MONACA, Pa. — Shaniah Miller just finished up a very busy summer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The 2022 Penn State Beaver biology graduate, who is now a wildlife technician with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, spent the past summer putting GPS collars on black bears as part of a statewide black bear survival study.
When she first arrived at the Beaver campus, Miller said, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with a biology degree but had considered marine biology. She said a summer internship at an aquarium in Florida helped her make a decision about her future career.
“It was fun,” she said of the internship. “But I learned it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
The following summer she did an internship with the Pennsylvania Game Commission that helped her realize she wanted to work with wildlife, she said. It also led to a full-time position after she graduated.
Miller is now part of a multi-year study of black bears — both male and female, adults and yearlings —in Pennsylvania. She works in the southwest region of the state in Armstrong, Cambria and Indiana counties.
The study is on a much larger scale than has previously been done, Miller said. She aims to put collars on 32 bears just in her territory; combined with other wildlife technicians to total 160 bears across the state annually. The team also took blood and hair samples from the bears and pulled a milk tooth from each, which helps them determine their ages, Miller said. She said the milk teeth of bears have rings on them, similar to the rings of trees that date them.
The team will track how the bears move and get an idea of how many are being harvested through hunting in different areas and demographics. The knowledge they gain from the study could help lead to different management practices in the future, Miller said.
Miller said the collars will remain on the bears for one year and then they will automatically drop off, at which time the technicians will collect the discarded collars.
Before her work with the black bear population, Miller said, she did similar work with turkeys, as part of another statewide study.
Miller said her time at Beaver prepared her for her career between the general skills she learned and undergraduate research on plants she conducted with Sarah Nilson, associate professor of biology.
In addition to helping Nilson with her research, Miller said she was able to design her own experiment with hydroponics to test how much zinc plants can take. Miller said Nilson watched over her work but allowed her to work independently.
“I don’t think you could do that if [Beaver] wasn’t a small campus,” she said.
Miller returned to Penn State Beaver last year to talk to and do a turkey trapping demonstration for Assistant Professor of Biology Autumn Sabo’s ecology class, and she does programming with the public as well.
“I like how much public outreach there can be,” Miller said of her job. “No two days ever look the same, and I like that.”