Kathryn Brautigam, PhD

About Me

Kathryn grew up in a tiny town in midwestern Ohio surrounded by agricultural lands, which sparked her interest in working with farmers and landowners who want to make livings while being conscious about the plants and animals that need those spaces, too.  Thus she began her academic career at Southern Illinois University where she received her degree in zoology.  While an undergrad, she worked for two graduate students as lead technician, both with doves and rabbits.  From there she held employment for Texas Tech University, monitoring behavior and movement of veeries and ovenbirds in upstate New York.  She also worked for Texas A & M as a technician, capturing, banding, and monitoring a population of the endangered black-capped vireo on the Edward's Plateau.  Not content with seasonal work, she then continued her studies at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, earning her MS in Forestry with a wildlife ecology emphasis, studying ground nest predation in mixed-forested ecosystems.  Now she is a PhD student in the Grisham Climate Response Lab looking at the wintering ecology of the Sandhill crane population on Muleshoe NWR in the context of land use and climate change.  Her pastime is spent hiking, biking, reading, birding, and antiquing.