FIELD NOTES BLOG

Meet Bryce

Bryce Messer
January 30, 2024

Salutations Everybody! My name is Bryce Messer and I am happy to be serving Severson Dells, for the first time, as an AmeriCorps Environmental Educator. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia but moved to Illinois a little over 1 year ago, so I am excited to learn everything I can about the natural wonders of the area.


I graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Biology with minors in Geology and History of Science. Then I received my master’s degree from Southern Illinois University majoring in Zoology. As a requirement for graduation, I developed a habitat management plan for the American Pronghorn across a 140,000-acre ranch in New Mexico.


Before my time at Severson Dells, I worked in wildlife rehabilitation with WildCare Oklahoma to nurture sick, injured, and orphaned animals back to health. Following leaving Oklahoma I served as a natural resource technician at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico then traveled to Trinidad & Tobago to study the evolutionary histories of guppies.




I have had a lifelong love for wildlife and the outdoors which means I spend most of my time outside hiking, fishing, birding, and hunting. When not outside I enjoy playing video games, live-action role-playing, and watching movies & anime.

RECENT ARTICLES

Spring Wildflowers

By Caedyn Wells, Lauren Bonavia, Olivia Price, Caroline Pacheco • April 15, 2026
April showers bring May flowers… and they're already beginning to appear! These newly emerging wildflowers remind us that the season is changing and that soon the lands around us will be in full bloom. With all of the excitement, let’s dive into some of the things that make flowers so incredible! In this month’s blog, we’ll be learning how to ID wildflowers, talk about the shape and arrangement of certain flowers, their benefits to wildlife, and lastly about their colors and anatomy!

Making it Easier to Volunteer

By Andrea Wallace Noble • April 9, 2026
Removing obstacles to connect you to causes you care about!

Carbon Sequestration at Prairie's Edge

By Emma Zimmerman • April 7, 2026
As we begin the process of rewilding the former Elliot Golf Course, now named Prairie’s Edge, one of the first steps is to gather baseline data so we can track our progress over time. One of the biggest changes we expect to see as the land transitions from a golf course to native habitat is how much carbon it can store. To understand why this matters, it helps to start with carbon itself.