Visiting American student Kristin Stillman has learnt that gaffer tape is useful to avoid bites and scratches when holding possums and gliders.

The AustraLearn intern has helped with trapping and radio-collar tracking of possums and gliders as part of her first field trip with Central Queensland University's Centre for Environmental Management.

The monitoring was part of a Main Roads-funded project checking the environmental effects of a highway realignment near Miriam Vale.

Kristin is being supervised by CEM Terrestial Ecology theme leader Dr Kevin Wormington, whose interests include native fauna and their host ecosystems (eg. hollow-bearing trees and vegetation corridors). The CEM has taken a specific interest in possums, gliders, nail-tail wallabies, koalas, yellow chat birds and northern hairy nose wombats.

The American visitor is looking forward most of all to a field trip to St Bees Island (off Mackay) in late July, when she will be monitoring koalas.

Ms Stillman is majoring in animal science at the University of Minnesota, with a view to post-graduate studies in veterinary sciences. Her home town is Menomonee Falls in Wisconsin.

While in Rockhampton, Kristin is staying with a local homestay family and walking to the campus each day.

She has come to CQU through education abroad specialist AustraLearn (www.australearn.org/), an organisation that provides university students with study abroad opportunities in Australia and New Zealand.

Details of CEM-hosted Professional Development for Academic Credit internship placements for American students are available via:.

http://australearn.org/Programs/Internship/PDACDescriptions.htm#science .

Details about the CEM are at: www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/ahs .