Hallie Cowan Barrera

M.S. Student - Wildlife and Fisheries Biology
Forestry and Environmental Conservation Department, Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science

Office: Lehotsky 201
Phone:

Email: hcowan@clemson.edu

Educational Background

B.S. Animal Studies
Eckerd College 2023

Profile

Hi, my name is Hallie Cowan Barrera. I am a first year master’s student studying wildlife and fisheries biology. My research focuses on ecotoxins in caimans. In Suriname, and many parts of the amazon basin, illegal gold-mining is releasing pollutants like mercury into the waterways. My project will be looking at the total mercury in caimans, along with their diets, to better understand how we can use caimans as bioindicators at multiple trophic levels. I started diving into this topic in Peru, where I work with a nonprofit called Fauna Forever and Lead Research Coordinator Chris Ketola. There, we have been taking nail and scutes samples to look at long term accumulation of mercury in the caimans. This is what brought me to my project in Suriname and Clemson.