My name is Joshua, and for my CAMINO internship, I worked for the Santa Cruz Mountain Reserves. I am entering my third year at UCSC as an Ecology and Evolutionary Biology major. In my life outside of school and work, I enjoy golfing and spending time in the ocean. I am from San Jose and have been visiting Santa Cruz my whole life, but working for the Santa Cruz Mountain Reserves opened my eyes to the beauty of the California coast in ways I had not seen before. I became intimately involved with the plant communities of grasslands recovering from the CZU fire and the wildlife community, performing small mammal trapping and camera trap monitoring. As fulfilling as those experiences were, performing a small research project on pollinator abundance and diversity on a farm that employs extensive sustainable practices across its business was my favorite part.