November 13, 2019 |    “I knew I was in the right place when our biologist, wearing his Ghost Buster looking electro-shocking backpack, gave confused onlookers a confident nod as we were on our way to sample some urban streams.  I sang to myself “When there’s something fishy, in the neighborhood.  Who are you gunna call? A biologist”!  Just another day at the “office”!”

Amber Left-Hand-Bull just recently finished her term of service as a Bureau of Indian Affairs Watercorps member. Amber served with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Puget Sound Olympic Peninsula Fish and Aquatic Conservation Complex working as a Water Technician. Amber worked on a wide range of projects including water quality testing, aquatic habitat assessments, aquatic habitat restoration and monitoring, fish disease monitoring, fish and aquatic invertebrate population monitoring.

She assisted with monitoring Olympic Mudminnow populations, which are a species of fish found only in Western Washington. She assisted the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife with Western Pond Turtle monitoring efforts, including personally trapping and collecting biological information on over 200 turtles. She also assisted with migratory shorebird surveys in Grays Harbor, one of the largest migratory bird habitats in the Pacific Northwest.  She conducted habitat surveys and sampled juvenile Chinook salmon and other freshwater fish from urban creeks in the Lake Washington drainage of Seattle. She says, “I really enjoyed transferring the surplus hatchery Chinook up fish barriers for upriver natural spawning.”

Amber hopes to further her skills as a motivated Field Biologist and continue stewardships in her community and educational outreach events.  “I find it inspiring to teach children and adults the importance of our ecological environments and the impact we have on them.”

Read more of Amber’s Story of Service and how she ended up in the environmental field on the USFWS Pacific Region Tumbler page.