Work at the fish evaluation station came to an early close at the beginning of September. The number of suckers being caught at the station made a dramatic decrease, so it was decided to stop our efforts. The peak in their numbers must have happened earlier in the season. Now we’ve begun our final reports on the project, with mine focusing on the recirculation aspect.

Research down at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge has also continued with water quality measurements, trapping of predator fish, and other predator surveys. So far we’ve mainly caught fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) and Sacramento perch (Archoplites interruptus).  These pose threats to suckers by either being predators to young fish or competitors. These fish end up in the ponds from the water being supplied from other sources, such as Tule Lake. We did get a surprise in our traps, two suckers.  They were placed in the ponds last winter from salvage operations. It was exciting to see that they had survived.  Both still had their PIT tags, making them easy to identify. Some larval suckers that were raised in captivity were placed in net pens down at the ponds as well. These will serve as experimental fish and answer questions such as growth rates and parasite loads. While visiting the ponds we also continued trapping at  Tule Lake for suckers released last year.

One of the suckers caught at the LKNWR ponds.

At the beginning of September I was able to get some time off to travel up to Olympic National Park for a week. There I got the opportunity to volunteer for the park on their Olympic marmot surveys.

Moose Lake

The Olympic marmot (Marmota olympus) is endemic to the park. They inhabit isolated sub-alpine and alpine meadows, or on montane scree slopes. They are a burrowing species and live in colonies. Spending most of their lives in hibernation, from about September to May. While hiking, you’re most likely to hear them “whistle,” which is actually more of a scream and is a warning to other marmots about predators. The population has suffered a huge decline, which has since stabilized but is still of concern. The project was started in 2010 and aimed to estimate population numbers. This was the last year of surveying before the data collected will be accessed by the parks wildlife biologist. Hopefully this data will reveal whether management actions might be necessary.

Marmot laying out and relaxing.

In order to survey we had to backpack into a remote part of the park and setup base camp. Our camp was at Moose Lake (even though there are no moose to be found in the park) in the Grand Valley just below Grand Pass.  From there our day hikes traversed most of the valley and parts on the other side of the ridges. Some of the surveys required off trail hiking on some steep slopes.  Marmots sure don’t make it easy to get to their burrows.  Overall it was a fantastic trip!

Base camp.

A view from Grand Pass.

Marmot!

Greetings again from the North Carolina Botanical Garden!  Actually, greetings from the field on the Southeastern Coastal Plain, where my crew has been spending 95% of our time.  The last time I wrote, we were waiting for a lot of our target species to develop mature seed.  That time has passed!   It’s hard to believe, but Autumn is already here, and we are staying very busy with our rounds of seed collections in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland’s coastal plain areas.  Our crew of four has split into two teams in order to cover the most ground possible.  My teammate, Lauren, and I have decided to take on a schedule starting in September where we work 8 ten-hour days in a row, and then take off 6 days in between.  This schedule is intense, but rewarding, because it gives us enough time to really cover a lot of ground and make a ton of collections in a week, and then have a nice long chunk of off-time at home before doing it all over again.  Because we do a lot of driving across a three-state range, it makes the 6-ish hour drive to Maryland and some parts of Virginia worth it, and we don’t feel like we have to turn around and drive right back immediately.

My crew has now obtained permits and visited over 75 sites in our range.  By the end of the season, that number will top 100.  It is interesting to see that the parcels of land in conservation are much, much smaller and spread out here on the East Coast than what I observed while living out West.  Instead of working on one or two enormous tracts of Forest Service or BLM land, we have been contacting and scouting dozens of National Wildlife Refuges (managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service), The Nature Conservancy Preserves, State Parks, County parks, and various land trusts.  Some of my favorite sites we have visited have been the National Wildlife Refuges.  These sites tend to be a bit larger, allowing for a diversity of micro-climates and habitats, which seems to provide more continuity for the plant and animal species that make their homes there.  In addition, these Refuges tend to have some spectacularly beautiful views!

A view from shore at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia

Salt flats at Chincoteague Island National Wildlife Refuge

An advancing storm over Chesapeake Bay as seen from Eastern Shore National Wildlife Refuge. Luckily, we were done with work for the day!

Another interesting thing about these conservation lands in the East is their proximity to developed, urban landscapes.  Occoquan Bay NWR, which has become one of our favorite sites, is only minutes from the urban sprawl that extends out of Washington D.C.  While we are there, the hubbub and traffic (OH, the traffic!) is far from our thoughts as we listen to the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore.  One of our recent collections at this site was Strophostyles helvola, annual sand-bean, or wooly-bean, a cute little viney legume that pops open its pods and hurtles the seed every which way when mature.  Using a bag with a wide opening helps while collecting this little guy!

Strophostyles helvola, with an immature fruit

As September breezes by, the onslaught of hunting season is upon us as well.  When considering that turkey, deer, and bear hunting is allowed on National Wildlife Refuges, one may wonder if the term “refuge” is really appropriate.  I’m sure this is one of the main reasons these Refuges were set up, though, and how they continue to maintain funding.  I know the managers of the lands are doing their best to keep balanced populations on their properties, especially considering how close most of them are to developed areas.  They must be doing something right, because the list of wildlife we have seen while working this season includes bear, deer, bald eagles, osprey, groundhogs, beaver, snakes, lizards, and even an alligator!  This doesn’t even include the countless species of smaller birds or the numerous pods of dolphins we’ve spotted while working along the coast.

Although all the driving and nights in hotels can become a bit of a grind, thinking of all these experiences helps me realize just how lucky I am to have such a fabulous job.  While most of the people of Washington D.C. or Raleigh might think of nature as something “other,” not a part of their everyday environment, I have the privilege to walk within it every day, and witness its everyday moments of radiance and tranquility.  I get to behold the glorious skies and beautiful blooms of her shining moments, and the stinking muck and terrifying venom of her darker side.  And all of these things help to make me who I am, someone a bit outside the norm of this “civilized” society, perhaps, but also one who is in touch with the pulse of nature and the rhythm of the seasons.  I’ll leave it on that note.  Until next time, peace outside!

Emily Driskill

SOS East: North Carolina Botanical Garden

One of the many projects we have going (while we wait for fall seeds to mature) is to find an adequate site to apply soil microbes for the biocontrol of cheatgrass. Did you know there is a microbial control of cheatgrass and other winter annual grasses? It’s pretty neat. Research scientists from Washington State University and USDA-ARS have painstakingly isolated the bacteria Pseudomonas from the roots of yellowing winter wheat. This bacteria produces a toxin that targeted the winter cultivar, which they then (through a long process) applied to a few of the invasive winter annuals that plague the arid west. The cost per acre is equivalent to the lower price end of herbicides, and can be delivered by spraying or coated on (wanted) perennial seeds. They are working with many agencies to put this method into widespread practice.

But in the meantime…

Cheatgrass. It’s everywhere! Why not use it to our advantage? I’ve noticed its natural tendency for its seeds to work their way into everything, so I thought, “Heck, just go with it.”

To make all-natural, (somewhat) organically grown socks:

1) Go to work. Preferably fire monitoring at the ol’ Spring fire, which was not seeded.

2) Let it in. Roll your pant ends up once or twice, just enough to expose your ankles. If your pants are a little on the short side, like mine, you can skip this step.

3) Walk. And walk and walk and walk. It’s that easy! You can just walk to your site, and continue your daily work routine. If you want to go the extra mile though, then do so (probably on your lunch break). Don’t worry about taking off your shoes to get the cheatgrass seeds all the way to the toe of the socks. They’ll get there, trust me.

4) Admire the tenacity of cheatgrass. It really is everywhere, isn’t it?

5) Launder. You might think this would remove the seeds, but it actually helps them weave deeper into the fibers. Make sure to turn your socks inside out! Wash and dry. Cheatgrass likes high heat, and your fancy wool socks don’t, so do that.

6) Re-evaluate. Stop for a second and think about what you really want.

6a) If you’re still thinking “WOAH, cheatgrass socks! What a great concept!”, then repeat steps 1-5. Eventually, your sock fibers will be entirely replaced by cheatgrass seeds, and you will have killer calluses covering your feet.

 6b) If you’re starting to miss your old, soft socks that didn’t constantly poke your poor feet, you might want to think about reversing the process. This will take 1-3 hours and must be done by hand with excellent lighting. Good luck!

Sincerely,

orps

Carson City BLM

Well, it’s already the 22nd of September, and we are wrapping things up here in Boise, Idaho.  The pressed specimens need to be affixed to their respective pieces of paper, and the labels need to be typed, printed, and glued in place nicely.  In addition to this exhilarating office task, we have been entering, analyzing, and organizing the data required for a GIS layer that will have points for every Habitat Assessment Framework (HAF) transect for our field office that has been entered into our Access database since the beginning of time.  This has proven to be a bit tedious, but rewarding once we looked at the (almost) complete Excel file ready to be converted to a practical, all-encompassing GIS layer.  Well that sure was boring; let’s look at some pictures of some stuff  that relates to the bad title that only fans of The Decemberists will (maybe) understand.  Here are some hazards that we have faced with poise and bravery throughout our rather varied internship:

Watch out for those arm spikes!!! (not to mention the invasive medusahead!)

Always make sure to take a drink of water before you start looking similar to this guy.

Always make your best effort to avoid getting run-over….this poor guy didn’t fare quite so well in the rather dangerous parking lot at our office.

That’s a fairly large rattlesnake.

That’s a scary dog.

That’s a smaller rattlesnake hiding under an Arrowleaf balsamroot only making him(or her)self known by rattling.

Now don’t sell this guy short…just think how hazardous it would be to step on this guy with no shoes on. OUCH.

…and those, my friends, are The Hazards of Work as presented by The Septemberists.

Thanks for reading and until next(the final) time.

Dan King

Four Rivers Field Office – BLM – Boise, ID

Fall is here in the Southeast, and some new seeds have ripened! Over the past few weeks, we’ve been collecting from a few plants that we have not seen ready thus far. One in particular that we are most excited about is our Rhexia mariana collection. We’ve seen this pesky Rhexia in just about every preserve and park we’ve visited, but until now it has not been ready. Luckily, we found some at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, and our long wait to collect came to an end.

Rhexia mariana flower

Rhexia mariana seed capsules. They look like little vases.

We also recently made our first collections of Polygonum sagittatum and Rosa palustris. Polygonum sagittatum has quite aptly received the common name of “arrowleaf tearthumb”, because of its prickly, recurved spines. Alongside the thorny Rosa palustris, both of these collections were a bit challenging at times. We had to be sure not to tear our thumbs.

Polygonum sagittatum

Rosa palustris. Look at those thorns.

Finally, we were able to make two collections of Aralia spinosa (which is also laden with spines along its stem and leaves!). Both collections were a lot of fun. It is easy to spot ripe Aralia spinosa by its bright maroon inflorescence. This made it easy for us to find as we drove throughout Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and Vandell Preserve at Cumberland Marsh.

Aralia spinosa with ripe, maroon inflorescences.

Dark purple to black A. spinosa berries.

– Maggie Heraty

North Carolina Botanical Garden CLM Intern

Well, my internship has drawn to a close. It has been an immense pleasure to be able to spend the greater portion of five months in the field. The opportunities that avail themselves when living in the rural west are incredible.

I’m pretty happy with the work I was involved with. I think SOS is an awesome program, and I’ll be interested to see how it develops in the next decade. I’m very proud of the accessions I was able to add to their collections-and doing so was a very rewarding experience. I was able to make 24 collections; but they are sorely lacking in some vouchers and pictures-of the original 30 plants I took vouchers from and monitored the progression of only a handful were able to be collected-but opportunity can be found in any parched, scorched, ravine in the steppe, again…and again… I spent a bit of my spare time studying genetics, plant demography, plant communities, and reading other assorted things to help guide my collection techniques and choose/prioritize plants; I think that this was an incredible way to study this sort of material.  I’m also really happy to be able to feel like I’ve got a really good feel for the sage steppe flora.

sitting in the snowfall.

I was enthralled to be in a ‘seasonal town’. For the last few years I’ve just been flat broke, that means only like 5-10 hikes a year. Having a job and basically already being in the mountains changed that! I’ve done a lot of the best hiking of my life this year. I still botanized a lot in my spare time too. Highlights looking back were: I went to this canyon (Swakane) to learn most of my sage-steppe plants early in the season, I recently learnt that the gentleman who wrote our flora (PNW-Hitchcock) use to do study weekends out there for decades with his friends. Another highlight were the endemic plants of the Wenatchee mountains. I think I saw about 20 endemics there this year- most of these rank in my (mental) top ‘most aesthetically appealing plants’ top 100. A final highlight was spending a lot of time in the sub-alpine and alpine and becoming familiar with those plant communities too. These are two groups of plants that I had no experience with until this year; and I’m very happy to now feel comfortable with my knowledge of the alpine, sub-alpine, east side forests, and sage-steppe areas of the PNW.

learn to ID dead things!

So I’ve learnt a lot about: plant ecology, orienteering, navigating, scheduling, planning, paperwork  (!),  dealing with people, keying a handful of new families, genetics, and monitoring. I’ve also cemented a lot of undergraduate knowledge that I would have probably ended up forgetting in a few years! I feel like a much more competent field worker now than I did five months ago, but I also still think I can grow significantly before pursuing formal instruction again.

So how does someone follow up something like this?

Well, easily discernible from the blogs is that most folks go to graduate school, right on! However, I’m not doing that, I’m going back to the analytical chemistry lab I work in as a phytochemist. I’m very excited to be able to reflect upon many of the interesting chemicals and their distributions throughout the steppe flora as I’m back at the bench. I’m also excited to hike the West cascades and Olympics for another year. I’ve also resolved to earn another bachelors as a part time student (I work in my old college town); this time in Plant Ecology (to supplement my B.S. in Plant Biology). I see how having a wider framework can be valuable for interpreting the natural world, and how a enhanced skill set can be an asset for various projects.

Thanks for opportunity Krissa, Rebecca & Molly.

SMILES

hey Justin, the fifth stratovolcano!

“And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay
And night comes so quiet, it’s close on the heels of the day”

After writing a lot of generalized blog posts that summarized my work and travels, I decided to dedicate a post to America’s favorite ungulate- the cow!

Dramatic cow photo. Such mystery, so aloof…what are they thinking about?

Every day I encounter hundreds of cows to, from, and during work. We drive by packed dairies carpeted by manure and spotted with black and white heifers during our commute. But mostly we encounter free-range beef cattle on BLM lands at work. When we see the cattle they are usually either crowded at watering areas or in repose among the sagebrush and grasses. They also play chicken with the truck, giving you the blankest, emptiest cow stares until the truck is literally inches away and they bolt and scatter.

Usually the cattle are well-fed and calm, with lots of clumsy and chubby calves that gallop around, always less than a year from being full-grown and ready to have their own calves that will replace them after slaughter. There are also the occasional unlucky individuals that get separated from the herd. It’s usually a lame bull, a skinny cow, or a fatigued calf.

A lot of cows.

We’ve also become experts at spotting sun-bleached cow bones from our truck and our hikes to our monitoring sites. We’ve even collected a few choice bones for our balcony museum of dead things (several cow bones and skulls, a dog skull, and a coyote skull)

But the constant exposure to these ungulates is starting to get to me. Sometimes I’ll spot some cows on the slope of an extremely steep mountainside or floundering in the dust of a veritable desert and just laugh. I know they’re deceptively surefooted and extremely self-sufficient (I mean, they turn wimpy grass into BURGERS), but most of the time they just look completely lost or out of place.

We’ve also encountered a couple calf-dumping sites which, as you can imagine, are considered bio-hazards. About a month ago we spotted four dead calves decomposing next to a trailer. As we drove past, two herding dogs came out of nowhere and chased our pick-up. It was a little creepy. We’ve been told that sometimes dairy farmers will dump their dead calves on BLM land as a show of hostility that stems from a dairy vs. beef ‘beef’ that has grown in recent years. We spent a lot of time at that particular allotment, which has gained some infamy at our field office for having less than desirable grazing, habitat potential, or diversity in some pastures.

That isn’t to say that this is representative or typical for our field office’s lands. On the contrary, we have an enormous range of different ecosystems from lush and green mountainsides covered in Douglas firs and snowberry to your classic sagebrush steppes, and of course, a few cheat-grass dominated sites.  And it’s rare to see any sick cows. But after encountering thousands of of beefy bovine and a fair amount of areas nearly desecrated by grazing, drought, or erosion, I wanted to learn more about the other less obvious implications of cattle grazing.

The last Habitat Assessment Framework site we did at Muldoon Canyon

I’m from Florida, which has almost 1 million head of cattle that supplies $2 billion of our state’s economy. Historically, we are the first state to have large-scale cattle ranches. At the moment, the majority of the beef produced in Florida is shipped elsewhere, like Oklahoma or Texas, due to there only being one industrial-sized slaughterhouse located in Florida (Florida Beef Council).

A few Floridian cows hanging out under the palm trees at my friend’s family ranch in Loxahatchee.

This is in stark contrast to Idaho’s beef industry, which caters its own products within the state and has more than double the amount of cattle in Florida. The profits from Idaho’s beef industry are only surpassed by that of Idaho’s dairy industry. Despite having gigantic corporate operation headquarters, the majority of the cattle in Idaho are raised on privately owned feedlots and ranches. More than 2/3rds of the state’s lands are owned by state and federal government, which means most cattle spend a portion of their lives on public rangelands (Idaho Beef Council). They’re a pretty big deal out west, and the BLM grants 18,000 permits and leases for ranchers and  puts aside 155 million acres for grazing.

Cows are arguably the most important domesticated animal that has ever existed and the “second most influential mammal in North America” (you can probably guess who’s number one). Some consider cows to be the oldest form of wealth and today is one of the most resource-intensive forms of agriculture (Cowed). We use 25% of the world’s land to graze cattle. It costs 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef and producing one pound of grain-fed beef has the equivalent ecological footprint of burning one gallon of gasoline (Rise & Fall of Cattle Culture). These gentle giants are as tasty as they are costly.

Our obsession with the ungulate can be traced back to humanity’s first attempt at domestication 10,500 years ago. We started with 80 of the first domesticated cows from Turkey, which grew to between 1.3-1.5 billion cows worldwide (UCL). The effects of this milestone has altered our landscapes and resources. It started as a symbiotic relationship where cows converted grasses into food, labor, and fertilizer, and we provided them with water and protection from predators (Cowed). However, taking into account global warming, declining soil quality, contamination of our water systems, the spread of invasive species, heart disease, erosion, and even wildfires– the symbiosis is equivocal at best.

Drill-seeded crested wheatgrass

On the other hand, cows are a celebrated resource- a seemingly endless supply of hamburgers, steak, cheese, milk, ice cream, fertilizer, leather etc. Our obsession with cows is evident in our favorite foods as well as scientific research. Cows are the only animal to have their entire genome mapped (and share 80% of their genes with humans). They also played a crucial role in settling the west. As the demand for beef grew, so did the need to expand westward in the 1900s (Humane Society). As a result, cattle culture is completely ingrained here in Idaho. There’s a new rodeo in town every other week, a surplus of western wear outlets, and trucks with unfathomably long trailers absolutely stuffed with bright yellow hay, ready to be munched on by dairy cows.

Most of the work we’re assigned (directly and indirectly) is a response to these animals’ existence and their profound effects on the environment. We monitor vegetation at long-term trend sites to gather vegetation data on pastures that will be used to inform allotment management plans and we perform grazing reintroduction surveys to determine when and if pastures can be grazed after a wildfire occurs.

These grazing reintroduction studies are conducted a few years (usually 2-3) after a fire has occurred and restoration efforts have begun. Some sites are naturally regenerated while others that require more intensive management are drill-seeded. Data on species type, count, and how established the root systems of the grasses are collected to determine the health of the pasture and when cattle or sheep can be reintroduced.

A grazing reintroduction monitoring site that burned about 3 years ago. The vegetation that followed was naturally regenerated and surveyed to determine when permittees can let their cattle graze in these pastures again.

We frequently encounter cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) during our monitoring. Cheatgrass is an invasive species that thrives in fire-prone ecosystems and is also an incredibly flammable fuel source. They’re also prolific reproducers, peaking at 10,000 seeds for every square meter of established cheatgrass and are expert competitors when stacked against most native flora (Greenwire). The Fish and Wildlife Service predicts that “in 30 years we may have five times more cheatgrass dominated areas in the Great Basin than we have today”. Between 2012-2014, 3.7 million acres of suitable sage grouse habitat went up in flames– and that number is rapidly increasing after this year’s sporadic incendiary fire events, like the Pooping Cyclist Fire in Boise (National Interagency Fire Center).

To combat this, the BLM has been pushing to plant more native grasses since the 80s, as well as introduced species like crested wheatgrass (a non-native that’s good for grazing, wildlife cover, and less flammable than cheatgrass) and forage kochia that tend to fare better than natives when it comes to out-competing cheatgrass and happen to be extremely palatable to cows (Greenwire).

Bromus tectorum, aka cheatgrass, aptly named for its poor forage value. It ‘cheats’ cows out of nutritious grass!

Although a strategic and calculated maneuver, it hasn’t been enough to deter wildfires. The recent fires in Idaho have created a lot of controversy and pointed fingers between the BLM and ranchers. Idaho has battled 21 wildfires this year. Ranchers and the Idaho Cattle Association have been very vocal about their opinion that the BLM could have drastically reduced the size of the Soda Fire. Many ranchers are arguing that had the BLM allowed more grazing this year to reduce the fuel load, which has increased due to higher than normal rainfall, the Soda Fire would not have reached the size or intensity that allowed it to destroy hundreds of acres of land. In an interview with KTVB, BLM state director Tim Murphy explained that the extreme weather, conditions that have not been seen in the area for nearly 90 years, was to blame and that increased grazing would not have affected fire behavior (KTVB).

BLM Director Neil Kornze recently toured Owyhee County to survey the Soda Fire which burned 280,000 acres and is now the agency’s priority rehabilitation site. The project to restore the lands may cost as much as $10 million. Grazing permits are an important factor when considering the complexity of how rangelands are managed in the future. This in combination with restoration efforts are exceptionally crucial for next month’s USFWS decision on whether the sage grouse will be put on the endangered species list at the end of September (Idaho Statesman).

I hope to write a post about at least one more human-rangeland topic (i.e. the BLM horse round-ups) before my internship comes to an end in October. Until my next post, I hope to speak to ranchers, range conservationists, and wildlife biologists to develop a better understanding of this complex interface of people, weather, flora, and fauna. It’s a sensitive and contentious time for Idaho’s ranchers, natural resource agencies, and public lands–but it’s also an invaluable opportunity to observe the sociology and ecology of this unique state.

Poorly organized sources