Utah prairie dog recovery biologist speaks on career options at USU

On Oct. 2, Barbara Sugarman, Utah prairie dog recovery biologist for the Division of Wildlife Resources, came to Utah State University to share important information for those considering a wildlife career. 

In the presentation, Sugarman explained how she came to work for the DWR despite receiving her undergraduate degree in forestry. It was a long process involving many jobs that Sugarman found she wasn’t passionate about. 

Sugarman’s first introduction to wildlife work experience was the summer after her first year of her undergraduate. She worked for the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project, which aimed to reintroduce wolves in the Grand Canyon area. 

“I got a lot of experience dealing with very unhappy and difficult people through this job,” Sugarman said in her presentation. “I learned that I did not enjoy doing environmental advocacy work.” 

This job, allowed her to network with experts in the field to get her experience more closely related to what she wanted to do. Although she was majoring in forestry, Sugarman said that she always wanted to focus on the wildlife aspects of natural resources. 

Sugarman’s boss for the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project had worked with prairie dogs in the past, and she recruited Sugarman to help trap and retranslocate the animals for a month. 

“That was the random thing that I did that led to my entire career,” Sugarman said. 

Although she gained experience with prairie dogs early on, Sugarman didn’t return to them until after she got her graduate degree. During this time, she had many different jobs ranging from park ranger to working with bears. 

Finally, things fell into place when Sugarman’s old supervisor wrote to her sayingSugarman that she got a promotion within the division and the prairie dog recovery biologist position was available.  

“I had done my master’s thesis work with prairie dogs,” Sugarman said. “So I applied for her job and I got it.” 

Now, Sugarman continues to work with prairie dogs. A major part of her job is counting the animals. 

“Prairie dogs move around so much,” Sugarman said . “It’s really important to see where they’re at right now, so we do a mapping.” 

Sugarman and her technicians count prairie dogs from 1,300 colonies every year. 

“We’re just documenting how many prairie dogs there are and trying to get the best data,” Sugarman said. 

There is some human-wildlife conflict between farmers and prairie dogs because the animals often get into the soil the farmers want to use.  

“We go and we trap Utah prairie dogs from locations where there’s like human wildlife conflict.” Sugarman said. “So it’s very important to get an accurate spring count of a property.” 

Sugarman hires seasonal technicians to help perform these counts. Two of them, Jake Durbin and Josh Morris, came with Sugarman to an interview following her presentation.  

Durbin knew he wanted to go into wildlife since high school after participating in the Future Farmers of America. 

“I’ve just been pretty much doing wildlife my entire academic career,” Durbin said. “I figured,  might as well make a job out of it.” 

Durbin’s passion continued in college when his school’s mascot was a live buffalo. He got to help handle it during sports games and parades.  

“That was kind of where I knew I wanted to do live animal handling,” Durbin said. 

Morris said that his passion for wildlife came early on as well, but not because of school activities.  

“I grew up on a farm, so I’ve always loved working with animals and hunting and fishing,” Morris said. “I just wanted to have a career in that field as well.” 

According to Morris, his time being a prairie dog wildlife technician is helping him gain experience to work with larger animals and eventually become a biologist. 

“I’d like to eventually work with game mammals like deer or elk,” Morris said. “I also just enjoy being outdoors and preserving what we have now.” 

In her interview, Sugarman said she really appreciates the work of her technicians, as it takes a lot of people to count all the prairie dogs.  

According to Sugarman, getting involved in volunteer work or working as a technician early on is crucial to getting your foot in the door of wildlife resources. 

“Volunteering is one thing you can do to get as much experience as you can during your undergrad,” Sugarman said in an interview. “That’s how my whole career ended up happening.” 

Sugarman said that being able to take opportunities when they were presented is important to finding footing in the field. 

“Your career is this transformation,” Sugarman said. “Something leads into something else that leads into something else.” 

Durbin agreed students should bethat taking advantage of opportunities as soon as you can is very important.they can. 

“It’s a lot easier on yourself if you have that volunteer work to add to your stuff right out of college,” Durbin said. 

Nakaila Wengreen, senior in wildlife ecology and management,  attended Sugarman’s presentation. 

“It’s always great to hear professionals talk about the work that they do,” Wengreen wrote. “I love hearing about the research that’s going on in Wildlife Management and all of the cool work that people are doing.” 

According to Wengreen, some of the opportunities that Sugarman mentioned were very important to getting experience in her desired field. 

“I learned about work opportunities next year with the DWR,” Wengreen wrote. “It helps to get career advice and to get an idea of what options I have when I graduate.” 

Wengreen wrote she hadthat she dreamed of working with animals since she was a kid. 

“Going into a career in wildlife means that I will be doing work that’s important and that I’m passionate about,” Wengreen wrote. 

Sugarman gave lots of advice during her presentation on how to get involved in wildlife for those considering going into the field, but she also made sure to note that everyone can do their own part when it comes to conservation.

“I find a lot of people with the intent to do good,” Sugarman said. “But often, when they don’t understand the situation, they make it worse.” 

Sugarman’s main piece of advice for people who don’t know much about wildlife is to ask experts. This can be as simple as looking something up when they don’t know the right thing to do. 

Wengreen agreed, that everyone should do what they can to appreciate and conserve wildlife. 

“Wildlife plays important ecological roles in natural ecosystems that would collapse if they were to disappear,” Wengreen wrote. “Those ecosystems need wildlife, and we need those ecosystems.” 

According to Morris, the efforts of the DWR are helping a lot to preserve these ecosystems. 

“I think it’s important just to preserve species that we have to protect the amount of wildlife,” Morris said. “The conservation that we’re doing helps.” 

For more information on the Division of Wildlife Resources and how to get involved, visit wildlife.utah.gov/https://wildlife.utah.gov/. 

For more information on USU’s natural resources programs, visit https://qcnr.usu.edu/.qcnr.usu.edu.