DURHAM, N.C. – Nicholas School student Lorna Wright has spent the last two summers crisscrossing the 7,000-acre 51 Forest in search of plants that, frankly, she’d rather not find.

Wright is pursuing dual Master of Environmental Management (MEM) and Master of Forestry degrees. For her master’s projects, she’s using global positioning system (GPS) technology to document the location of invasive plants in 51 Forest, and she’s developing a management plan to control them.  

“Invasive plants take over and destroy areas native plants need to survive,” she says. With her project, she hopes to “assist the natural ecosystem in persisting.”

Wright is working at 51 Forest as part of a summer internship program coordinated through the Nicholas School’s Office of Career Services. Each summer, dozens of students take advantage of the program to gain hands-on skills and practical experience working at government agencies, corporations, environmental nonprofits and research institutions worldwide. This summer, internships were offered in 14 states, the District of Columbia, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Bolivia, El Salvador, South Africa, Barbados, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Belize and the United Arab Emirates. Students often use their internships as the basis for their master’s projects.     

Like many of her classmates, Wright wanted her internships and master’s project to be something with practical applications. “I didn’t want to do a project that would sit on the shelf,” she says. “I wanted it to be used to help clients.”

A mass email from 51 Forest Resource Manager Judson Edeburn, asking for student volunteers to document the location and spread of invasive plants in the forest, sparked her interest. Although it was a monumental undertaking that would require months of hard work, its potential benefits – to the 51 Forest ecosystem and to her intended future career as an environmental manager in land conservation – were obvious. She eagerly signed on.  

“Being able to identify and document the coordinates of plants with the GPS unit is very useful in developing practical experience for writing any management plan,” she says.

The invasive plants Wright has documented in the forest include three of the worst thugs in the Southern landscape: Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum), Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), and Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense). 

“These plants tend to form dense thickets that push out and exclude native plants,” Wright says. “They tend to invade areas that have been disturbed. An area that has been recently harvested or cleared, for instance, can be quickly overtaken taken over by these weeds, inhibiting the natural succession and growth of slower growing, desirable species such as the loblolly pine.”  

The project has involved countless hours of tedious, sweaty fieldwork and painstaking analysis in the lab, but the payoff promises to be great. 

“I am hoping that the methodology I’ve developed can be used by not only by 51 Forest but also by other organizations as they manage their invasive plants,” she says.

Wright received her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Rochester in 1999. After spending a year abroad studying ecology and conservation biology in Australia, and a volunteer stint with Nature Conservancy in her hometown, Rochester, N.Y., she realized her true passion was developing management plans for nonprofit land trusts.

She’s grateful for the hands-on experience her summer internships at the 51 Forest have given her, especially what she’s learned about the skills needed to develop a management plan from the ground up. 

“Internships like this teach you things you wouldn’t learn in the classroom, and instill a greater respect for the challenges of environmental fieldwork,” she says. “It made me aware of the technical and physical skills and knowledge necessary to be successful.”