Featured Scientist

Laura Cockrell with an endangered Green sturgeon she tagged in the Sacramento River for a sturgeon movement study


Laura holds a Western pond turtle at Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area.


Laura swabs a hunter-harvested Northern pintail for Avian Influenza sampling in 2007 at the Gray Lodge Wildlife Area.

Laura Cockrell is an environmental scientist at the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area, which is made up of three units covering nearly 9,700 acres in Butte and Glenn counties. Her duties include coordinating and conducting biological surveys on the wildlife area, managing wood duck nesting boxes, coordinating with volunteers and interacting with partners, including governmental agencies and non-government organizations. While most of her work involves surveying for game species, she has also captured giant garter snakes and western pond turtles for studies, and conducted surveys for yellow-billed cuckoos and Swainson’s hawks. Laura can also regularly be found planning habitat improvement and maintenance projects, writing reports, creating maps designed for public use on the wildlife area and generally assisting the public.

Laura graduated from California State University, Chico in 2007 with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Science with an emphasis in Wildlife Biology. She earned a Master of Science in Biology with a concentration on Applied Ecology from Eastern Kentucky University. Her thesis used Landsat imagery to evaluate trumpeter swan nesting sites in Yellowstone National Park.

Prior to working at the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area, she worked for the International Halibut Commission in Dutch Harbor, and for California Waterfowl in the Sacramento Valley, where she worked on summer mallard banding, pintail rocket netting, nest searches and wetland monitoring.

What led you into a career as a wildlife biologist?

I always enjoyed being outside and exploring as a kid. It took me a little while to find my path in college, but I chose to major in biology because studying ecology and nature sounded like a good chance to be outside every day. I signed up for a waterfowl course, and my passion for wildlife really took off after that.

Who or what brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

When I first started as a scientific aid with the department almost 11 years ago, I was working on the Avian Influenza Project. I swabbed hunter-harvested birds at the check station to be tested for avian influenza in the lab, and surveyed for bird die-offs throughout the region. I had never worked alone before, and it taught me a lot about how important it is to stay focused and on task when you are by yourself!

What inspires me to stay with the department is the potential I see for us to fulfill the goals of our management plan, and to improve habitat on the lands we have been entrusted to manage.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

It depends on the season. Waterfowl season is our busiest season as far as public use. It runs from late October through the beginning of February, but the preparation begins much earlier. During waterfowl season, I am usually in the office or at the check station. After waterfowl season ends, I finalize our hunt records for the end of season report and everyone is out monitoring the area flooding or inspecting damage from flooding. In the spring when we are in full survey mode, I will probably be out in the field before sunrise counting pheasant or quail. During the summer, I am usually in the field banding or in the office working on grant reports. Fall brings us back into preparation for the hunting seasons, where we have to prepare for September dove hunts, the J-9 zone deer hunt and waterfowl season.

What is your favorite species to interact with or study?

I have really enjoyed getting to work with western pond turtles and giant garter snakes. I took herpetology in college and it was great but “herps” were not really my thing until I got to work with them more. Any time we get to work with protected species and species of special concern is rewarding, and it is not something we get to do very often. Seeing protected species thrive on our wildlife areas means the hard work that goes into developing protections is helping local populations persist, and if the local population becomes healthy enough to expand maybe they can rebound throughout their range.

What is the most rewarding project that you have worked on for CDFW?

Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area is one of the few wildlife areas with an agriculture lease, so we work with our farmers to support wildlife-friendly agriculture practices. Because of the winter flooding this year, some of the rice fields were too wet during planting season, and farmers will be enrolling those fields in the BirdReturns program, which is offered by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with the California Rice Commission. The Nature Conservancy and the California Rice Commission began this program in 2014 to compensate farmers who provide pop-up habitat for migratory shorebirds in the fall and spring by flooding fallow rice fields. We are planning shorebird surveys during fall migration and I am so excited to see how shorebirds will react, hopefully by returning to the area. During the shorebird survey, we will drive down the roads through the flooded rice fields and count the number and types of shorebirds that are using the fields. Normally, if the fields have been planted in rice, they would not be usable by the birds because they are looking for mudflats, not rice fields. We would hope to see a high diversity of species and large amounts of birds using the flooded rice fields.

What is it about the work you do that you would most like us to know?

There are many constraints on the work we do that are created by factors outside our control. A large part of the work on our wildlife area is managing wetlands, but the drought brought a lot of challenges with water management. We work with what we have, but sometimes it is not a lot and that can be frustrating.

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to do?

Wildlife overpasses/underpasses! Our wildlife area has a highway that bisects one of the units, and the amount of wildlife killed by vehicles is such a shame. A few years ago, we had four deer killed in a quarter-mile stretch in less than a week, and this winter someone ended up driving into a waterway at one of our units to avoid a collision with a deer! There are the standard “deer crossing” signs, but people often drive well over the speed limit and put themselves and wildlife at risk for a collision. There has been a great deal of success in reducing wildlife collisions where wildlife overpasses and underpasses were created. I would love build underpasses with elevated roadways for all the major roadways around our units.

What is the most challenging aspect of your career as an environmental scientist?

More than once, I have had to remind myself, “You signed up for this, so put a smile on your face and get it done!” Walking in waders to check traps when it is 110 degrees out is not fun. Examining a carcass that has been rotting for a week is not fun. Cleaning up garbage is not fun. However, all of those things are critical for what we do! So put a smile on your face, get it done and get on with it.

Is there a preconception about scientists you would like to dispel?

One of my classmates in college told me that I should switch to microbiology because “there is no future in studying plants or animals.” We need to understand our environment, how we interact with it and the impacts we make. Scientists are not always in a lab – they are out in the field, too. Obviously, I did not agree with his assessment or I would be a microbiologist! The guy that I was talking to felt like, career-wise, the money was in lab work and microbiology rather than fieldwork. Part of me can understand that line of reasoning, as there are more jobs with the medical profession if you target microbiology, but if that is not where your passion is then why would you take that path?

All photos courtesy of Laura Cockrell.

Dave Lancaster is an environmental scientist covering Humboldt and Del Norte counties for the Northern Region’s Wildlife Management Program. He has been a unit wildlife biologist for the past 13 years, covering a variety of issues involving birds and mammals including hunting program management, human-wildlife conflict, wildlife disease and welfare, habitat restoration, special-status species protection, population monitoring, research and providing technical assistance to other CDFW programs, agencies and the public.

Dave grew up in eastern Oregon and graduated from Oregon State University, earning Bachelor of Science degrees in both Wildlife Science and Fisheries Science. He has worked as a biologist for more than 20 years, the last 17 of which have been with CDFW.

What led you into a career as a wildlife biologist?

Hunting is a part of life out in rural eastern Oregon, and you start young. This early introduction to game quickly grew into a much wider appreciation for the land and wildlife in general. While there are a number of different jobs that allow a person to satisfy their desire to work out on the land, being a wildlife biologist provides an opportunity to work for the benefit of wildlife and the people who appreciate it.

It is interesting that you have degrees in both Wildlife Science and Fisheries Science. How did that come about?

I wanted to have a career in wildlife management, but most of the work was in fisheries, so I was hedging my bets.

What brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

Early in one’s career as a biologist, it is often necessary to be flexible and willing to go where job opportunities take you. Like many people in other states, my image of California was crowded freeways and urban sprawl. I never imagined I would make a career here, but when a job came up, I took it, figuring I would not be here long. It was a nice discovery for me that California still has a wealth of wildlife and wildlands, and diverse opportunity to work toward making a material contribution to conservation.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

Unit wildlife biologists have such a wide variety of duties that we typically work on several distinctly different issues in a day, and frequently have our plans changed by new developments occurring in any one of the many tasks we cover. I may on a given morning start to design a study, do a survey or prepare a management plan. Then the phone rings and I am being told a bear broke into a chicken coop, a deer is tangled up in barbed wire or a group of birds has been found dead on the beach – and the day just changed.

What is the most rewarding project that you’ve worked on for CDFW?

There are so many rewarding moments in a biologist’s career, it is difficult to pick out one particular thing. There are those projects that are not enjoyable to work on in the moment, but are very rewarding in the end because of the benefit to wildlife they produce. For example, developing habitat improvement projects and mitigation for impacts from development projects involve a lot of time at the desk, in meetings and conferring with folks with differing opinions and goals. Then there are the days when you are out in woods, grasslands or marshes doing surveys or tagging wildlife. You also get personal satisfaction and thanks from the public for helping a particular animal in some form of distress, such as when a deer or an elk is tangled up in barbed wire and you are able to free it up and send it on its way. On other days, you get the opportunity to help a person who is having some type of problem with wildlife. Of course, for wildlife biologists, any day improving the outlook for wildlife constitutes a good day, but if doing so happens to involve watching, handling or tracking animals, then all the better.

What is your favorite species to interact with or study?

The groups of species that I interact with most frequently are game birds and mammals, typically through managing hunting programs, helping landowners who are having conflicts with wildlife and responding to disease outbreaks. I do not have one particular favorite species. It is a diverse and fascinating world out there, with each one having its own appeal.

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to do?

Figuring out how to restore and maintain native grassland habitats while accommodating commercial livestock ranching in the shrub steppe of the Great Basin and in coastal montane prairies would be high on the list in terms of landscape-scale conservation priorities. These areas provide important wildlife habitat but the livestock industry is important as well to these rural communities. Providing for both is the key to success in the big picture.

What is it about the work you do that you would most like us to know?

Unit wildlife biologists, as with staff from most of CDFW’s programs, work every day to find practical, effective solutions to complex problems, and try when doing so to satisfy a diverse range of constituents. We have to be practical because the decisions we make and the work we do often directly affects both our constituency and conservation actions carried out on the ground. We have to come up with solutions that actually work, not just in theory; they must work for wildlife, be compatible with landowners’ desired use of their property and be implemented in a cost effective manner. Take hunting as an example: you need to provide for the ecological integrity of the wildlife population being hunted and the habitats and other species that interact with it, and provide for use by the public both in the form of hunting and viewing opportunity, and use hunting as a tool to minimize property damage the hunted species may be causing on private property.

Any advice for people considering careers in science or natural resources?

Get out in the field and read all the quality scientific literature you have time for. The university and on-the-job training are key components to building knowledge and competency, but a lifelong habit of self-education is indispensable. A broad familiarity with the collective knowledge compiled by those that came before us, tempered with extensive and considered first-hand observations from the field, are what make a good biologist.