't realize till you start doing jobs. But my first job really was in AmeriCorps right after high school. So it was part of disaster response and then partially trail work and other kind of conservation work. So that was sort of where I first got introduced to. I managed a couple of small farms after that in different areas of the country. Um, I did some prescribed fire work out of season, managed a Christmas tree lot. I tenanted a bunch of random stuff um until I got to Montana, uh, where I still did trail work here for a handful of years, which I absolutely love doing it. It gets you in the backcountry, you learn a lot really fast. Where I worked doing trails, it was sort of specific to a certain area in the Bob Marshall complex, which I did love, but I wanted to do a little bit more in other parts of the Bob, which is why I started working for outfitters, just so I could see a little bit more. And yeah, you you get to know um what gets people passionate about wildlife and being outside. And I would say outside of conservation specifically, sort of the land management side of things and how things work with the different agencies that manage the land that we really want to keep public. And yeah, I guess um just figuring out that I really wanted to work in wildlife and meeting Brent and still doing a handful of different other jobs in the meantime and probably still figuring it out. But all my jobs I've really loved and I've learned new things with all of them.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Yeah, I think we see a lot of people taking this kind of nonlinear path. So, what advice would you give to the young student or a young professional kind of in that phase of their life? Like, what would you tell them to really pay attention to, soak up, learn these kinds of skills when you're not quite in what you might think is your dream job or something of that nature?

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Yeah, I would say especially early on, which is why it took me so long to commit to getting my bachelor's degree, because I was afraid of debt, because I really loved being able to just travel around and do these jobs that don't last very long or maybe don't pay very well, or maybe both. So I would say don't, especially early on, don't be afraid to just go all over the country. A lot of these short-term jobs too give you housing. So it makes it really nice to be able to find places that maybe you learn you really don't want to live there, or maybe you learn that you absolutely love it and you want to stay. Um, so don't be afraid to travel around and try all the new things. And then once you do find a place like I did, be as open as you can to trying new things that you want to try. I was interested in wildlife work and I ended up working mostly in bear management, which wasn't really on purpose. It was just that was what was here. So you get interested in what's available.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Yeah. Brent, do you have any similar advice you might offer or lessons that you learned from the path that led you to where you are now?

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Um, just it's a balance of personal and work life. So obviously, you don't want your work life to become your personal life. So trying to find these places where you can live, where you enjoy living, where you can be doing the things you enjoy doing when you're not officially working. That's important, whether you have a family or not a family. If you have a family, then that feeds into all this stuff too. And then just getting that experience, like Ali said. Um Ali's traveled, Ali had the opportunity to work a lot of different places. So it's giving her that perspective to land where she's landed and you know, you can enjoy being where you're at from adults who work and personal perspective. And the same for me is just getting experience. If you're starting out in a wildlife career and you think you want to be in some sort of wildlife or conservation field, there's probably as many diverse jobs as there's ever been in this in this line of so if you're an undergrad and you're in school and you have summers off where you can go volunteer while you're in school doing certain things, or do some seasonal work in the summer, it can tell you that, yeah, that was great. I'd love to be able to do that more part-time, full-time, or well, that was that was a good learning lesson, and I never want to do that type of work again. And that's part of the experience. And then eventually in time, you land in some type of work that hopefully is something you really enjoy doing. Ideally, you make some money out of. You don't get into this type of work to make a lot of money and all that. You do it because you love it and you have a passion for it. And then being involved in your community, don't like for Ali and I just because we're a small community, we become not you're not just somebody in the community. Now they recognize you as so-and-so in the community, you know, you have a personal key in the community, but um, you have to understand that as well. So just depends on where you're at. So stick with it, don't get frustrated. You'll have all sorts of work out there that may or may not work out. But if you really want to do it, it's a rewarding type of career, depending on what you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Stick with it too. It just my first wildlife research position that I got came from applying to the bear tech management job that I didn't get. And then when I emailed them to kind of follow up, someone was like, Hey, there's this also that's very similar. So if you wanted to apply to that, I ended up getting that. And then the next time the bear management job opened up, I did get it. Um, so you know, even though I didn't get that first one, sometimes it leads to something that gets you where you want to be, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Awesome. Well, was there anything about the festival or anything else that we wanted to touch on?

Dates, Partners, And How To Attend

SPEAKER_00 33:54

What was it? This year's March 20th to 22nd.

unknown 33:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

There's a website, the website folks can go to, I know, and it talks about the details of it.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yeah, we'll have the schedule. If you look up Wild Wing Shadow, it'll be on there whether you want to come or you're just interested in, you know, what kind of our basic small town website looks like if you're interested in doing your own kind of project. Um, we have a partners list on there. We have a ton of really awesome partners that help um make this happen every year, too.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Thank you both for joining us today and for telling us a little bit about this festival. And I hope there's lots of birds that come through this year, and you'll have a really great event. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

Thanks, Katie. Appreciate it.