Youth Conservation Leadership Program

Audubon Fellow Alumni

Thanks to several funding opportunities and local partnerships, Audubon Vermont has been able to offer in-depth fellowships to emerging conservation professionals.

Cassie Wolfanger
she/her
Lake Champlain Sea Grant Conservation Research Fellow
View articles written by Cassie

Originally from western New York, Cassie Wolfanger spent her childhood exploring the great outdoors and refusing to come inside. She holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Environmental Science and Ecology from SUNY Brockport, where her research focused on land use and restoration influences on coastal wetland biogeochemistry.

Previously, Cassie worked for the Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit on juvenile lake sturgeon and then for the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. She’s most passionate about the protection of rare, threatened, and endangered species, and keeping natural places wild for their survival. With a firm belief that a connection to nature must be accessible to all, she values engaging historically underserved communities in the conversation around environmental action and policy. Cassie’s goal is to find the best ways we can be stewards of the land, even in human-dominated landscapes, in order to coexist with wildlife, so this fellowship opportunity is very exciting! Currently, Cassie lives in Richmond where her free time is spent hiking with her dog, kayaking, playing women’s rugby, or Nordic skiing.

Hannah Weiss
she/her
Conservation Education Fellow
View articles written by Hannah

Hannah Weiss is Audubon Vermont’s UVM Conservation Education Fellow for 2019, a position which involves broad participation in the organization’s many conservation and nature education initiatives. These articles are part of a series of “field notes” pieces, written to give the community a fellow’s-eye view of the exciting and important work being done by Audubon Vermont every day.

Hannah spent her childhood running wild around the hardwood forests of western Massachusetts. Feeling indebted to the ecosystem that had helped raise her, she earned a B.S in Environmental Science from the University of Vermont in 2018, and has continued at UVM into an M.S in Natural Resources. During college, she traveled to Patagonia, Chile to engage with community-based participatory-action research projects and has continued working on research through her academic career. Between semesters, her most memorable summers were spent teaching land conservation to high schoolers in Minnesota, and how to backpacking in the White Mountains, NH. Overall, she is interested in broadening access to and contributing to what is known about the natural world. When not in class or at her research site, Hannah can be found exploring Vermont via bicycle, trying new Paleo recipes with her partner, or watching Star Trek (Next Generation/Voyager).

Where are they now? Hannah held a variety of conservation science and environmental education positions after her time with us. She now works as a scientist for Atlas.

Samuel Blair
he/him
Conservation Research Fellow
View articles written by Sam

Sam is a student at The University of Vermont (UVM). He was Audubon Vermont’s first Conservation Education Fellow in the summer of 2018. He returned to Audubon Vermont in the summer of 2019 as a Conservation Intern. Sam grew up in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, where he learned to pay attention to nature from an early age via mud pies and milkweed fluff. He was also a big fan of trucks, but the nature thing pulled through in the end. At UVM he has consumed an educational smorgasbord, from the history of oral epics to the science of geology and geography. He’s still figuring out how to tie it all together. He is a leader in the UVM Outing Club and a member of Slade Ecological Cooperative, a student-run housing, food, and arts cooperative. He loves the great outdoors, growing and cooking food, playing music, and reading.