Looking at posts from the other interns, I’m as surprised as they are how fast my internship has gone by. It seems like just last week I was driving out to California, stepping out of my car believing I was in the Mojave Desert and abruptly realizing I had moved to the surface of the sun. Overwhelmed by my new surroundings and immediately missing hills, trees, and water. Thankfully things have cooled off since then, I’ve been many unique places that most people never get a chance to see, and I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty the desert can offer. I’ve formed many valuable relationships in the office and truly appreciate the people that I’ve spent time with. As with everywhere else I have worked and gone to school, it’s the people that make a place feel more like home.

Since my last post, we’ve continued our rangeland surveys. We’ve also performed a few Proper Functioning Condition surveys with the help of a botanist who recently retired from the field office. He worked here in Ridgecrest for almost 40 years–he’s such an interesting person to talk to and is an immense bank of knowledge. He knows the field office like the back of his hand and can point at just about any mountain and tell you the last time he hiked it and what populations of rare plants are found there. He’s also very well-versed in geology and hydrology, and knows all about how the features in the field office formed. I wish I could listen to him tell stories about the mountains here all day.

We’ve moved out of the northern portion of the field office and into a new allotment in the southern portion, and it’s been great getting to explore new areas. We’ve gotten to go through the Walker Pass area and have been spending many days up around Kelso Valley. The Starks would say, “Winter is Coming,” but they’d be wrong, because it’s here–I’m regretting not packing more winter clothes but that was the last thing on my mind in July! Apparently they don’t get much snow here in the valley, but some of the higher elevation areas have been turning white. Hopefully the weather holds out for one more week until I go home for Christmas.

Some final-internship-month highlights in photographic form:

The New England Seeds of Success 2015 season has now come to an end and it’s time to reflect on what we were able to accomplish. Each of us on the team has learned so much about the local environment, native taxa and not the least of which, how to describe the Seeds of Success program.

Throughout the past season our team has traveled throughout New England collecting seeds for restoration projects that ranged from establishing salt marsh plants in the face of rising sea levels to proving seeds to help stabilize river banks after removing dams. The common theme between all of these species, regardless of state or habitat, are that these species are the building blocks for each plant community.

It is these common and often under appreciated species that create and define each habitat. By collecting and storing these familiar species we are able to provide locally sourced native plant seeds to conservation efforts in the future. Although it sounds more glamorous to work with rare and endangered species, it is crucial that we also work on the commonplace species, because they provide the structure to support everything else.

Beautiful view of Upper Klamath Lake.

Sorry for the delay. I have been traveling quiet a bit these past few weeks. I am still in shock as to how fast my internship went. During my last few days I helped BOR with the A Canal forebay salvage. BOR funneled the fish (via a seine) towards the fish screen and hoisted them up in large fish bins.

BOR seining fish in the A Canal.

We sorted through thousands of fish looking for any suckers. The suckers were then processed by USGS. They took fin clips, measurements, and PIT tagged all suckers. Nearly 700 were salvaged this year, while last year had counts of 130. The suckers were relocated to a nearby spring-fed inlet of Upper Klamath Lake.

Alia, Nolan, and Josh electrofishing.

We went electrofishing for Klamath sucker genetic samples one last time with Josh and Nolan near the Klamath Marsh Refuge. On my last day, I helped Julie install the cover for the greenhouse at Gone Fishing.

The cover is on and everything is looking great.

This internship surpassed every expectation I had. I feel so fortunate to have worked with so many passionate and inspiring people. Josh is an amazing mentor. He has great life lessons and even better stories. I gained a multitude of skills in such a short time. The Motorboat Operations Certification Course (MOCC) was extremely helpful. I had no experience with trailer backing or boating prior to this internship. Now I feel very confident performing both. It was rewarding to work on Upper Klamath Lake for most of the summer. I really enjoyed being a part of the collaborative efforts that Klamath Falls Fish and Wildlife Service has with other agencies. It was inspirational to see and hear about ongoing conservation efforts throughout the basin. One of the many highlights from my internship was seeing the suckers we raised school together as we released them. I’m glad that my roommates and I had the opportunities to explore the beautiful state of Oregon. I LOVE the Pacific Northwest and will definitely be back.

50+ hours, 2,950 miles, and countless stops later, Finn (my awesome dog) and I made it to our final destination of Chicago, IL. First, I had to travel to Lake Havasu, AZ to pick up a few things of mine. Next, I stopped in Las Vegas, NV to visit family. I had a great time there.

Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area.

We went to Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area. The history, geology, wildlife, and recreation (so many rock climbers) of Red Rock Canyon are fascinating. I love the fact that this area is located about 20 miles from the strip. I also went to my first Cirque du Soleil, Mystère. It was spectacular. After visiting family, I cruised over to visit friends in Colorado. It was nice to catch up with them. I have been in IL for a few days now. I was fortunate to be offered a seasonal job at UPS until I find something in my field. My experience with CLM internship and KFFWO has been amazing!

Thanks for reading,

~Erica

Little Finn was tired of traveling.

 On the road near Independence Rock (WY).

It’s been just over a month now since I left Burns, Oregon. Sometimes one needs time and separation to get a proper perspective on past experiences, so it may be that my impression of Burns will change with time. Regardless, as I look back, there are a few key things that I think will be important for me going forward.

1) People. This is probably the go-to answer to the question of what is most important out of any experience. But I don’t think that makes it too cliche. It was easy to connect with my 3 fellow interns, especially since we were all the same age, worked and lived in the same place, hailed from generally suburban areas, and had all just graduated from college. It was sometimes harder to connect with people at work who were mostly older than me, disagreed with most of my political views, shared a much more rural background, and mostly disliked visiting cities let alone living near them. However, when you spend 10 hour days in a pickup truck in the hot, dry sagebrush with someone, there is plenty of time to talk about and get over differences. And I think that, for me, coming from a bastion of urban liberalism, it was vitally important to hear a different side of the story.

 Culture

2) Systems. For an ecologist like myself, each new place is a new system, with similarities and differences to other systems. This was the third major system in which I have had the privilege to do fieldwork, and it spreads my understanding over a larger swath of the country. To the eastern coastal ecosystems and the Missouri forests and glades, I can add the vast sagebrush steppe system to my list. In a way, its fire suppression problem is similar to the problem of juniper encroachment in Missouri glades, however its current problems surrounding wildfire and invasive species are unlike any I have seen before.

 The sagebrush steppe

3) Land. This internship gave me the chance to drive cross country twice- once from St. Louis, MO to Burns, OR and once from Burns, OR to Lexington, MA. These two trips took me through at least 17 different states, and my travels during the internship took me to two more; 5 were states I had never been to before. In all, the two cross country trips plus the internship allowed me to visit (if I’m not forgetting any) 6 national parks, 4 national monuments, 2 national historic parks, and many national forests, wilderness areas, BLM lands, and scenic areas. The amount of federally owned land in the US is enormous, far more than I realized at the beginning of the internship. The opportunity to see so much of it up close and in person was more than most people get. I can’t help but hope to spend more time traveling the country in the future.

The moon at sunset, Crater Lake National Park

So that’s it in a nutshell, whatever that means, but of course it was so much more… I hope some of the people I met in Burns enjoyed meeting a few outsiders, and perhaps learned something from conversing with someone so different from themselves.

This is it, my CLM internship has come to an end. I am so thankful that I had this opportunity straight out of school, and that I have the opportunity to return for another season of greatness. Both my internships, one in NM and one in OR, made me a much stronger and more confident botanist. I worked with great people and explored incredible places. I soaked in local knowledge of culture, food, and ecology. I got to do work that was meaningful and important, and that I felt proud of. I really improved my skills in fieldwork and gained an understanding of how federal land management agencies work. I’ve just signed up to do a term with Americorps, but after that I intend to continue a job search with USFS or NPS. I can prove on my resume that I have experience driving 4-wheel drive through sand, mud, and even over rocks :)… and I can tell you if the flower receptacle was chaffy or not, in a raceme or a panicle. I can’t believe I got paid to do all of these wonderful things that I loved, in places that I loved. Deciding to be a CLM intern is honestly one of the best choices I have ever made. I am grateful to the moon and back for this experience and will remember my time in this internship for all my years. To Krissa, Rebecca, the rest of the folks at CBG that make this possible, my mentors Sheila and Kristin, friends met along the way, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my CLM intern heart.

After an entire summer of plant monitoring it was a nice change of pace to help with a post-burn native seeding project on two BLM sites. When I was sprinkling the seed that I mixed while working at the “Seed Castle, I realized that this internship has allowed me to come full circle. Last spring and summer I spent my time quantifying the percent cover of native prairie species, then I learned to make seed mixes, and finally I got to spread seed on the ground for the next intern to quantify.

It took Christine and I 4 full days to seed nearly 40 acres of wetland prairie by hand. We would each carry two 5-gallon buckets filled with seeds and a corn husk filler material and try to distribute the seeds as evenly as possible. To keep track of where we had already been we worked in transects marked by pin-flags.

These two sites were both intentionally burned earlier in the fall. The reason behind controlled burning in this prairie system is to decrease encroachment from weedy grasses and small trees and shrubs. These ecosystems are utterly dependent on fire to maintain their open structure and the BLM and other agencies in the Willamette Valley use fire as a tool for restoration. Seeding after a burn gives native seeds a better chance of out-competing woody and invasive species.

As you can see, the recently burned soil surface produces a great environment for the germination of seeds and is also home to a variety of fungi. The bunchgrasses and carex species that grow in the prairies have adapted to frequent fire (a product of Native American management for thousands of years).

At the end of the day I got a dose of what I imagine the rest of you working in rangeland habitats encounter all the time.. cows! In the Willamette Valley there are very few public lands that still facilitate grazing and this herd of cows probably escaped from an adjacent private landowner’s property.

This was the first time I came in contact with cattle while doing restoration. My feelings about grazing-induced ecological collapse aside, being in the presence of these animals spawned a few unexpected realizations on my part. First, cows (especially with young calves nearby) are stubborn and kind of scary. I was especially concerned for my safety when I realized the sheer irony of a 12-year vegan being mauled by a meat cow while doing habitat restoration. Second, cows will eat native seeds right out of your wheelbarrow while your back is turned third, if you leave a five-gallon bucket unattended, cows will try to put their entire head inside, and finally, cows do not seem to understand my sarcasm when I refer to them as restorationist job security.

It is hard to believe that 5 months can pass so quickly. I came into this internship with high expectations, and yet this program managed to exceed those expectations! I have learned so much in ways I did not anticipate. I am very grateful for the experience working within the Bureau of Land Management. It was a great introduction for what to expect with a career in a government agency.

I have moved away from home before, but I always had a friend making the transition with me. For the first time in my life, I moved to a place where I knew absolutely no one. Yes it was scary, but it was a wonderful learning experience and an opportunity to grow as an individual. Throughout my time in Susanville I met so many wonderful people, and I am sad to say goodbye.

The West has really stolen my heart. From the mountains to the coast, I love it all.

My next goal is to work in a National Park. If anyone knows of any good opportunities, please let me know!

Cheers,

Rachael Payer

Before I write my final FINAL blog post, I thought I should include some pictures of the area that I have had the pleasure of living in for the past 7 months due to my CLM internship. I really feel lucky to have landed in central Oregon, and that I won the “BLM location lottery” so to speak. Working here and learning about local ecology helped to enrich my experiences outside of work too. After all, part of being an intern in the CLM program is exploring a new land, at work or play, and at the best times, it is both! Being in the center of the state was great because most any part of Oregon was accessible within a 4-5 hour drive. It is an extremely diverse place with countless things to do and very friendly residents. I drove most of the Oregon coast, backpacked in the breathtaking Wallowa mountains in eastern OR, and soaked in hot springs in the middle of sagebrush country. Here are some pictures to pay tribute to a lovely state.

enjoying the high desert with my little buddy

Elk!

The wild and desolate southern OR coast

Redwoods (small forests in OR)

Typical high desert-blue mountains ecoregion where I worked and collected seeds

Lava flow in the Cascades, the three sisters mountains

The Painted Hills

Rainy day in the usually dry Ochoco Ntnl Forest dominated by golden tamaracks and ponderosa pine

Crater Lake – unbelievably blue

Tumalo Falls, less than an hour from where I lived in OR

Wallowa Mountains

The past 6 months of this internship have been a wild, wonderful roller coaster. I couldn’t have asked for a better job right out of college!

A quick 5 things that this job has taught me:

1. Marshes are unpredictable; tread lightly or you may get a boot full of sulfur water.
2. Seed collecting during a hurricane can be difficult. And wet. (Shout out to Hurricane Joaquin.)
3. Permethrin. Permethrin. Permethrin.
4. Mosquito face nets are also a good investment (especially for Chincoteague Island).
5. Hotel continental breakfasts are life savers. Especially when they have chocolate milk.

It has been an amazing experience to see the landscapes change so drastically from blooming, lush meadows to crunchy, withered fields.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, MD. September // November.

And a few fun pictures from our trips. The color scheme of November is brown // grey.

Collecting Spartina patens is an arduous task. Sometimes you just have to lay down in the marsh.

Carefully treading through the marshes at Blackwater NWR, MD.

Grey skies at Pettigrew State Park, NC

Blackwater NWR, MD

Clear skies at Robinson Neck Preserve, MD

Farewell, friends.