Wildlife Experiences Highlight Nature’s Impact

But that wasn’t all.

Hoping to make the most of his Cullman experience, Angus also spent a week studying the biological evolution of crickets with a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College, and a handful of weekends banding Canada Geese with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.

Volunteering his time is nothing new to the Lyme, N.H. native, but this experience took it to a new level. 

“Ecology and environmental science have kind of been something that’s interested me for a while,” said Angus, who will attend Bowdoin College in the fall. “I’m going to study something biology related but I’m not 100-percent positive of what that will be at this point.”

Considered among Kimball Union Academy’s highest honors, the Cullman Scholarship Program was established in 1983 with a gift from Hugh Cullman ’42 and supports students in off-campus study opportunities. In 2024, Angus and nine other students were awarded scholarships to pursue areas of study of their choosing that develop leadership skills, global and environmental awareness, and service to others.

For Angus, this meant getting his hands dirty along the banks of Wyoming’s Green River, building beaver dams to reduce erosion, and stabilize waterflow to downriver communities. The effort was led by Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving, protecting, and restoring America’s cold-water fisheries and their watersheds.

Angus said that excessive trapping during the 1800s reduced the area’s beaver population to dangerously low levels. And with a lack of natural beaver dams along the river, erosion issues began to impact waterflow and strain nearby communities. To combat this, Angus and his fellow volunteers created man-made habitats that they hoped beavers would maintain once reintroduced to the river.

“When they put the beavers in, it increases the amount of groundwater exchange that happens,” Angus explained. “So later in the summer, more groundwater will be stored in the higher parts of watersheds which basically means there’s more available water when these areas are most strained.”

After returning to New Hampshire, Angus spent one week alongside a Dartmouth College Ph.D. student researching juvenile phenotypic plasticity in crickets. Angus said his role was primarily comprised of photographing crickets for future measurement and collecting data on eggs which were incubated at a variety of different temperatures. Angus said the premise of the work was to determine if juvenile crickets changed their reliance on certain mating practices in response to different selective pressures during incubation.

From there, Angus joined members of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department to band Canada Geese during a roughly two-week span in which the geese have molted their feathers and are unable to fly. Angus likened the activity to herding sheep.

“They’re vicious creatures,” Angus joked, adding that information gathered from the bands is later inputted into federal wildlife migration databases. “The places we ended up banding geese were bizarre. We were at a golf course one day for two hours, and there was probably a group of 60 or 70 geese in their ponds. The next day we were in the back of a shopping mall in Hooksett by one of those little residential ponds.”

Angus said he was grateful to the Cullman family for providing the resources necessary to further explore his passion in environmental science and encouraged future KUA students to apply for the scholarship — even if they’re not completely sold on a particular subject matter.