Hunter Howell: A Photo Essay

Hunter Howell:

A Photo Essay by Leila Thompson

To most, the word “Everglades” conjures up images of alligators, massive flocks of wading birds, and the actual national park with its wide expanses of untouched nature and miles and miles of wilderness.

For Hunter Howell, the word “Everglades” brings to mind a slightly different image; as a PhD candidate at the University of Miami, Hunter’s research focuses on the Everglades herpetofauna, or amphibians and reptiles, outside of Everglades National Park.

The vast majority of Howell’s research takes place within the Loxahatchee Impoundment Land Assessment (LILA) area which is owned and managed by the South Florida Water Management District and serves as an experimental landscape that helps inform management decisions moving towards a warming future.

Howell’s days are long and often begin before the sun rises and continue long after the sun has set. He works from sun up to sunrise setting out various types of traps, pulling traps set out the day before, collecting data on a number of different species, and tagging individual aquatic salamanders with Passive Integrative Transponder (PIT) tags to track growth and movement data over generations. Though the work can be sweaty, exhausting and mosquito-filled, Howell gets gratification in knowing that his research helps and will continue to help inform management decisions when facing issues of species decline and climate change.