It’s our pleasure to introduce our 2025 Karen Mashburn Environmental Scholar, Sophia Lima.
Sophia Lima, the 2025 Karen Mashburn Environmental Scholar.
Sophia, a Miami native, is an honors student studying Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. Her lifelong connection with nature has led to a variety of work and volunteer experiences in environmental education, wildlife rehabilitation, and animal care. During her first year at UF, Sophia participated in wildlife acoustics and bird banding projects and volunteered in the Ornithology Collections at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Sophia has been hooked on birds since she discovered birdwatching in high school. She believes in the power of birding to spark kids’ curiosity about the natural world.
According to Sophia, “Bird blindness – missing the birds that are right in front of you – is a real phenomenon…Learning about the species that they can see all around them will make students understand the message of conservation much more prudently – they know what wonders of the world could go missing if we don’t take care of it.”
During her internship with Friends of the Everglades, she will draw on her passion for ornithology, environmental education, and storytelling to develop engaging lessons about our feathered friends in the Everglades.
To learn more about Sophia, enjoy her application essay below.
Childlike Wonder, Lifelong Impact: A Conservationist’s Origin Story
“He’s BLUE!!”. Those were the first words my dad heard as I ran into the house, wet from the knees down, holding a bucket full of greenish water and a splendid little arthropod. When I was 5 years old, I found myself in the secret wild places few know Miami has. Feet dirty and grass-stained, I crawled under docks behind my house and over sharp white rocks – just me and my bucket. I caught the usual suspects – tadpoles, squishy silver minnows, spindly insects that clung to the surface of the lake. That was until I found him – or until he found me, staring back at him, wide-eyed. Procambarus alleni, the Everglades crayfish. Electric blue in my mom’s mop bucket. I thought I had caught a lobster. How wonderful that something so vibrant could exist just feet from my house, and nobody knew? It was my little secret.
I was often the only attendee of lizard funerals, the sole spectator of an insect molt. I grew up knee-deep in lakes, or studying horseshoe crabs in the Biscayne Bay, sifting through sargasso to find shrimp to hold as they wiggled in my palms. It was Miami, the big city; it was supposed to be barely a memory of the wild world. But I checked under rocks for something I knew was hiding. From then on, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said I wanted to be an “animal adventurer”. Later, I learned the proper term was “wildlife biologist”. I have never been able to let that go.
I volunteered at the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge/Nature Center for six years before I got my first paying wildlife job this past summer 2024, working as a seasonal Wildlife Educator. There, I helped run educational outreach programs for students ages 5-14, provided care to captive wildlife species in the nature center, monitored volunteers, identified marine and terrestrial species for student education, volunteered as a sea turtle scout to search for and identify Loggerhead sea turtles for tours, and taught adult members of the public about the native wildlife in the area.
I have been working in education and outreach for some time while in high school and college. I worked as a member of the Norton Museum of Art’s Teen Collective, a group of high school students who work with the museum to cultivate dynamic programming for teens and their families. We met weekly to discuss art classes teens would be interested in, and social events for students visiting the museum.
I then worked at the Palm Beach County Library System (Jupiter Branch) as a Student Employee for two years (2022-2024), until I graduated and left for college/my summer job. At the library, I organized and shelved materials and engaged with patrons in need of support. My favorite part of my library job was the educational programming. I helped to facilitate children’s art classes, social activities like Lego Club or Pokemon tournaments, lectures for adults (in both English and Spanish), and the environmental club for ages 7-17, Everything Explorers! After joining Everything Explorers, I have become involved with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots, and have continued to attend some Everything Explorers gatherings even while at the University of Florida this year. In September of 2024, the Everything Explorers attended the Youth Environment Summit, and we were able to meet Dr. Jane Goodall in person. I could tell this moment meant as much to all of the kids as it did to me – we all shared a deeper connection to our Earth through each other.
I have a passion for education and see the future in children. I am a babysitter alongside my studies in wildlife conservation. Even as a college student, I love “playing” outside, exercising my imagination, and appreciating the world with childlike wonder – all things that help me connect with the kids I babysit and teach! Wonder is why children make excellent advocates for environmental conservation. Children know better than anyone why conservation is important, and we must reinforce that feeling of wonder and care for the wild – they will be the ones to live Earth’s future. I
see myself continuing in education no matter where my future career leads me – education is the most important tool we have for conservation. I would love to bring the wild to children’s classrooms – using paper airplanes to show what wing shapes help birds fly best, testing our skills against native animals to learn more about them (can you jump as far as a Florida panther?), and bringing education about climate change and conservation early in the lives of youth. Let’s look at water samples, let’s go birding, let’s get outside!
In the future, I would love to work as a scientist in a natural history/science museum setting or an environmental NGO. There, I could blend my love of education and public spaces with my scientific mind. I am starting to volunteer at the Florida Museum of Natural History in the Del-Rio Lab this spring, using bioinformatics to sequence genomic data of birds, to better classify them and heed their conservation.
It hasn’t been easy to get here. It never is easy to be a young scientist, let alone a woman in science. I am a first-generation college student and a first-generation American born to a Cuban immigrant family. My dad and my Abuelas fought hard to get here from Cuba, to make a life for themselves, and later for me. Their devotion to our family carries me forward.
Sometimes you love something so much it eats at you. And eat at me it did. My love for the natural world and all the creatures I could find right in my backyard, and in the wild places I’d romp around in, made it all that much harder to let the challenges I faced hold me back from my dreams. I hope to continue this fight for conservation with the help of Friends of the Everglades.
May this wild world find you well,
Sophia Lima
