Gina Bartleson

Born and raised in Iowa, Gina spent as much time as she could outside, usually in the nearby creek. While in college, she discovered a love for ecology and fieldwork (and travel!), taking volunteer trips to Montana to help set up transects for snowshoe hare population counts and to Utah for invasive tamarisk removal. She graduated from University of Iowa with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and then received her Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Memphis with a conservation focus, studying the effects of roads on the threatened Florida Scrub-Jay. After graduate school, Gina lived in Chicago for a few years before returning to Iowa. As a Iowa Master Naturalist, she spends most of her time volunteering with nonprofit organizations conducting bird and pollinator surveys, prairie restoration, invasive species removal, and collecting native seed. Gina also enjoys hiking, reading, gardening, and researching native plants to add to her yard and the pollinators those plants attract.