Hi, my name is Taran Snyder (TJ for short). I was born and raised in Colorado, spending a lot of my childhood either in Littleton or in the Rocky Mountains around the Buffalo Creek area riding horses, learning to fish, attempting to paint, etc. Today I am an avid outdoorsman, enjoying hunting, fishing, backpacking, and being on horseback as often as I can be. I served in the United States Army immediately following graduation from high school, for a total of eight years. I was a member of an air medevac unit responsible for receiving calls for aid, responding to, and transporting potential patients to designated hospital locations. My last few years were spent as an aviation battalion training non-commissioned officer. After being honorably discharged from the Army in 2018, I attended Colorado State University, where I received a bachelor’s of science in Biology and graduated in May of 2021. I decided to become a Mt. Adams Institute AmeriCorps Intern because of the limitless potential that comes with the internship. The program offers an exclusive potential to network and gain hands on knowledge and experience from the experts in their fields. Personally, I am ecstatic to continue my quest for knowledge in everything Ecology, learning specifically about fish biology, hydrology, GIS, and watershed ecology. I hope to one day apply what I gain from this internship into either a position with the federal government (hopefully still in AK?) or continuing my education to pursue a MS/PhD in Ecology. One day I hope to be an ecologist, studying top-down pressure in the Rocky Mountain ecosystems and utilizing this information in the proper management of large carnivore species.
