Serra Hoagland
My name is Serra Hoagland. I was born and raised in a small town in California, in Placerville. A lot of my childhood was spent outdoors. I consider myself lucky to have had that opportunity. I wasn’t surrounded by concrete—my playground was literally the outdoors.
Today, I work for the U.S. Forest Service at the Rocky Mountain Research Station. I absolutely love my work! I serve as the Tribal Relations Specialist for the agency. I’m a tribal member myself. In fact, four weeks from now, I’ll be hunting back on my own reservation in New Mexico. I feel very tied to that place.
What kind of research do you do?
A lot of my fieldwork is in the forest. My dissertation focused on the effects of forest treatments on the Mexican spotted owl, which is a threatened species found primarily in the Four Corners region. A lot of the work we do is trying to monitor the owls’ habitat and their occupancy trends. We’re also minimizing our disturbance on them.
Surveying for owls involves a lot of nighttime work in the forest. In the particular place where I work, there’s hardly any cell service. So we’re working primarily in steep, rugged terrain, in a 500,000-acre landscape, at night, with no cell coverage. There are times when it can get a little scary, especially if I’m working by myself. But it’s funny—I’ll be lonely and scared and uneasy up until I hear the owls. The moment I hear the owls, I don’t feel alone. They provide a level of comfort for me when I’m in the woods at night.
That’s exactly it. I’m usually hiking in the woods and eliciting the owls’ territorial calls. That means I actively mimic their territorial calls and wait for a response.
We also conduct surveys in the daytime or at dawn and dusk to monitor the owls’ nesting behavior. When we do nesting surveys, we’re usually trying to figure out what trees the owls are using for their nests. We use live bait—mice—that we set on the forest floor. The owl will come down and grab the mouse and take it back to its nest.
What would you say are the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a field scientist?
The biggest challenges are safety and logistics: trying to make sure we don’t get hurt and have protocols in case of emergency.
Once, I was working in the forest at night with two of my close colleagues and I randomly got cell service, which happens sometimes at high elevations. In that moment, I got a text from my roommate saying my dog was missing. I was heartbroken and I panicked. I was so out of it, I didn’t even know where our vehicle was. I couldn’t orient myself or function. It was a blessing my colleagues were with me, otherwise that could have been a dangerous situation. That experience helped me realize I need to have an emergency plan when I go into the field.
When we’re in the field, we have limited cell service, but we have radios and satellite phones in case we need to call for help. We also have personnel that’s not in the field and we message them before we go and after we get back from fieldwork. That personnel has a good sense of where we’re going in case something happens. Those are some of the ways we stay safe.
Turning that question on its head, what is your favorite thing about your work?
That’s a difficult one—there are so many things I love about it!
That’s fine! You can have several favorite things.
One thing I really love about my work is its physical nature. I love being outside and getting my heart going. We spend a lot of time at 7,000 to 9,000 feet elevation, hiking up steep slopes, over logs and through mud, trying to find owls. I like that active component. I’m definitely in the best shape of my life when I’m doing owl surveys!
I love interacting with my field technicians and all the people I’ve been able to hire over the years. But I also love the solitude in the forest. I get to see some unique things—wildlife behaving in ways you’d never see otherwise. And the owls! Interacting with the owls never gets old. It’s so exciting every time I see them.
When I go to professional societies or conferences and I’m wearing professional attire, people sometimes don’t even realize I could be someone who’s doing great fieldwork. You sometimes have to prove yourself in those situations. But I feel fortunate that I’m at a point where my work largely speaks for itself. I know the hard work and diligence that goes into it.
What advice would you give others, especially girls and women, who are interested in getting into field science?
Go for it! Don’t let anyone talk you down or say you can’t do it. If anything, let that fuel your fire.
Another piece of advice: Get as much field experience as you can and ask a lot of questions. It’s such a cliché, but there really is no such thing as a dumb question. And don’t be afraid to bring up new ideas. I wish I’d been a little more vocal about that in my earlier career. When you’re learning and developing, you want to be humble and respect people who are more experienced, but there’s a huge advantage to seeing something with fresh eyes. If you have an idea, don’t be afraid to speak up.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Images used with permission of Serra Hoagland.
