Even during a pandemic, opting to stay near campus as he finishes his next-to-last semester at the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Cody Scarborough manages to keep his feet in the country. Originally from the small enclave of Lake Park in South Georgia, Scarborough found himself riding out the COVID-19 crisis in Hull, a rural town about 15 minutes away from UGA. It makes sense, though, for this wildlife major to stay ensconced in the country. It’s where he’s like to see himself, no matter where he ends up after graduation. “Ideally, I’d like to end up out west for graduate school and get a master’s or Ph.D. in wildlife behavior or habitat management,” he says. “You never really know how things are going to turn up.” Scarborough is among Warnell’s Outstanding Seniors for 2020, selected by his peers in the UGA chapter of The Wildlife Society and his classmates in the wildlife sciences program. Growing up in South Georgia, Scarborough always enjoyed the outdoors. Hunting and fishing were a way of life—still are, really. His father graduated from Warnell in 1988 with a forestry degree, and growing up on a farm, Scarborough’s life and education revolved around forestry and agriculture. But Scarborough realized early on that wildlife allowed him to keep a foot in both worlds. In high school, he says, whenever he was assigned to write a paper, his topics always gravitated toward wildlife. He knocked out his core classes near home and then transferred to the Watkinsville campus of the University of North Georgia. From there, he transferred to UGA and directly into Warnell’s professional program for wildlife sciences. This meant that, as soon as he came to UGA, he was able to dive right into Warnell’s labs and hands-on classes—something that he fully embraced. Labs, he says, were a game-changer. He still recalls in detail his first class, Field Measurements, where students got to work with equipment that’s used by professionals in the field. “You can sit in a lecture and learn things, get textbook knowledge, but without labs, you’re never really going to learn,” he says. “That and just, you’re in classes with people who, for the most part, share the same passions as you. In my wildlife classes, most everybody in there has something to do with wildlife, so you connect with your peers.” After he graduates this fall, Scarborough says he would love to stay connected to both research and management. Conserving our resources for future generations is imperative, he says, and game species—the animals he’s most interested in working with and managing—play a key role in that. “The thing with game management is, you have to be able to manage wildlife species in one way or another,” he says. “We’re managing it so it’s there for future generations; mainly, conservation of natural resources is what it all comes back to.”
