If there is one concept that has been reinforced during my time on the Exotic Plant Management crew, it is that invasive plants grow where people go. When we create a new settlement or adventure into an unknown land, we carry with us tiny seeds that germinate and grow. And so, while I was drawn to this internship because I wanted to learn more about plants, what I didn’t anticipate was learning more about people. Much of our work involves surveying places that humans once occupied, as well as land that they continue to use today. What has struck me is standing in a place that was once a part of someone’s life; a part of someone’s story. Looking at an abandoned house can give us a glimpse into a place once full of life and meaning.

A few weeks ago I went to an abandoned homestead near an old copper mine that once belonged to a family that had an infamous battle with the park service. Being on that property and learning the history that had occurred there revealed another layer to the job that I once thought I understood in its entirety; not only am I surveying for plants, but I am also gathering small tidbits of data on humans as well.

Last week I went back to another district of the park, in the towns of McCarthy and Kennecott. Though this was not my first time there, it was my first experience being up close to some of the mines in Kennecott, an abandoned mining town. Kennecott struck me as such an interesting place mostly because of its oddity as an industrial town in the middle of Alaskan wilderness. Further, as an abandoned town, it remains (mostly due to restoration) in the state it once was so many years ago. This place serves as a memory of a very specific and unique time and place that was once shared by so many people.

~Remnants from Kennecott~

While I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between plants and people, rest assured, I have had plenty of time among the plants. A couple of weeks ago, I was able to go to a new region of Alaska, to the coastal region of Yakutat, as well as to Dry Bay in Glacier National Park. The similarity of the ecoregion to PNW was both spectacularly beautiful, as well as a comfort in its likeness to my Oregon/Washington roots. I even got to see my old friend, Mimulus guttatus, for the first time outside of a greenhouse! There were so many other beautiful flowers to be seen, including Fritillaria camschatcensis and Dodecatheon pulchellum, however both were past their flowering time. I could have only imagined these fields with both of them in flower. One of the plants that we definitely saw in flower was Leucanthemum vulgare, a beautiful invasive that we monitor. It is possibly the only invasive that I have slight remorse while removing.

~Yakutat sunset~

~Leucanthemum vulgare~

Though the bulk of our field season is winding down, our team is keeping busy. I will be going on more Elodea surveys in lakes throughout the park later this month, as well teaching a course on plant identification at a culture camp. I am particularly excited for the culture camp, as our preparation for it has brought together many of the themes surrounding people and plants I have encountered this season. People and plants are inseparable entities, and when we learn about one, we inevitably learn more about the other.

-Natalie

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

A glorious transformation of my coffee mug, orchestrated by my field partner.

These five months in Central Oregon strike me as a montage celebrating the Dionysian. The district, especially to the south in our swath of sage grouse habitat, was at first sleepy, cold, blanketed in its last sheet of snow, filled with just green-gray sagebrush rustling in the freezing wind; it soon stirred with little basal starts that my naive self dreamed were potential collections but ultimately were weedy little bur buttercups (Ceratocephala testiculata); and then things exploded into being and colors, yellow asters leading the way and mimicking the sun in their rays, blue pea-shaped lupine shocking the landscape with vibrancy, crimson-orange paintbrush charming even as their roots drilled into the roots of other plants to steal a little water and nutrients here and there. It had been a wetter winter than the last, so it almost seemed like flowers fell over themselves in portraying their luscious petals to their pollinators, and to me, the collector. And just as quickly, they dried, shriveled up, proffered some seed (if we were lucky), then disappeared, many leaving not even a shred of a remnant of their being. It was an explosive affair, and we felt a certain manic excitement when we timed it just right, or were just fortunate enough, to haul in a good batch of seeds. There were times, too, when often-monitored collections just spirited away, and our drive home was far more dejected. Sometimes the flash of flowers were just that, and no seed were to be found nearly at all.

There were celebrations of thunderstorms, which more often than not found me at the top of hillsides; I’d rush to the rig with my seed bag under my shirt, then watch as the rolling clouds and flashes of lightning danced across my vista then away. There were windy days on scapes, watching as the achenes of the invasive Lord Tragopogon dubius (which presents itself in a pappus ball bigger than a softball) took flight in impressive flocks. There were the rowdy roads that had us bouncing about in our rig’s cabs, our seatbelts straining to keep us in the vague radius of our seats.

The stately but invasive Tragopogon.

Between that all, there were the quiet days. Quiet days filled the bulk of our time, but they blur together in memory. The one blended scene is this: the sun is bright, sometimes painfully bright. It was hard to pick out the particular shade of dried plant from the other shade of dried plants with sunglasses on, so we bore with the sun. Even when my field partner and I were working at the same site, we drifted away from each other to maximize the land we covered, so much of my time in the field was alone. My sunbleached senses snagged on the snapping of seed from plants, the clicking of my little metal movie-theater counter, the horseflies insistently orbiting and sometimes biting, the wind drying sweat from our brows – or just as frequently, hijacking a couple of the lighter seeds. Sometimes a cow would challenge us to a game of who could moo louder. Our ears craned for the rattling of snakes and we jumped when we rustled past a plant with seed pods that mimicked the sound.

My down time too was a celebration of the outdoors, since folks can find nearly any outdoor activity they like within a half hour drive from Bend. I found myself climbing and hiking every weekend, even after long weeks in the field. I thought I would stay here after this internship, but alas… community college is cheaper in California.

I’m changing tracks after this internship. As much as I loved the work and the mission for SOS, there are other avenues I’m planning on exploring next. Still, what a wonderful season to end my foray into botany as an occupation. I intend to continue annoying my hiking partners by stopping at every flowering forb I see.

Vi Nguyen, Prineville BLM

Astragalus obscurus… probably. The Hitchcock Astragalus key is as long as it can be cruel.

The ever cheerful Eriophyllum lanatum – “oregon sunshine”

For a while I couldn’t stop whipping out my phone to take a picture of every Lewisia I saw. It was excessive and I see that now.

Headed down Hole in the Rock road today to finish our collection of Sphaeralcea coccinea (scarlet globemallow). Hole in the Rock is a famous dirt road from Escalante all the way down to Lake Powell. It follows the track the Mormon pioneers took from Escalante to the (then) Colorado River. From Hole in the Rock, present day travelers can reach numerous exciting places to explore — Peekaboo and Spooky slot canyons, Coyote and Willow Gulch, Chimney Rock and so many more. There’s also plenty of fun plants to find.

We started out early because it’s monsoon season here; almost every afternoon it pours rain, and when Hole in the Rock is wet, the red clay road turns into a sliding mess akin to ice and snow and slush all mixed together. A few weeks back my co-intern and I tried to get down it to check on our globemallow population…only to slide off the road into a sand due. Good times. We got the truck turned around eventually — I channeled some good old fashion Michigan snow and ice driving skills — but we weren’t too keen to get stuck in the same position again.

After some backtracking and a couple pit stops, we got to our site, finished collecting and then headed off to catch lizards for awhile. We’re working on some baseline species surveys on Grand Staircase, meaning we get to hike across the desert with lizard catching poles (glorified fishing poles) to see what species we can find. We measure, weigh, and photograph all of the lizards we catch, while getting a lot of strange looks from hikers who think we’re crazy people fishing in the desert.

Great Basin collared lizard (Crotaphytus bicinctores) found down Hole in the Rock

Humans are bedazzled by gold and driven to unearth this precious metal. Alaska had the well-known Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1800s, but few people realize that there are still active mining claims. The glory days may be gone, but the living heritage persists. Miners are rather industrious and their equipment powerful. These extractive processes, as one can imagine, have an effect on the hydrology, water quality, plant communities, wildlife, soils, and overall ecology. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has started to employ the Assessment Inventory Monitoring (AIM) program to better understand these impacts and quantify the reclamation progress. AIM was originally developed for BLM grazing lands throughout the western region and are now being adapted for the Alaskan landscape. We received training in Chicken, AK and then completed our first assessments up the Dalton Highway. This past week Brad Casar, Soil Scientist of Homer Soil & Water Conservation District, fellow CLM Intern Sam Snodgrass, and I went into the White Mountains to examine gold mine reclamation sites in varying stages. Sam and I focused on the vegetation assessments using the point-line intercept method to determine cover and species diversity. It was a productive and full week with some of our own golden moments. We feasted on wild berries, viewed bumble bees lapping up sugar excretions from aphids, and fell asleep to the sound of a waterfall.

A water color inspired by mountain experiences.

So many wild berries including this blueberry plump and juicy for the picking!

Active mining area with remnant structures from older claims

Conducting AIM across this landscape of early seral species.

A mosquito prepared Sam Snodgrass amidst Alaska Rhubarb, Polygonum alaskanum, going to seed.

A scenic outhouse on one of the mining claims.

Fellow CLM Intern Sam Snodgrass presenting two bouquets of flower to a miner, one highlighting native forbs and one to discourage non-native invasive plants.

Sphagnum moss with sporophytes.

A bumble bee lapping up the sugary excretions of the aphids.

The last three weeks have been filled by looking for grasses. The grasses we have been looking for are Orcuttia tenuis and Tuctoria greenei, both species are listed as federally endangered. These species exist in areas known as Vernal Pools. Vernal Pools are wetlands which only have water in them seasonally, as in winter or spring, and then become dry during the summer. They form in depressions, which have no access to an inflow of water or groundwater generally.

We have been looking for these grasses in the region known as the Gerber Block, which is just a bit southeast from Klamath Falls, OR, and also extends into California.  The Gerber Block has many different kinds of vernal pools and also many associated species of plants which also grow with the grasses. Surprisingly, Orcuttia tenuis has been found on the California side of the GB, but have somehow been undetected on the Oregon side. This is the main reason that these surveys are needing to be conducted is because we are not sure if it has just not been looked very hard for in Oregon, or if it really does not occur in the state. However, because the state line is completely arbitrary, there is not really a good reason the grasses should not exist in Oregon, being that the habitat is the same.

So, the surveys being conducted are following a previous study performed in 2010 and 2011, which covered a good chunk of the block and contained 118 different sites of various vernal pool habitats; from intermittent streams, to vernal meadows, actual vernal pools, and stock ponds. The surveys are only presence/ absence of either grass species and also we were helping BLM survey for a species of mint, Pogogyne floribunda, and Disappearing Monkeyflower, Mimulus evanescens.

We have now completed the surveys, and we did not find either species of grass. We were able to survey 74 of the 118 sites. We tried to hit the spots which were considered “better” habitat, and also we tried to hit the spots which had the most relevant species, which would be in areas where ORTE is currently found.

It was definitely an interesting couple of weeks looking for mysterious species of grasses, and I was really pretty happy that in the last week and a half the temperature starting getting to a more enjoyable level for surveying. I believe that these were the last plant surveys of the summer, and now onto more fishy days 🙂

We are well into the swing of things here in Meeker. My feet are blistered from hiking (both for work and personal enjoyment), my pants have acquired permanent layers of dirt, and I have more freckles than I could possibly think to count. It’s turning out to be a very productive and fun field season. Fortunately, the juniper gnats have died down for the season, making some of our field days far more tolerable.

My coworker and fellow CLM intern, Vanesa, enjoying the view on a hike to our plot.

A collared lizard struttin’ its stuff

Time is truly flying by this season. I feel I can measure how long I’ve been here by how many plants I recognize when doing our vegetation monitoring. Every week, I recognize more and more specimens, which is a very empowering feeling. I like the idea of inching closer to truly understanding a place and all the diverse components that make up a functioning ecosystem. As the season wears on, it becomes more difficult to identify many annual plants, as many tend to dry out in the heat. And naturally, it is difficult to identify plants without diagnostic characteristics like flowers. Luckily, our mentor is a near-expert on the flora of Colorado, making it easy to learn. Of course, some days we observe aspects of dysfunction, like monocultures of the highly invasive cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum). Other invasive species like Alyssum desertorum and Lepidium perfoliatum are also extremely abundant on BLM land. Although our team does not do any work relating to eradicating or managing invasive species, it is my hope that the data we collect can help derive management plans for areas that are overrun by invasive annuals.

A particularly beautiful Wyoming sage plot in Dinosaur National Monument.

A few highlights from this last month include seeing a flock on approximately 100 Pinyon Jays whilst on a grueling hike from our plot. One day we were able to go out in the field with a stream assessment crew to do aquatic invertebrate sampling. We also had the privilege of taking a riparian plant identification class this past week, taught by two highly knowledgeable botanists from Colorado State University. Although we predominately work in sagebrush and Pinyon-Juniper ecosystems, it was exciting to learn many riparian and wetland plants in Colorado, as wetlands are of the utmost importance for the overall health of the ecosystem.

Cheers,

Coryna Hebert

BLM, Meeker, CO

July hit us with a collection frenzy.

Within a couple weeks, the unusually cool, wet spring I enjoyed my first month here evaporated into a blazing hot summer, and with it, our collection timetable. We had expected many species to set seed later; instead, they ripened on double-time. Just another reminder that Mama Nature isn’t interested in sticking to our silly human schedule.

For five weeks, we worked around the clock, trying desperately to keep up. Hot spells, dry winds, and a general lack of predictability kept me on our toes, continually visiting sites, always with a paper bag in hand in case today was the day. Fortunately for me, I now had help. On July 1, my new partner, Justyna, rode into town. With twice as many hands at work, our original goal of 25 collections seemed manageable again.

Time passes quickly when you have a lot on your plate, and as quickly as it began, our main project is now wrapping up. We are now turning our attention to other things, some botany-focused, some not. I’m looking forward to gaining new experiences as the summer wraps up!

It’s getting to be fire season in northern California! This past week I saw the first big fire plume I’ve ever seen burning in the field office. The rhythmic patterns of four work days and three day weekends seem as cyclical as the morning to evening cycles between cool, hot and cool again. Over the past month and a half since I last wrote I have been bounced along more BLM dirt “roads,” collected seed from native plants, visited a fair number of stock ponds, measured a bunch of juniper trees, picked a lot of cheat seeds from my boot laces, lost some rubber on my boot soles to the basaltic rock, learned a handful of monitoring codes for plants, and done a fair amount of zooming in, out and panning on the Trimble Juno SB. I’ve almost used my first bottle of sunscreen I started the summer with. My tan lines have deepened, as has my dislike for juniper. We have also visited a few fire lookouts (my favorite of which was on a weekend trip to Mt. Harkness in Lassen national forest), determined our 14 in DBH arm grip, and marked a fair number of cut trees on BLM stands. We still do not have door access or our own computers to work on in the office, but I am hopeful that this might happen before we leave. Who knows though, it might not.

Going out with Clif, the forester, in the trees is one of our favorite work activities. Being in the cooler air with the shade is a relief from the blazing heat and sun, but there are also a lot of beautiful pinecones. Marking trees is in fact, as Clif says, more of an art form than a science. We mark for cut trees over 14 inches DBH based on spacing, tree form (no ramiform branches!), and ladder fuels. Most of the lots we are marking will probably be cut in 2017. We won’t be around to see the job get done, but it is satisfying knowing that the forest will be healthier and safer after it is thinned. We all enjoyed the first time we went out with Clif so much that we joked about all applying to forestry school together at the University of Nevada Reno.

We have started trying to think about some projects that we might like to start individually. I am particularly interested in the issue with juniper trees because of their importance in the ecological narrative of most of the ELFO land. As I mentioned before, juniper trees have expanded their range in the past 100 years as forest fire was limited. Once juniper trees grow older and become more artichoke shaped, they shade out all plants underneath them, leading to bare ground so no sage brush or native bunch grasses can grow. They also use a lot of water, which stresses other plants. There is really nothing that great about them, and they will definitely be part of the picture moving forward for this field office. I am interested to know how the aerial/ spectral mapping of junipers can help the BLM deal with their presence. We are interested in trying to help with some hand removal of small trees, since this is really the only reasonable method for controlling juniper at this point. It would be a pretty satisfying feeling to remove some of those little trees before they grow into monsters.

We have also been working on sage grouse forb inventorying, though at this point everything is dead so most of our plant ID work could be aptly described as “forensic botany.” The sage grouse forb inventory line point intercept counts were supposed to be done in May to June, but we are just getting started on them now and I see a fair number more in our future. We do these plots mostly for the range technicians at spring locations. We visited a spring off of Horse Lake road that has to have been one of the most upsetting things I have seen on the land while I have been here. Some springs are fenced off while water is piped to troughs on the other side of the fence, which protects the spring from destruction by cows. Unfortunately, this spring had not been fenced and the whole spring and green way, where riparian forbs should be growing, had been completely demolished by cow traffic. There was just a gurgle of murky, slimy water and a few tufts of green grass where the cows hadn’t trampled it too much.

It is in these instance that I am reminded of the scale and differences in the western landscapes, as well as the limitations on what we as people, and of course smaller organizations like the BLM, can do. It’s a lot of work first of all (I still don’t understand how they get big machinery out here to bulldoze reservoirs and move large troughs) but there is just so much land. It’s not possible to ensure that everything is taken care of and preserved. I do wonder how many springs on BLM land are in this condition, which unfortunately is likely beyond restoration. It is so surprising to come around the corner on a two track and see something so unnatural. It is sad.

We have successfully collected from Elymus elimoides (squirreltail), Poa secunda (sandberg bluegrass), Leymus cinerus (great basin wild rye), and Cercocarpus ledifolius (mountain mahogany). Squirrel tail has to be one of my favorite grasses to collect. It’s easy to pull the bottle brush seeds off of the plant and feel satisfied with a large bag of fluff. We originally thought it would be really fun to collect mountain mahogany, but then we discovered how painstaking it is to collect. The trees themselves are beautiful when the seed is ready to collect, the awns on the seeds are 2 to 3 inches long and curly. The awns also have a million small minute hairs that fly off and stick on everything when you pick up the seeds or shake the branches. The awns look fun and fuzzy, but the hairs make your skin itch like crazy, and if you have any respiratory issues like Jocelyn, I think they make it so that you can’t breath. We probably have to collect mountain mahogany again, so that will be less exciting than it was the first time.

A few weeks ago the state botanist of California and a man from the state office in Nevada came to tour around some sites of our field office. We toured with them, visiting a site off of Smoke Creek road where sagebrush seedlings had been planted. Unfortunately most of them had died, probably due to the fact that they really only spread by seed, and that the contraction and expansion of the soil in this area, as the man from the Nevada office noted, would have probably broken their roots. It is easier to dig in this soil though. They are interested in creating green belts with plants that stay greener longer along barriers to fire like the road. This is an area where the Rush fire burned in 2012. One of the questions is which plants should be used. Solely natives or non-natives if they stay green longer? The second site we visited was at Ramhorn. The BLM has a 14 day campground here off of 395. This is a successful site that has been seeded. Native plants and shrubs have re-grown here post-Rush fire. Seeing this sight brightened their moods a bit and we enjoyed lunch at a look out towards Observation peak at the top of the road.

I finally saw a rattlesnake out on Horse Lake road the other week. It was sunning itself on the road in the morning and thankfully Julie saw it in time so we didn’t run it over. We hopped out of the truck and grabbed a few pictures, but the snake wasn’t interested in rattling so it slithered away without giving us any entertainment. While we were out driving near Fredonyer with Clif, the forester, we saw a really fluffy baby owl. Dalton, a seasonal range technician, and I saw a huge thistle while visiting a stock pond the other week. It is hard to get excited to see thistles, but this thistle was at least five feet tall, probably taller, and about 5 or more feet wide so it honestly looked like a cactus. Unfortunately the Susanville fair had just ended, otherwise we probably could have won a prize or something. I have yet to see a mountain lion (Jillian saw one!) or a marijuana garden. The most magical and exciting wildlife sighting was when Jesslie, Christian (wildlife biologist), and I saw 19 sage grouse while we were leaving a water right (that we had seen a not so pleasant, but nonetheless quite interesting and relatively fresh, but eaten and dead cow at). The sage grouse were a complete surprise as they flew out of the sagebrush in groups of 3 to 4 as we kept walking along the path.

It’s hard to give a complete update about how things have been going without talking about the other 3 days of the week. Susanville is not a destination of any kind, but it has its benefits in that there are some pretty amazing places within a 5 hour radius. Thus far, every weekend has consisted of some great exploring and adventuring to Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Truckee, Echo Lake, Juniper Lake, Lassen National Park, Greenville, Fort Bragg, Mendocino, and Reno. There is so much to see here in the western United States and we are all really happy to be making the most of it with our trips so far and the ones we have planned.

Unfortunately I had taken the time to write a pretty thorough and detailed blog post earlier that was probably two to three times as long as this, but it was accidentally deleted. I don’t think I will be able to re-create the same type of entry again, but I hope this gives you an idea of what life in Susanville has been like since my initial post. We’re excited to go out with an archaeology mapping crew from Chico this week on the Skedaddle mountains. Hopefully the interns from Alturas will have a chance to come visit the ELFO office later in August. We are nocking down the number of juniper and water right points that are done. I’m not sure how many more acres of trees need to be marked. As exciting as the summer has been, I think we are also really looking forward to those cooler, clear autumn days.

Alia

BLM Eagle Lake Field Office

Susanville, CA

Since the majority of what we’ve been doing is office work that is not terribly exciting to write (or read) about, I am devoting this blog post to our field day today. I am also devoting this blog to my fellow intern/life friend Lillie, and the title is in reference to her favorite song/catchphrase.

The sweet sounds of Drake’s “Views” played in our ears for the millionth time (Pennington, 2016). We drove out to the site that would be our last FRGE site revisit. Our mission: to determine the tree and shrub cover and plant association at said site. Today was supposed to be cooler, in the 80s, unlike most of the ninety-something degree days we’ve been having. We parked off the site of the road, slathered on sunscreen, and set off. The route we were taking put us close to private land at times, and at one point early on, some folks nearby were absolutely blasting Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Somewhat bizarre, but very appreciated.

As we bushwhacked through buckbrush and manzanita, we stopped to smell the spicy celery aroma of Lomatium triternatum seeds.

The ground has turned mostly brown, the madrone bark is peeling to reveal its true colors, and the poison oak is starting to turn shades of red, yellow, or pink.

The hike to the site feels familiar (we have indeed done it not too long ago), but not so familiar that we aren’t constantly checking our GPSs. Midway through the hike, we came across a very visible deer blind that any deer would surely notice. Further on we found some scattered lawn chairs.

Even further on, what looked like an abandoned truck on BLM land that had the registration on the front seat.

Sometimes we find weird stuff. Sometimes we do weird stuff with the normal stuff we find. Like what Lillie did to this poor bunch of Ponderosa pine needles.

At the site itself we found the skeletons of FRGE past, with seeds inside that likely would not create more FRGE (since it’s more of an asexual reproducer).

Going back to an old FRGE site gave us nostalgia for hiking around in an area we have only come to know in the past few months. Every field day is looked back upon with sentimentality. Even the most challenging days hold treasured memories.

After hiking back to the truck, two sheepish doggies greeted us and let us give them pets. We drove back to the office with the realization that days like today would not happen again this field season. But at least we’ll be in Fort Lauderdale for the ESA Conference next week (!!!).

Kiki, Grants Pass Interagency Office