(bright music) - Sageland Collaborative works to provide science-based strategies for wildlife and conservation.

Frances Ngo joins us now to tell us more.

Welcome, Frances.

- Hi, it's so exciting to be here.

- I'm excited to have you.

So tell me a little bit more about Sageland Collective.

- Yeah, so Sageland Collaborative, we're really excited because this year we're celebrating our 30th anniversary.

So that represents, like, three decades of building partnerships to do conservation locally on the land, and connecting people, like, with wildlife and landscapes around us.

- And who's a part of Sageland Collaborative?

- Yes.

- Is it volunteers or?

What's your organization?

- Yes, so we've got a small, but mighty staff of scientists, outreach people, communications, but all of this hinges also on our partnerships.

So that could look like landowners, that could look like other conservation organizations and our big volunteer base.

So we really couldn't get things done without them.

- Yeah, so many people, they'll look and they'll be like, well I'm not a scientist, I don't have the official, you know, credentials.

How can I get involved?

- Yeah, and so I think that is the big basis of, like, our work, is that community scientists, anybody can be a community scientist and a participant in conservation.

And so we have about five different community science projects that go on throughout the year and anyone can get involved in these.

So that could look like serving shorebirds at Great Salt Lake, looking for reptiles and amphibians, or building beaver dam analogs in the stream.

And so all of these things are people that anyone can jump onto and just get their hands on the ground.

- Yeah, and Earth Month, what a great month to get started, right?

- Yeah, which is very exciting.

And so as things are warming up and spring is kicking off, we're really excited to start launching some of these programs from now all the way until like late summer in September.

- Wow, I love that.

How did you get involved?

- Ah, how did I get involved?

I guess it's a really long story of a tiny Frances being very excited about nature, and that has led me to a career all the way to Sageland Collaborative.

And right now I do a lot of our outreach, like building partnerships, talking to volunteers and like how, like, making sure that people can get involved in any way possible.

- Well, your excitement about it is so contagious.

We wanna make sure that people have information so they can get involved as well.

The information's on your screen, just head to sagelandcollaborative.org, sagelandcollaborative.org for more information.

And I'm Liz Adeola and I wanna thank you so much for watching "Contact."

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