Blog Post 1

December 1st 2025

Starting last year at the end of AP seminar, it was always a weight on our minds of what our research topic would be. I went through every possible combination of ideas for everything I was passionate about. From girls' lacrosse helmets to outer space, all my topics were explored. One thing that caught my interest was the political aspects of wildlife introductions. Last year in an AP seminar my research topic was about television and its effects on political polarization. Because I had done something with politics last year, I was looking at potentially political topics for this year as well. 

Politically, there is no end to the topics that could be delved into. However, I was talking to my grandpa (a retired veterinarian in southern Colorado) and heard about the wolf reintroduction. Hearing about it from the perspective of a seasoned veterinarian allowed me to hear it from the perspective of ranchers and other people who are opposed to wolves. Living in Castle Pines also allows me to hear mostly positive views in my daily life. With such different perspectives in my life I was very fascinated by what other people around the state thought about them. 

Set on researching wolves, I then needed to further refine my research question. Initially, I was hoping to research what ranchers thought about the wolves and also what they thought about how the state was handling the wolves. With not much previous research from the perspective of ranchers (and none in Colorado,) it was something that would be easy to find a gap in the research. 

In my mind, I was set on this. However, in the process of doing my proposal form I reached out to the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence (CHCC) at Colorado State University for a mentor. Hearing back from them, I began to be in contact with a professor at CSU, and luckily one of the people who does work related to the wolf reintroduction in Colorado. After reaching out to the professor, she suggested to me not to do ranchers because of how they are being stretched thin with people seeing how they feel about the wolves. She suggested that I shift my research focus from ranchers to people doing recreational activities in Colorado.  

From this point on, I was able to continue my research and solidify my gap in the research by finding a lack of research for what people who do recreational activities thought of the wolf reintroduction in Colorado. I have learned a lot about the wolves, and the history behind them as well as hopes for the future of the state. 

The lack of previous research was one of the driving contributors for me to be choosing this topic. However, there were some very important research papers that I used to drive my research forward. One such paper was written in 1996 and was based on a large-scale survey done in the state of Colorado for what people thought of the wolf reintroduction. It was found that most people would be interested in reintroducing the wolves (Pate). This also helped with my methodology and gave me some sample survey questions. Looking at the context of the time is very important for this paper. The survey was conducted right after the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction which was viewed positively at the time and is now regarded as a success. 

Another paper that was useful to me for my methodology was based in Florida in 2015. This paper was more about ranchers and what they thought about the Florida panthers. This was very applicable to my research because while I was not doing ranchers anymore, it gave me some sample survey questions as well as allowing me to use an online survey tool. This paper cited Qualtrics as their survey tool. However, I chose to use Google forms because of how familiar I am with it as well as its ease for others to use (Jacobs).

Diving deeper into my methodology, I got many viable questions from these two sources. As well as getting the online methodology, because I am using similar questions to the 1996 survey I can compare how people's opinions have changed over the years in regards to the wolves in Colorado. This is very useful because it allows me to see not only how people's opinions have changed over time, but with the use of my other questions I could find out potential causes for the predicted shift.

Overall, I have explored some topics and shifted my focus within my topic but have mostly stayed with the same goal in mind: to discover what residents of Colorado think about the wolves and the wolf reintroduction. I hope my research is able to help for future reintroduction in and out of the state and to see what CPW needs to be doing further or to ensure a smooth coexistence between the residents of the state and the wolves.  

Blog Post 2

February 9th 2025

In the past few weeks, I have been working on collecting responses to my survey and analyzing the data I have gotten so far. So far in my research, I have been able to compile more data that I had hoped to acquire in my whole process. My goal for responses was 50, with hopes that I would be able to get some from around the state and not solely from the city my high school is in or the city that my friends and family live in. As of January 27th I have 74 responses which makes me ecstatic to see! Throughout my data collection I have posted and sent out my survey in every way that I can think of. So far I have sent it out to: 

• 16 family friends 

• 1 preschool teacher 

• 14 family members 

• 2 Instagram posts 

• 2 Nextdoor post 

In the first part of data collection, I was only getting responses from the cities that I live in and go to school in which I was not super happy about because I wanted a larger spread of data. When I had 19 responses was when I decided to first post on Nextdoor. While I was a little worried about the possible backalast (because we all know how mean people on Nextdoor can be) I was more hopeful that I would get at least 30 responses and be able to use some other methods to get to my goal of 50. However, on the very first day the response blew my expectations out of the water and within the first week I had 57 responses. Getting above my initial goal was a super huge morale boost for me. It allowed me to start analyzing my data and begin to see patterns in what I am collecting. After this significant boost, the responses slowed down but kept coming in. When I was at 71 responses I reposted my original post on Nextdoor hoping to boost it in the algorithm and get even more responses from that. From this post, I have gotten 93 responses which makes me hopeful to get 100 responses! 

My response rate has been very encouraging but that does not mean that I have had no challenges. One thing that I have been struggling with is sorting responses into categories. For some questions such as what location the respondents are from, it is open ended to allow anyone to reply. This leads to some reasons that are the same place but show up as different places. For example, with Castle Pines I have had responses saying Castle Pines, castle pines, and Castle pines which shows as 3 different answers. While I was expecting this problem to occur, it is still something that I have to go through by hand. Once I put them all into the same category it is easy to analyze, but doing that initial step is tedious especially because it is for multiple questions. Another problem that I have run into is non response. This is a problem that I was not anticipating, and is a little bit harder to mitigate. With some of the questions they are more "yes or no" so if people don't respond I can reasonably assume the answer is "no", however, from some questions I have a significantly smaller amount or responses than I do in the total survey which makes it hard to analyze. I cannot assume what recreational activities a person does, so when they don't respond I just have to accept that they did not want to fill that part of the form out and hope that other people will fill it out. While this has become a problem, overwhelmingly I have gotten >97% response rate on most of the survey questions which is very good, and makes my data easy to analyze for many questions that have a lot of responses. 

The data I have collected so far has been very interesting to look at. Not only have I gotten responses from all around the state, but I have also gotten responses from people who do recreational activities all over the state. I have not begun analyzing locations that people recreate yet but for locations where people are from I have 23 relevant locations. (I say relevant because of the fact that some people are not from Colorado and some people said Colorado as a whole which is not usable for my data purposes). 

It is also interesting to see that most people who feel either positive or negative feel more strongly in their viewpoint than more neutrally. I would also have not predicted this and would have thought that people with an opinion would be more neutral and not as strongly opinionated. This is all the more interesting to me when I look at what people voted for in the 2020 election. 

Overall, so far in my research process I have been able to acquire much more data than I was hoping to achieve. I am very pleased with the amount of data I have been able to get so far and I hope that I will be able to get 100 responses by the end of my data collection period. In this research period I have learned about how to consolidate responses much quicker than I was at the beginning, and I have begun to really see patterns in the data. Some individual responses are very interesting to look at, the qualitative responses are especially fascinating and I believe that they will provide me with more insight into why people think the way they do. With the new wolves being reintroduced in this past month, I hope people will be more inclined to take my survey and voice their opinions. Overall, so far I learned many things about survey analysis and making sure that my survey has minimal bias when collecting responses and for the future when analyzing my data. I have had so much fun with this so far and I can't wait to continue with the next steps of my research!

Blog Post 3

May 5th 2025

Over this past year, I have learned a lot of things about the wolves in Colorado (surprise surprise!). However, more specifically I have learned about what impact the wolves have on everyday residents. At the start of my project, I knew about the reintroduction and the effects it was having on ranchers but I didn’t really understand how it was making a difference in recreational activities. Through my survey, I discovered that the wolves did not make much of a difference in what Colorado residents thought of both the wolves. However, I came to the conclusion that educating the public needs to be at the forefront of CPW’s endeavor. In order to ensure recreation in Colorado is continued to be enjoyed safely, they need to do something similar to what they do with mountain lions, bears, or the occasional aggressive moose. They should prioritize posting signage in counties or hiking areas where wolves are known to be present, and also work on educating residents about what to do if you encounter a wolf, a den, or a pack. This is something that I did not think I would be looking into with my research but as I researched it became increasingly evident that this needs to be done. 

I also hope to continue research and conservation research in college, and I want to continue to see how the wolves evolve in Colorado. This research gave me a basis for that and gives me the ability to understand what it means when the wolves are moving and have more of an idea of what effects they are having on the state and its residents, positively and negatively. I also want to go more into research about the wolves and the effect they have on the ranchers. While I was not able to do this in high school because of a variety of reasons, I would love to see where this lens takes me in the future for college and beyond. 

While I was working on this project I learned a variety of skills that I want to carry with me to college and beyond. One thing that I gained form this year was being able to send out a human participant survey. This was something that before I would have been able to create, but I didn’t know how to go through the process of getting approved and I didn’t know all the guidelines for an ethical survey. After doing this research I now know much more about the ethical survey process and I would be able to recreate it in a variety of topics. Because I want to go into possible research in the future this is something that I will be able to use extensively. Doing this research also equipped me better to write academic papers. This paper was the first time I had written an abstract, and that was definitely something that I needed to learn and refine. However, once I figured it out, I realized that it is going to help me greatly in the future for any other papers that I may happen to write. 

I not only learned a lot through what I was making, but I also learned about how to better my time management and figured out the best way that I can learn. For example, with the various presentations I gave this year (getting IRB approval, my college board presentation, and the Research Symposium) I learned the best way for me to memorize the content that I was reciting. This is something that knowing will greatly help me with future presentations and I will be able to build upon it in the future. Being able to present and give a synopsis of research that I have conducted is something that I know will be useful for college. Overall, just refining my presentation skills through this course as well as my memorization techniques really taught my a lot. 

Here is the abstract of my research process. It gives an overview of my paper if you would like to go more in depth! I have linked my paper as well as my final presentation slideshow below if you would like to see either:

With the reintroduction of wolves into Colorado in 2023, there has been a controversial aspect that needs to be addressed. With the vote for wolves passed in all counties over 100,000 residents, with the exception of Weld county, there is a clear difference between rural and urban opinions on the matter (Colorado Secretary of State, 2020). The goal of this research is to hear from citizens of Colorado who partake in recreational activities and compare their opinions about the wolf reintroduction. A human participant survey was done in the state of Colorado using social media apps such as Instagram, NextDoor, and Messages. The online survey was done for the months of January 2025- February 2025 and received 110 viable responses during that time span. The participants were asked questions about their recreational activity habits, their opinions on the Colorado Grey Wolf reintroduction and how they felt about both in conjunction. The null hypothesis is that there is not much of a positive or negative change in the willingness of Colorado residents to do recreational activities in Colorado because of the wolves. Based on the data collected, it was concluded that there was not reasonable evidence to reject the null hypothesis and that there was not a significant change in the willingness of Colorado citizens to go to places with the wolves or change their recreational activity habits solely because of the wolves. This research calls upon the state of Colorado to provide proper education on the wolves and to ensure places with wolves have proper signage. This paper highlights a new point of view in the field of conservation, and emphasizes the importance of more research done on recreational activities regarding other conservation efforts; past, present and future. 

Link to academic paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QFdUfzHM_TzDHwG6YZSc-hjlnbPPzmugAzFcnamiirU/edit?tab=t.0 

Link to presentation slideshow: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGmlnR4J2U/OpN13fnbAGnGzFI1a4u3LQ/edit?utm_content=DAGmlnR4J2U&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton