2025 Land Stewardship Interns!

Avalonia is pleased to welcome Morgan Reynolds and Coleman Pushlar as our new Land Stewardship Interns for the 2025 summer season!

This internship program is once again generously sponsored by the Southeastern New England Educational and Charitable Foundation (SNEC) and, much like last year, promises to offer interns with meaningful and practical experience in land conservation.  Starting on June 16th, Morgan and Coleman will participate in long and short-term stewardship projects, participate in a variety of meetings and outreach events, and get to know the workings of land trusts through the lens of a day-to-day conservation practitioner, whether that be preserve monitoring, restoration and/or invasive management, trail design and maintainence, or any number of other stewardship related activities.

Without further ado, here they are in their own words:

Hello, I am Coleman, an incoming second-year master’s student within the Biodiversity and Conservation Biology Program at UCONN Storrs. I graduated from Roger Williams University with a bachelor’s in Marine Biology and found my love for conservation through this program. I am especially interested in the mechanisms of habitat restoration and disturbance ecology with invasive plant and insect species. I have worked with the Northwest Conservation District conducting education and outreach, and value my time with the Lake Waramaug Task Force and the Kent Land Trust, where I removed invasive plant species and planted native plant species.  I am excited to learn more about the processes of managing preserves and conservation easements with the Avalonia Land Conservancy. I enjoy being outdoors, paddleboarding, identifying plants, hiking into uncharted territory, and doing my part in protecting these critical landscapes for the biodiverse flora and fauna found within Connecticut.   

My name is Morgan Reynolds, and I am a recent graduate from the University of Connecticut with a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I will be staying at UConn one more year pursuing a M.S. in Biodiversity and Conservation Biology, which I then hope to use towards a career in environmental conservation. I am super excited to be working with Avalonia this summer and to get to explore my many interests within the environmental sector! Although I am still narrowing down exactly where my heart lies, I am interested in the relationships between species, species response to the changing global climate, and agricultural sustainability.

If you run into either Coleman or Morgan on the trails, please welcome them to Avalonia!