USFWS Emily Teachout, -ScienceWoman (16095682443)

March is Women’s History month, and we want to highlight some of the amazing women here at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on our social media sites.
Name: Emily Teachout
Title: Fish and Wildlife Biologist
Duty station: Washington Fish and Wildlife Office
Female Conservation Hero or Mentor: Frances Hamerstrom, one of the first female raptor biologists and the only female graduate student of Aldo Leopold. She published over 150 scientific papers and wrote 12 books and was best known for her long-term research on greater prairie chickens and Northern harriers. She housed thousands of biologists in her primitive farmhouse and inspired many towards wildlife careers. She was quite a character, an accomplished falconer and hunter, and often fed her houseguests wild game and even roadkill.
Where did you go to school:
The Evergreen State College
Optional: What did you study?
Ornithology and natural history.
What’s your favorite thing about working for FWS?
I implement the Endangered Species Act and especially enjoy working within teams of scientists to come up with new ways to understand, and reduce, our impact on imperiled species.

What’s your favorite species and why? The marbled murrelet, because their unique life history is so captivating. Unlike its seabird relatives that nest on rocks close to the sea, marbled murrelets nest on tree branches. Though early naturalists searched high and low for their nests, the first one wasn’t discovered until the 1970’s, so there is still a lot that we don’t understand about these web-footed birds up in the foggy canopies of our forests.