Two students awarded Garden Club of America Frances M. Peacock Scholarship for Native Bird Habitat

Luke Douglas
Luke Douglas

University of Maine graduate students Luke Douglas and Carl Pohlman have been awarded the 2021 Garden Club of America Frances M. Peacock Scholarship for Native Bird Habitat. The scholarship awards will help support field research activities this summer. 

The students are the only recipients of the competitive, nationwide scholarship this year. Only one other University of Maine student, Meaghan Conway, who received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Brian Olsen, received the award in 2016.

Douglas is an M.S. in forest resources student from Barrington, Rhode Island advised by Amber Roth, assistant professor of forest wildlife management who holds a joint appointment in the School of Forest Resources and Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology. His research focuses on how rusty blackbirds (Euphagus carolinus) use commercial spruce-fir forests of northern New England. 

Carl Pohlman
Carl Pohlman

Pohlman, who is from Bexley, Ohio, also is pursuing an M.S. in forest resources and is advised by Roth. His thesis investigates the long-term effects of an expanding gap silvicultural system on bird assemblages. This research advances UMaine’s Acadian Forest Ecosystem Research Program which is based in the Penobscot Experimental Forest, a 3,900-acre research and public recreation forest in Bradley, Maine that is managed cooperatively by the University Forests Office and the U.S. Forest Service. 

“Carl and Luke’s awards continue a legacy of bird habitat research funded by the Garden Club of America that provided significant support for me when I was a graduate student,” said Roth, who received the award in 2008 while a Ph.D. student at Michigan Technological University.  

“This demonstrates the importance of the award and its contribution to young scientists striving to conserve declining bird species and their habitats.”

Established in 1994, the Garden Club of America’s Frances M. Peacock Scholarship for Native Bird Habitat provides financial aid to study areas in the United States that provide seasonal habitat for threatened or endangered native birds and to tend useful information for land-management decisions. Selection is made by a team of reviewers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which also administers the scholarship. The selection is reviewed and approved by the GCA Scholarship Committee. More information about all the scholarships the club offers is available online.

Contact: Amber Roth,  amber.roth@maine.edu; 207.581.2856