Something “clicked” for Mackenzi Hallmark while doing fieldwork in northwest Georgia.

The current Odum School of Ecology graduate student and 2024 James E. Butler Fellow was measuring water quality in the Etowah and Conasauga rivers, part of her role as a research technician for the school’s River Basin Center (RBC). She became enamored with the biodiversity she encountered, from freshwater mussels to fish species like the amber darter. Everything she’d learned about in her college classes now swam and slithered by her in real time. Simultaneously, the threats posed by development, agriculture and industry on rivers and streams became clear and present.

“I was seeing firsthand how humans are impacting the environment,” said Hallmark, who worked at RBC for three years after completing a biology undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech.

Recognizing the direct connections of human action and ecosystem degradation—what Hallmark calls “the human component”—changed everything.

“It was something I was looking for without ever realizing,” she said. And it gave her a reason to pursue ecology and conservation as a profession.

Making connections

As a graduate student working on the Ridges to Rivers project, a regional conservation partnership program (RCPP) led by the Tennessee Aquarium, Hallmark’s research will address the human component directly. She’ll be working with farmers in southeast Tennessee to apply conservation principles to improve water quality.

“Farmers are on the front line of climate change, and they’re the foundation of our society,” Hallmark said. “If we don’t have farmers, we don’t have food.”

Through the program, farmers are being incentivized to use cover crops, establish riparian buffers, manage nutrient inputs, and implement other practices that have been shown to improve freshwater ecosystems around working farms. But Hallmark said the farmers, who primarily raise livestock and plant row crops, have been slow to change their operations.

“There’s a piece of the puzzle missing. I’ll be interviewing [farmers] on their use of conservation information, how they’re accessing it, interpreting it, and employing it,” Hallmark said, but many of them are not implementing changes based on the information.

Finding the missing piece will be worth it. “If we give [farmers] what they need, and meet them where they’re at, we’ll be doing a lot more for conservation,” she said.

Hallmark’s applied research “has the potential to generate actionable insights for conservation practitioners, policymakers and agricultural extension services,” said Sechindra Vallury, assistant professor of ecology, RBC director of policy and Hallmark’s graduate advisor.

By bridging her ecological training with rigorous social science research, “Mackenzi’s work will generate insights into how conservation organizations can more effectively support farmers in making decisions that have ecological and social benefits,” he said.

A quarter life crisis

Hallmark grew up in Florida and spent much of her youth exploring Georgia’s coastal plains. She fell in love with the natural world, especially frogs, and knew the outdoors would always be a big part of her life.

Initially, Hallmark went to film school in Canada. She thought she’d pursue a career making nature documentaries but quickly realized that the entertainment business wasn’t the right fit.

“I say that I had a midlife crisis, even though I was so young,” she said. “I had to ask myself, ‘which way was I going to go?’”

Taking stock, Hallmark assessed what really mattered. The natural world ranked near the top. Wild places were “precious” to her, so out of a sense of stewardship, she switched to biology and ecology. Spending time with amphibians as an undergraduate researcher at Virginia Tech, Hallmark found her place and purpose.

“I saw [ecology] as a way that I could take care of the things I love the most,” she said. “It’s really interesting work. And it’s really important.”

Turning over rocks

Hallmark still feels most at home in the field. On breaks during data collection, she often sits in streams, turns over rocks and marvels at the wonders that reveal themselves.

“Fieldwork to me is a way to reconnect with myself as a kid,” she said. “Those are the moments that I feel the most privileged in this job. I get to go outside and interact with life that most people don’t get to, or don’t even know exists.”

Making more people aware of what’s happening in rivers and streams, and how human choices impact them, is where Hallmark plans to focus her career after graduate school. Vallury said she’s already building the expertise to do so. 

“Her ability to connect human decision-making with ecological outcomes makes her uniquely suited for work at the interface of conservation science and practice,” he said.

In the future, Hallmark hopes to work as a policy advocate who can bridge the gap between data and action. She wants to address conservation issues from multiple angles—to try and reach people in ways that haven’t been tried before, rather than hoping the science falls into the right hands.

“Including more voices and reaching more stakeholders is integral to progressing sustainability initiatives,” Hallmark said.

She may not be able to convince everyone to love frogs as much as she does. But she’s going to try to make a difference.

“I want to be able to see the change that I’m trying to influence in the world,” she said.