Calvin Udall

My name is Calvin, and I’m in YLab at Lab51. Much of my time at One Stone has been spent working with animals: surveying rattlesnakes, writing care guides, and studying the Chytrid frog fungus. One of the ways I enjoy doing good in the community is through improving our local environment, and I’m working with local biologists and natural scientists toward this goal. In my first year at One Stone, I met Lucian. Like me, he’s interested in animals and conservation, and he has a particular interest in birds. He’s been a birder for three years and is now on the board of the Golden Eagle Audubon Society. For my YLab project, I’m working with Lucian to make birding in Idaho more accessible for youth. In September, at the climax of the Badger Fires, we took a trip to the South Hills of Idaho to help with fire relief and population monitoring of the Cassia Crossbill (Loxia sinesciurius). Idaho is one of three inland states that has an endemic species of bird (a species that isn’t found anywhere else in the world). Cassia Crossbills are endemic to the South Hills and Albion Mountains of Idaho. The fires burning through that part of the state have been destroying the small amount of habitat the Crossbills have become accustomed to. They are suited to a diet consisting entirely of Lodgepole Pine seeds, which is why they are confined to their specific range (roughly 27 square miles of land), and that, along with wildfires and climate change, threatens the Cassia Crossbill with extinction. The climate crisis is such a behemoth of a problem that sometimes it’s hard to detect the smaller changes it has caused. I want to spend this year and my future academic career helping the environment, starting at a local level and hopefully expanding as soon as I have the necessary resources available to me.