Date: July 19, 2006
Contact: Paul Super, (828) 926-6251

Students from four North Carolina high schools have been selected to work in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park this summer thanks to a 3-year, $162,200 grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to Friends of the Smokies.

This is the start of the second 3-year grant from Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) to support the internships and middle school science trips. The interns, who are National Park Service employees in the division of Resource Management and Science, are spending approximately 32 hours per week working in small groups assisting scientists in collecting data. The information they collect will help the National Park Service understand the resources it protects and to practice science-based management of the Park. Several of the projects the interns will be working on are a part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI). The ATBI is designed to identify and inventory all living species in the Park, and it will also help the Park understand the species distribution and relative abundance.

“The program meets the goal of the grant to provide students with opportunities that encourage them to consider careers in sciences and medicines. At the Smokies, students learn about science in a hands-on setting, apart from textbooks and predictable results. The program aims to spark an interest in the sciences in Western North Carolina youth, starting them down paths that may eventually lead to their returning to the parks as graduate students or professional scientists who will lead to a greater understanding and protection of the Park and its resources,” Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said.

The interns are continuing multiple projects from the last two years, including monitoring the effects of ozone on native vegetation, long-term population studies of snakes and salamanders, and a study of the effects of an arson fire on the invertebrate community. They have also started several new projects, including a radio-tracking study of box turtles to better understand their habitat needs in the park, a project in collaboration with a high school in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area.

Based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund is an independent, non-profit foundation that supports research, scientific and educational activities. Founded in 1955, the BWF makes approximately $35 million in grants annually. The grant was provided to Friends of the Smokies and is part of the fund’s Student Science Enrichment Program, which supports creative science education for middle and high school students in North Carolina.