Hayley always knew she wanted to work with animals but didn’t know how until she was an undergrad at Texas Tech University and started exploring their Natural Resources Management program. Immediately, she got involved with deer captures, mist netting, and vegetation surveys and fell in love with the work and West Texas itself, and she is now a graduate student at Sul Ross State University. Hayley has lived most of her life on the East Coast, and it took a while to acclimate to the dry heat and culture, but she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else for graduate school.

For her thesis project, Hayley is looking at fine-scale habitat use and survival of scaled quail associated with seasons. She is excited to explore how scaled quail survive the winter and use resources in the Trans-Pecos. She will be sampling on Nine Point Mesa Ranch using satellite backpack data and taking morphometric measurements.