In the first few years of knowing Amelia, we shared in lip-syncing VH1 music videos, telling scary stories over campfires and jumping trampoline. It's what I like to think of as classic kid stuff.

Most lastingly, we connected over a shared fascination with the natural world around us, specifically the delicate bond between animals and humans.

We spent days and nights tramping around the woods and wetlands that surrounded our houses, scooping everything from tadpoles to garter snakes out from under logs, out of the muck and from the water. We easily, and I believe, maturely, grasped at the complex and fragile balance between these creatures and ourselves a lesson not just in respect for the environment, but in responsibility to it.

Now entering our 20s, as my path has led me down new avenues, Amelias current work reflects her lifelong desire to explore, protect and improve the quality of the environment and its diversity of inhabitants.

This summer, Amelia is partaking in the Central Michigan University Gull Exclusion Study.

In the words of Elizabeth Wheeler, who is one of the professors heading the project: Our overarching objective in this study is public health. She explains that over the past decades, the gull population on public beaches has exceeded normal levels. This has led to conflicts between gull and humans due to bacteria and other microorganisms, which the birds carry to public beaches.

The study seeks to answer two questions: (1) Can border collies discourage gulls from landing at public beaches? And (2) will keeping gulls off the public beaches keep the bacteria levels in swimming water and beach sand at acceptable levels?

Amelias job entails handling a docile, 16-month-old border collie named Darla for morning and evening shifts at the beach.

Darla was previously trained to chase geese off military runways in North Carolina. But now her task is to chase gulls specifically ring-billed and herring gulls from West Michigan beaches.

Amelias and Darlas beach shifts are currently being conducted at North Shore Beach, paired with Kirk Park as the other treatment location. These beaches are treated by the collies against two control beaches: Grand Haven City Beach and a private beach with the Grand Haven Beach Association, which are left alone for the gulls to do as they please.

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