White Bear native’s passion for nature leads her to Florida swamps

“I’ve always been passionate about the environment and nature. My mom is really a passionate conservationist. I’ve spent my life exploring the outdoors in Minnesota, so that sparked my love for nature and wanting to study it,” she explained.

Nicholson said growing up on White Bear Lake also made her realize how important water is and made her interested in exploring it further.

She said many people question why she has wanted to study bats, but Nicholson said she thinks they’re fascinating creatures. She first got interested in bats when she learned about the flying fox species, one of the largest bats in the world. Nicholson had the opportunity to work with some while traveling to Australia and that sparked her interest.

Ford said he’s not at all surprised at the path his daughter has taken. “She’s been on a science track since she was practically in diapers. Her interest in science was fostered by my wife Catherine at an early age,” he said. “I could couple her interest in science with a strong desire to try and make a difference in the world.” 

“I realized how important they are for our ecosystem in terms of eating so many insects and helping with crop pest management. They’re pollinators, too, and disperse seeds. I was really excited to study them,” she said.

Now she’s studying the Florida bonneted bat.

“That’s my main species of focus. They were declared endangered in 2013 and we don’t know much about them, so it’s really exciting to work on this species because anything we find out is going to be new information — which is cool,” Nicholson said. 

From January through August Nicholson was in south Florida doing fieldwork.

“I’m trying to understand the effect of filling these canals, trying to do environmental restoration and what impact that restoration has on the bat community,” she explained.

Each day, Nicholson would travel to one of five field sites where she would move or remove several field acoustic detectors. A total of 97 acoustic detectors were dispersed throughout the state forest.

Since the detectors are all fairly far apart, Nicholson had to figure out how to travel to each one, which was harder than she originally thought.

“I had done some field work in Minnesota and other places, but I was not prepared for how challenging working in the Florida swamp would be. There’s water, a few inches to a few feet deep. It’s super muddy. So much of my day-to-day was figuring out how to get to new places. It was an unexpected aspect of my work but it ended up being pretty fun,” Nicholson said.

She used car, kayak, ATV and even snowshoes to get to where she needed to be.

“Right now, I’m getting into the nitty gritty of looking at the data we collected and doing some statistical analysis as well as taking classes at the University of Florida,” Nicholson said.

In January, she will return to South Florida to do it all again, as she wants two years of data collection.

Once done with grad school, Nicholson wants to either come back to Minnesota or go out west and explore more places. 

“I’m interested in getting a Ph.D. after this, and I’m interested in eventually teaching. I really love educating others and talking to people about the environment and why it’s important for us to be responsible with our natural resources,” she said.

Nicholson wants people in the area to know that there are a few easy things that they can do to help bats, too. This includes putting up a bat house in your backyard, leaving old trees to provide roosting habitat and minimizing the use of pesticides and herbicides, which can impact bat health.