Communicating Conservation

Hello! My name is Carlee Allen and I am a rising junior majoring in Art and RWPD, with a minor in Japanese. This Summer I have been working at Blue Mountain Land Trust (BMLT) as a Communications and Outreach intern. Through this internship I have been able to learn a variety of skills that are valuable to the field of marketing and communications, but I have also had the opportunity to learn about the work being done at BMLT, as well as raise awareness of that work. Within the Blue Mountain region, the land trust is dedicated to a wide variety of projects including working with landowners to write conservation easements, putting on events to connect communities to nature through education, providing upkeep of trails through volunteer work and more.

Over the course of this Summer, I have gained a lot of insight into the practice of posting on social media from a professional standpoint. Recently, a lot of that experience has come from doing onsite media coverage at Welcome Table Farm to capture moments of their day camp, “Farm Kids.” Before heading out to the event I have to create a storyboard, which entails sketching and writing out my ideas of photos and videos I would like to capture, so that I can be sure to leave the site with useful content. The other day when I got to the farm, Professor Heidi Dobson was doing a presentation with other Whitman students about insects, and I got to listen to this interesting lesson while I captured photos of the kids looking through microscopes and catching bugs. After gathering content for the day, I practice building a media library by organizing everything I captured into a drive, and then I create a first draft of my post. When the draft is done, I organize it into a catalog so I can keep track of my work, and then I check in with my supervisor to get feedback and approval. My most recent post was a reel that I made documenting a day at Farm Kids, including clips of the kids adventuring through a creek, using flower pigments to create unique prints, and more.

Blue Mountain Land Trust purchased a property in Eastern Oregon called Phipps Meadow, where they are leading a restoration project that will provide a space for salmon to spawn and rear, which will greatly benefit the species population. While improving the habitat for freshwater species and wildlife, they also want to provide education opportunities for the community. This August, BMLT is hosting a conservation tour at Phipps Meadow in order to fulfill that goal of providing education, and I have been able to work on the promotion of this event through press and business outreach, creating social media posts, and updating details on the website regarding the event. I’m extremely excited for the tour, and I look forward to camping with the team, learning more about their restoration projects, and gathering photos and videos of the experience.