Employee Spotlight: Suzy Peurach Joins the BBL Team!

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Suzanne “Suzy” Peurach joined the Bird Banding Lab (BBL), at USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (PWRC), in November of 2018 where she is currently learning about all aspects of color marking within the BBL database. Suzy is a new addition to the Bird Banding Lab, but not to PWRC. She spent the last 22 years as a museum specialist, and in the past 8 years, she served as the Collections Manager of North American Mammals for the now defunct Biological Survey Unit stationed within the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Her primary duties were caring for and assisting researchers using the NMNH mammal collections. She also had a special focus on mammal hair microscopy and assisting the Feather Identification Lab with their non-avian wildlife strikes. Suzy also worked on identifying mammalian components of anthropological and archaeological Smithsonian artifacts, prey remains, and food contaminants for researchers outside of the institution. She is also a seasoned field mammalogist, having assisted with mammal surveys in North, Central, and South America, as well as most recently in Djibouti, Africa. From these experiences, Suzy has a deeply instilled appreciation for biological diversity and the importance of data integrity and proper nomenclature, which will surely be an asset to the BBL. Suzy has a Bachelor's from the University of New Mexico in Biology and a Master's from George Mason University in Environmental Science and Public Policy.