Well, here I am, still in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Just another intern at the busy Carlsbad BLM Field Office. It has been only about two months into my internship, and yet I have already gained so much experience that I hope to take with me in my next step towards my career.

For one, I am happy to be taking a part in a New Mexico native seed collection. I was able to help collect seed in our first collection for Seeds of Success (SOS) just a few short weeks ago. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the SOS, it is a government-driven program that is focusing on seed banking for a number of reasons. Seeds that are collected by us interns and field botanists are sent to a seed cleaning factory, then sent to be stored and saved for potential future disasters. Of course, there are other reasons for the seed collections: Many universities and horticulturists may take some for their own research prospects. When we collect more than enough for everyone, we even get the chance to keep some for native restoration of our public lands. I say it is a program that is a win-win situation. I am incredibly overjoyed to be a part of a bigger picture, something bigger than you and I.

Taking a shady refuge on my first collection day – plant press slung around my shoulder, and data sheet in my hands. Photo taken by B. Palmer

Our first collection of the year came on a delightfully overcast and cool early morning of 85°F (a pleasantly wonderful surprise that seldom graces the Chihuahuan Desert). With the guidance of the Las Cruces district botanist, we decided to collect a native and pollinator-friendly flower of the Asteraceae family, Ratibida columnifera. With four of us collecting, I believe the morning to be a success! You see, as part of the SOS protocol, we are required to follow certain rules: we must collect from a minimum of fifty plants within a population so that the collection is genetically diverse. We can only collect a maximum of 20% of the available seeds per plant, to not take away from the native population. And…we must collect a minimum of 10,000 seeds, per collection. The SOS will not accept collections less than that, due to the expenses of cleaning seed and storage (not to mention it takes a lot of seed to restore disaster zones successfully). Of course, if our BLM office wanted to keep some of the seed for our own restoration purposes (which they do), we must collect more than 10,000 seed, and anything extra will come back to us. Fortunately, it was not difficult from this particular collection, as plants of the Asteraceae in general put off a lot of seed per plant in the first place. I couldn’t have asked for a better collection to learn the SOS protocol on.

A small handful of Ratibida columnifera seed. Photo taken by B. Palmer

Unfortunately, it has been our only collection thus far of the season. Typically, July is “monsoon” season for Carlsbad. However, it has been a typical rainless desert for the month of July. No rain, with high, dry-heat, stifling temperatures. Really anywhere you go, no rain = no new flowers to collect from. The other Carlsbad CLM intern and I arrived late enough to miss potential spring collections, but now we may be gone before the potential fall plants are ready for collection. Until it rains here, we may be out of the job we were sent here to do. Fortunately, we have been working with our mentor, Johnny Chopp, who is a wildlife biologist, and he has had a few other projects for us up his sleeves.

One of which has been a herpetology survey he has conducted for several years at this office. There are plenty of Chihuahuan Desert endemic plants here in Carlsbad, but now it is time to think more like an ecologist. You see, Johnny has been searching for the Sand Sagebrush Lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus), an endemic to the area, and has been on the decline the last few years. We have been surveying sites to find a presence of this particular lizard. How do we do this, you ask? Simple: pitfall traps made of a 5-gallon bucket snugly buried into the lizards’ sandy habitat on dunes of Shinnery Oak (Quercus havardii Rydb.) and Sand Sagebrush (Artemisia filifolia Torr.). I can honestly tell you, I have never encountered so much sand in my life. I come home and there’s sand in my hair, my ears, my nose, my shirt, my pockets, my boots…but what kind of experience would it be if not for that??

This is typical habitat for the desert lizards. They take refuge under the Q. havardii, and run though sandy areas to find food. Photo taken by B. Palmer

Here I am showing off one of the lizard pitfall traps, and a snake stick we use to open traps. It is a 5-gallon bucket buried into the sand, with the opening canopied by a small piece of plywood that keeps the critters shaded and predators out of the traps. Photo taken by N. Montoya

To our dismay, we have yet to find the anticipated Sand Sagebrush Lizard. However, we have found many of the desert’s interesting critters along the way. We have pulled beetles, wasps, ants, spiders, scorpions (oh so many scorpions) out of the traps. At one of our first arrays, one of the office’s wildlife biologists found a Texas-Horned Lizard – not even from our little traps! That indeed was a gem on its own.

A Texas-Horned Lizard, found hiding in a bunchgrass. Photo taken by B. Palmer

There are several lizards found in the Chihuahuan Desert, and another is commonly and creatively named the side-blotch lizard (yes, for the blotch of black found on its side). We have even found juvenile lizards, as big as your thumbnail. But again, we have not found the lizard we have been looking for yet. A trend has been noticed by the biologists here, that when there are side-blotch lizards in an area, there is typically not sand sagebrush lizard. This is a trend that still shows to be true this year as well.

I am handling my first Side-Blotch lizard that was caught in one of the traps. Photo credits: M. McClure

An adult Side-Blotch Lizard I found in one of the traps. You may notice that its left claw is blue. We mark the lizards here to check if we recapture any. Photo taken by B. Palmer

A juvenile found in one of the traps. Juveniles do not yet have the markings we use for identification, so the species of this little guy is unknown. Picture taken by B. Palmer

In excess time here, I have also been involved in a project to install Monarch Waystations in a few selected locations around the Carlsbad area. For those of you who don’t know much about Monarch butterflies, they too are on the decline. They are a butterfly that migrates from northern North America, all the way down into Mexico. Their habitat has historically been near prairie settings, however, what do we use prairie habitat for now? You guessed it – agriculture. In the recent years scientists have found that Asclepias spp. (Milkweed) is a prominent piece of monarch butterfly habitat. You see, the plant itself is very toxic to animals animist insects, but is the main food source for the monarch caterpillars. We do not want to loose an essential pollinator of North America, so waystations, areas designated as butterfly “sanctuaries” along their migration lines if you will, are on the rise. We wanted to be a part of that too, so we proposed in a weekly NEPA meeting to provide four different locations to install potential waystations. It has been a difficult process to get others in the office on board with the idea, however, we have been able to pull through. Some fellow interns and I drove all the way to Albuquerque, NM (a 10-hour round trip drive and 13 hour day) to pick up two species of Milkweed plugs (Asclepias speciosa and A. latifolia) from a native plant nursery.

Each tray holds 98 young plants, between 1-2 years old. We picked up two different kinds of Asclepias: Showy and Broadleaf Milkweed. Photo taken by B. Palmer

Our first planting was but a few days ago, at a little area called Conoco Lake. It is a small recreational (and man-made) pond in the middle of dozens of oil pads, that has turned into a small wildlife sanctuary. There are birds in the trees, fish in the pond, and a plethora of pollinators that seek its refuge: one of the reasons we decided to plant there. We ended up planting 98 young Asclepias plants in hopes that it will become a waystation in a year or two. I hope our hard work pays off, and some of the milkweed survives!

I am instructing others how to transplant the young milkweed on our big transplanting day. Photo credits to M. McClure

Despite our extra projects, we are always on the lookout for potential plants to collect seed from. It is dry as a bone out here in the desert, but there is still life out here; I have a hard time even fathoming how plants grow here. For example, guess what I found on one of our scouting days: Equisetum!! That’s right, a freaking horsetail…in the freaking desert! The ways of the desert and what grows here surprises me everyday.

Equisetum growing in the desert. I still cannot believe I found this! Photo taken by B. Palmer

I was also very excited to come across flowering towers of Agave species (possibly Agave neomexicana, however, I am unsure of the species) on another scouting day a few weeks back. This is by far one of my favorite plants of all time. They have tall, stunning yellow inflorescences that I will never forget! All their lives, Agave spends its life as a small, dense, succulent rosette. Then one day after years of this vegetative state, the plant decides to put forth all its energy into that thick, impressive reproductive shoot holding hundreds of little flowers, attempting to put forth its genetic makeup into the world via pollination before dying that very year. Is there anything more spectacular than this?

We were driving through some pinion-juniper woodland, when I forced the others to stop the truck so that we could investigate this inflorescence! Photo taken by M. McClure

Overall, I love hunting for plants in the desert. But oh how I miss home so very much. Everyday I am out here, I am incredibly homesick: for trees and vivid green landscapes, my dog, my home, especially my soon-to-be husband. Nonetheless, I believe traveling is essential for personal development. One night a group of us went out to dinner, and my mentor brought up a favorite quote of his, by Mark Twain:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

When one stays in one place for a long enough time, they can become stagnant in their lives. That is why this internship is so incredibly important. Not only for me, but for all the other interns in the program as well. We can learn about the world from the safety of our homes, but you cannot truly experience it unless you step outside, and out of that comfort zone. Since I have stepped out of my own comfort zone, I have learned one incredibly important thing about myself: Despite the interesting town that I am stationed in and the blistering daily heat, there is a loupe around my neck, a plant press swung onto my back, a notebook in my hands, and most importantly, a smile on my face. I am where I need to be, and I am a field botanist.

I feel (and think that I look like) a true botanist. I am blossoming now, and hope to be a great botanist in years to come. Photo taken by B. Palmer

Brooke Palmer

Carlsbad, New Mexico, BLM Field Office

It feels like we are finally starting to reset after the frantic pace after last month.  All the early season plants we had our eyes on in July have either been collected or lost and now we are moving on to the preliminary site assessments for the later flowering species.  So far we have sites for Lupinus Argentis, Asclepias labriformus, Eriogonum umbellatum, and Eriogonum ephedroides.  We are about to collect Asclepias labriformus and Lupinus argentis.

A week ago we went on a 3 day rafting trip down the White River to help with a monitoring study of treatments of Russian Olive and Tamarisk.  The trip was great.  The view of the canyon was spectacular and sitting in an inflatable raft between sites certainly beats sitting in a car between sites.  I would have to say the only downside was the mosquitos and deer flies, which might have bitten me a couple hundred times.

Getting the raft loaded

We brought duckies because there wasn’t room in the raft.

Birds made these nests.

GIS / Remote Sensing Update

I am almost done with my main project for this internship!! I have been working since February on mapping cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) for our field office. After hours upon hours of processing, I was able to complete a large map of the cheatgrass densities for the Upper Powder River Basin area for our field office! Now, my main goal was to create a similar map for the southern section of the study area and then I will be done with this assignment! After creating these two cheatgrass maps, I would have to ground truth the Upper Powder River Basin Study Area to confirm that there was cheatgrass. After ground truthing, I would be able to move on to other projects like mapping sagebrush densities, doing vegetation monitoring, and working on NISIMS! Hopefully, the next assignments should start around August!!

During the various processing assignments I had to do, I received many side quest missions from the BLM staff regarding GIS! Most of the quests were pretty simple and could be completed within a few minutes, but there were some quests I had to do some research on before I was able to help people out! Almost everyday I learned something new regarding GIS. Working on GIS projects had been rewarding and I am very confident that I would be able to use these skills that I gathered for my next job!!

Cheatgrass turns a purplish red in mid June in Wyoming. I used remote sensing techniques to try to find the red signatures of the cheatgrass. The above picture shows you the difference between cheatgrass and other grasses in the landscape in June.

The Northern Powder River Basin Cheatgrass Density Map so far! Still have to fix some portions of the map and spruce it up a bit. Soon I will use this map for ground truthing!!

This is the Southern Powder River Basin map! Not as much cheatgrass due to all of the badland and bare ground structures in the area.

Cheatgrass Comic

Quick Comic

Spooky Nightjar Surveys

One of the most unusual experiences for this internship was doing nightjar surveys in the Bighorn Mountains. One of my bosses, Bill, wanted me to go up into the Bighorn Mountains and perform a nightjar count along a specific mountain route. I had to do this survey around 12:00am when there was a full moon in the sky. My goal was to listen for different nightjar species such as nighthawks (Chordeiles minor) and common poor wills (Phalaenoptilus nuttallii). I had twelve stops along the highway and twisty side roads. Each stop had to be around six minutes long in order to properly listen to bird calls.

The first couple of stops were a little spooky. I was by myself, surrounded by forests, with large animals roaming around such as moose (Alces alces) and elk (Cervus canadensis). I usually heard a few great horned owls (Bubo virginianus) in the forested areas. The second stop did have two nighthawks, which I was very happy to hear! The rest of the remaining stops were not as productive. Many of the park (open areas) stops had Wilson’s snipes (Gallinago delicata)! These birds were “winnowing” up a storm. Winnowing was the sound and action a snipe makes to defend its territory or attract mates. Sometimes it would be very silent and then a snipe flies near my car winnowing, freaking me out! Haha! They absolutely loved to surprise me!

Overall, this was one of the most bizarre bird monitoring I have done on this internship. I loved viewing the full moon and listening to different birds, but it was rather creepy being up on the mountain by myself with an unnatural amount of RVs driving through the Bighorns very early in the morning.

What the experience should’ve looked like….

This was my actual experience…>_> Hahaha!!

Bird Routes!

Recently, I have had a great opportunity to do more bird monitoring! I went out with BLM Legend Don to do two routes in Northeast Central Wyoming. The towns we passed through were extraordinarily small and had a grocery store and a few barns. The landscape on these routes was beautiful!! There was so much diversity of bird species, we easily saw fifty or more birds. We passed wetlands, farmlands, grasslands, juniper stands, badlands, prairie dog towns, streams, ponderosa pine forests, shrub lands, rivers, savannas, towns, and disturbed areas. Each area offered unique species of bird! The most common bird species we did encounter were the western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta), vesper sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus), and brewer’s sparrow (Spizella breweri).  Some of my favorite bird species we saw were the red headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), Sora Rail (Porzana carolina), Upland Sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda), Red Head (Aythya americana), American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana), Wilson’s Phalarope (Phalaropus tricolor), Greater Sage Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus), and the Bullock’s Oriole (Icterus bullockii)!

An American Avocet taking a break from finding food!

An elusive cinnamon teal I saw!!

We had two very long routes around Arvada and Recluse, Wyoming. We had to stop every 0.5 miles and record the bird species we saw and heard in the area. We stopped fifty times along the route and looked around the area, noting weather conditions and excessive noise. Most of my bird monitoring I did relied on my hearing. I could pick out specific species of bird just by hearing them. When we stopped near a lake, we would get the spotting scope to see what we could find. Most of the time, we saw gadwalls (Anas strepera) and mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) swimming around the small lakes. Some reservoirs did contain some rare bird species! After six hours per route, both Don and I were exhausted! We had to wake up 3:30am and travel to a route that would be over an hour and half away from Buffalo, Wyoming. By the end of our work day, we would go to the Breadboard Sub shop for lunch before going home for the day. This type of bird monitoring was very rewarding, but also it was very draining to the system!

A wild red head headed woodpecker has appeared!!!

Vegetation  Monitoring

Tis the season for vegetation monitoring!!! Recently, we have been doing S&Gs, rangeland health assessments, and a whole bunch of vegetation monitoring projects! I have been working entire weeks and weekends on various vegetation monitoring projects. Beyond bird monitoring and GIS, I have been helping the Resources Staff and range interns get settled with vegetation monitoring. I am also helping out with University of Wyoming vegetation studies on the weekends and some days during the week. Hopefully, I can acquire a lot of comp time!!

BLM Legends Arnie, Charlotte, and Dusty are ready to do vegetation monitoring!!

Welch Recreation Area

For two days, I had a great opportunity to help out the BLM Recreation Department (Rachel and Damen) with nature education with a local Sheridan Library Summer program. We took nine kids to the Welch Recreation Area and taught them a series of subjects ranging from plants, birds, geology, and entomology! The first day we went to the seed plots and collected green needle grass (Nassella viridula) and bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata) seeds! Afterwards, we went to another location to do a plant scavenger hunt! The kids had to find the difference between a tree, shrub, grass, forb, and grass-like plants! Next, we went down by the river to look at all kinds of macroinvertebrate! We had the chance to actually go in the water and look for insects! The kids loved walking through the water and they picked up rocks to look for more insects!!

The kids collecting green needle grass seed.

The next day we started off under the bridge to look at the cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) and talked about other bird species. The kids were not as interested, so I shifted gears and talked about rocks. The kids loved this idea!! They were picking rocks up from the river and were showing them to me! I had to identify all of the igneous and sedimentary rocks that were in the river! Some of the kids found really cool agates, which surprised me!! We went across the river and decided to learn about crickets and grasshoppers. After a brief educational experience regarding those insects, we decided to use bug nets to capture and look at various insects. Mostly we encountered crickets (Gryllidae), grasshoppers (Caelifera), and katydids (Tettigoniidae), but there were spiders to look at as well! We ended the day with another river exploration activity!

Teaching the kids about rocks and geology! Some of the kids found nice looking agates!!

Overall, this educational experience was amazing and I think the kids really enjoyed the experiences. I loved helping Rachel and Damen teach the children about all kinds of sciences. Another bonus was to spend time outside in a Riparian Ecosystem instead of the Sagebrush Steppe for once! ^_^;; I loved doing these kinds of activities!!

Bird Banding Experience

On a Saturday, I had another great experience! The activity was to bird band cliff swallows and other song bird species!! We went to Welch Recreation Area and put up mist nets for cliff swallows by the bridge! BLM Legend Wyatt and myself helped the Rocky Mountain Audubon Society with their efforts!! The cliff swallows were wary of our presences and it was difficult get even one bird to band!! We did catch one female cliff swallow! We were by a very tall bridge and it was hard to reach the swallows without them seeing us. In our songbird net, we ended up catching a male Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena)!! This bird looked very beautiful!!! Even if we were not as successful in banding birds, I ended up with a good education of how to perform mist netting. An added bonus, I got to meet many Wyoming birders!!

Catching cliff swallows was hard!!! We did get one!!

BLM Legend Wyatt (Right) helped with bird banding as well!! Lazuli Buntings are so beautiful!!

Call of Duty

One of my bosses, Bill, needed my help for a special mission. Since the BLM Recreation Department was busy with field activities, I was selected to help out with the task. Bill wanted me to go with him to Moiser Gulch for clean-up duty. Apparently, some people over the weekend thought it would be funny to put an eight feet long log in the local picnic outhouse. Bill and I had to dress up and take the log out of the outhouse. With quite a bit of effort, we were successful! We had to get rid of the bio-hazard material, which took another fifteen minutes to do. We were also the local entertainment for the picnickers who were watching. ^_^;;

How!?!

Looks like a job for a CLM Intern!!

Bill and I finally got the log out!!! The emoticon is there to cover the unpleasantness…

The Bat Festival and The Mighty Wind

Recently, I helped BLM Legend Chris and his wife with the Bat Festival at Devils Tower! The BLM joined many Department of Interior Legends such as the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and Fish and Wildlife with the festival! It was fascinating working with each of the DoI Departments! Their techniques and hierarchy are completely differed from the BLM! We all set up many different booths regarding bats such as bat ecology, bat monitoring, White Nose Syndrome, finding bats, bat housing, bat coloring activities, and bat detection technology! There were many people that stopped by to learn about bats! Many of the kids loved to learn about bats, and they were quick learners!! Some of the 5-7 year old children knew about bats already based on their schooling!

Around 3:00pm, we got a severe thunderstorm warning!! There was supposed to be 75mph winds and golf ball sized hail! We saw the large cumulonimbus in the area, and we had to pack everything up! We quickly made it to the National Park shelter just in time! The storm was not as severe and it just heavily rained out! There was some hail, but the ice stones were pea sized. Afterwards, we went back to the picnic area and continued our Bat Festival!

We continued another few hours of more educational activities before our bat night walk! When it got darker, we got our bat detectors that would listen for bat sounds! We found many big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) flying through out the campground area!! They were neat to watch and hear through the devices, unfortunately, I did not get any good pictures of them! Someone even had a infrared detector, which was neat to use! Overall, this was a great day full of bat activities!!! ^_^

Devils Tower

The beginning of the day we set up and helped educate people! Around 3:00pm, there was a massive thunderstorm! Eventually, we continued our activities and did a bat night walk at the end!

Moment of Zen: Cloud Edition!!!!

Some of my favorite clouds pictures taken recently!!

Post Script:

We got a visitor by our window at work. It is a baby Say’s Phoebe (Sayornis saya). The little one sends its regards to everyone!

While working with the staff of the Surprise Resource area, I have gained many new experiences. One of my first projects that I got to work on was doing vegetation surveys for weed treatments. In the Modoc area, and this is probably true for many areas, we have issues with invasive species like Medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusa), Japanese Brome (Bromus arvensis), Ventenata, and cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum). Previously, members of the staff had applied a bacterial herbicide to several test plots in order to see how effective this herbicide was on invasive grasses. We had mixed results but it had been less then a year since it had been applied.

Other projects that I have been working on include doing water quality assessments in perennial creeks across the desert. I have also been working on riparian vegetation monitoring, range health monitoring, and range compliance. One of my wildlife projects this month had me finding a small thermal sensor on the side of a steep mountain rock field in order to replace it with a new one. The sensor detected pika and other small mammal movements and was used to monitor the habitat usage along the rock slope. One of my projects took me to East Wall Canyon in order to monitor a pipeline for potentially new planting projects. East Wall Canyon sits below the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge in Washoe County, Nevada and is a very remote region to visit. However tucked inside the numerous small canyons, streams, meadows, and mahogany forests are little homesteads that mark the history of settlement in the area.

Horse Creek, a small perennial creek that runs into Oregon.

A rattlesnake that we found on Tuledad Mountain. This is the first of the two rattlesnakes that I have seen so far this year.

Over the Forth of July weekend, I got to drive a small first responder vehicle in the Lake City, CA parade. We had about twenty-two entrees in the community parade and about three hundred and fifty individuals in attendance in a town with fifty individuals normally. Several members of the field office were in attendance, participated in the parade, and helped with the barbecuing at the potluck that followed. So far I’ve had a lot of fun working in the Great Basin and am enjoying the small town atmosphere and am looking forward to more fun experiences.

Mosquito Valley from the Barrel Springs Road.

I hope everyone is enjoying their internship and staying safe out there!

Hey ya”ll,

As we dive deeper into summer, it is becoming more and more apparent how much progress we’ve been making on our work. We manage to get out and survey a few BLM parcels each week. This sounds impressive but in reality a good portion of each parcel tends to be made of rock cliffs and boulders. But we do what we can and despite accessibility issues we have obtained a lot of data. It became much more obvious during a weeds meeting we had this past week. Our supervisor loaded up ArcMap on the big screen, pulling up areas we had been working in and there were all our polygons points and lines of noxious weeds found in those areas. And while of course it’s not a desirable thing to have so many invasive species, it is good that we seem to be doing well scouting for them. As I’ve mentioned in recent blog posts, some of the areas require a good huff and puff of hiking to reach. Last week was particularly exhausting. We hiked over 20 miles in 3 days climbing up and down hills that sometimes changed in elevation by 1000 feet. The picture below is an example, though it doesn’t do it justice. 

Running along this site was the Okanogan River which we camped next to the week before.

Not a terrible place to crash for the evening. However, I was kicking myself the whole time for not bringing my fishing pole, apparently this section of the river is excellent salmon fishing… D:
Two weeks ago was also the week our crew became familiar with a highly aggressive invasive, medusahead. This winter annual grass is native to Europe and was first found in Oregon at the beginning of the 20th century. It thrives on range land, spreads quickly, and decomposes slowly, resulting in thick layers of litter covering a large area. This inhibits native plant growth and becomes a great fuel source for a wildfire. It has never been found in the county we work in until this year when someone found an odd looking grass on private property nearby and decided to report it. Sure enough it was confirmed to be medusahead and now federal and state agencies are trying to determine the extent of its infestation in the area. We surveyed a BLM parcel near the area where it was found to see if it was present and fortunately none was found. But first we visited the property where it was found to make sure we knew how to identify it.

Taeniatherum caput-medusae or medusahead

We’ve kept our eyes peeled since, but luckily it hasn’t been found outside this area. How it got here remains a mystery and will probably stay that way since its seeds can stick to practically anything; clothing, tires, animals, etc. On the plus side, the area we surveyed nearby did have a rewarding view of the Wenatchee valley.

Next week we plan on having another work camping trip and hitting some spots that I have no doubt will mostly be made of boulders and cliffs. The adventure continues..

Kat

… The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.”

I’m not sure how many of the CLM interns or other people reading this blog are old enough to remember Baz Lurhman’s 1999 hit “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” or the 1997 commencement speech, written by the Chicago Tribune’s Mary Schmich, that inspired it. If you are unfamiliar with this little piece of 90s pop culture, please go ahead and look it up.

As this is my last blog post of my internship, I have decided to focus on offering some insights and advice for current and future interns. The majority of CLM blog posts focus on the fantastic new people, places, and things that interns are experiencing. This is great! However, as with all social media, the rose-colored glasses people use can block out some of the more challenging aspects of life. So, without further ado:

Wear sunscreen

This advice is solid, no matter where you are located for your internship. And, really, this is good advice for any time you’ll be outside, working or not.

Don’t dwell on other interns’ blog posts

It can be fun to see what everyone else in the program is doing and learning. It can also sometimes seem like other people are receiving more/better opportunities or training than you are. What the blog posts tend not to show are the periods of frustration, stress, loneliness, etc. that everyone experiences. Don’t focus on other people’s internships. Focus on making the most out of your own.

Communication is KEY

I consider this as important as wearing sunscreen. Poor communication skills are the source of many of life’s frustrations, and cause strain on personal and professional relationships. If you are working with other people, make sure everyone is on board with schedules and plans, and that everyone has a chance to contribute. Listen to other people’s concerns, and if you have concerns or frustrations of your own, speak up! No one can help you if you don’t ask for it.

Stay where you are…

…within reason. I’m not saying you shouldn’t take advantage of weekend trips to places fairly close by. I’m saying don’t use your vacation and personal time to keep going home or keep taking trips to meet friends or significant others halfway across the country. You’ll squander your opportunities to discover the places around your internship location and your opportunities to build relationships with your fellow interns and coworkers.

Use your support system

This likely consists mainly of your fellow interns. Many internships are in smaller towns or rural areas, which means your main social options are who you work with. Build relationships with your teammates and support each other. Spend time together and go on adventures. Isolating yourself not only lessens your own experience, but can also leave your fellow interns on their own.

Be aware of expectations vs. reality, and be proactive

Many times things don’t turn out the way we expect them to. Is your project not what you thought it would be? Is your location not as exciting as you’d hoped? That sucks, but you’re going to have to deal with it. Being perpetually negative won’t fix anything. Being proactive will. Start asking around the office to get involved with other activities. Start networking where you can. Opportunities usually exist, but sometimes they require effort.

Take advantage of and appreciate your time here

Whether you are loving your internship or have hit a rough patch, focus on making the most of your time. You are in (probably) a new and unfamiliar place. Appreciate experiencing a different environment. Appreciate experiencing a different cultural region of the country. Appreciate meeting new people. Appreciate experiencing struggles you may not have faced before, and the personal growth that comes from that.

Take advantage of your time here.

There has been a prolonged stretch of hot, humid days here in Maryland.  This weather can make field work unpleasant at times but there is a silver lining.  The decrease in the amount of rain, which is normal for this time of year, allows the Potomac River to drop to lower levels.  This drop has implications for the rare plant survey work I am tasked with for my internship.  River scour habitats were a new concept to me when I first got here and read about them.  The idea of grassland maintained by erosion from flood waters on river islands and river edge habitats was something I never really thought about.  With the drop in water levels on the Potomac, surveying these river habitats has gone to the forefront in my mind.  In particular, the historical records of the federally-endangered Haperella (Ptilimnium nodosum) within the canal have caught my interest.  The last time this plant was seen on the Potomac was around 20 years ago.  Even though I know the chances of finding it are remote, I still can’t help but hold out a little hope.  This plant has a habit of popping up in random river scour bars one year and disappearing the next.  From the little exposure I have to these scour bars it seems apparent that the invasive plant Japanese Knotweed (among several other invasives) also thrives in this disturbed soil.  One of the harder parts of my internship is seeing situations where rare plants are under assault from invasives and knowing how best to contribute to dealing with the problem in a meaningful way in light of the limited time I will be here.

Looking upstream on the Potomac in western Maryland. The plant at the bottom of the photo is Water Willow (Justicia americana) which is very fond of growing on the edges of these scour bars.

The development of a Weed Warrior program was also one of the tasks of my internship.  Another intern and I will be giving a presentation on several invasive plants commonly found in the canal as well as control methods and native look-alikes for each.  I read a statistic in a published paper that stated 33% of the flora of the Mid-Atlantic region is considered non-native to the region or North America.  I was surprised by that number honestly.  It really underlines the importance of efforts like this for the National Park Service moving forward.  It also poses some difficulties in prioritizing how to develop a program such as this with limited time and resources to train volunteers.

This experience will no doubt be valuable to me as a person that wants to be a nature preserve manager one day.  The part I am looking forward to most is meeting one on one with the individuals afterwards and learning the challenges of maintaining a volunteer-led invasive control effort.  I also hope to learn how to tailor future educational exercises for volunteers interested in invasive removal as well as knowing who these people are and why they chose to volunteer in this particular way.

I haven’t done as much botanical surveying since my last post.  One reason for this is because I participated in a wetland plant identification course at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia last week.  This was a great experience.  Of the three instructors for the course, one was an author for Flora of North America and another had a major hand in developing the wetland indicator codes assigned by the USDA.  He also founded a herbarium.  Needless to say it was great being around so many knowledgeable botanists.  It was also nice talking to the other students in the class, many with permanent federal jobs, who had some helpful advice about seasonal work and graduate schools.

On one of the few trips I made into the field recently I snapped a couple interesting photos.

Purple Cliffbrake (Pellaea atropurpurea) This cool looking fern was growing in the masonry walls of one of the canal locks.

Common Water Snake. When I stumbled upon this snake I thought for sure it was a Copperhead. However, after seeing the rounded pupils of the eyes I knew it was not vemonous.

Coleman Minney

Field Botany Intern

Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park

I’m lounging—literally lounging—on the tundra, reindeer lichens crunching under my Xtratuffs, and I’m not wearing a bug net. I’m not wearing rain gear either. Or a down puffy jacket, or even a hat. And I’m lying belly down on the cushy tundra staring at the mucronate involucral bracts of a Luzula through my hand lens.

Above me, puffy cumulous clouds float through blue sky. Below, a creek rushes through
alders into a series of beaver ponds and the robotic starship song of a gray-cheeked thrush carries up on the wind. We didn’t even have to thrash through those alders to get here. We flew—at 100 knots per hour—on a Robinson 44 helicopter over rolling lichen-covered hills and frost-wedge polygon patterned tundra and streams choked so full of chum salmon you can’t even see the bottom. We sent a grizzly sow and her two cubs romping over the tundra, watched two moose calves follow their mother into an alder thicket, and, tucked in a steep drainage, caught a glimpse of a big lone muskox bull, his long shaggy coat waving in the breeze. Flying along the beach, we saw a bloated dead walrus, its tusks not yet harvested by the local natives who scan the beaches every day for treasures to collect and sell or turn into artwork.

Mind you—this is NOT normal. This is the kind of day we live for in Alaska, the day we can’t stop thinking about for weeks afterward, the day we earn through hundreds of less ideal days in trade. The day we dream of during weeks of office drudgery in December when it’s 40-below and dark at 10:00am.

This is the day I’ve earned by countless others spent soaked to the bone in cold driving rain that deems my Rite-in-the-Rain datasheets un-writable, which doesn’t really matter anyway because my fingers have lost all motor functionality for writing. The days spent tussock-hopping over ankle-twisting towers of cottongrass wearing a suffocating headnet and rain gear not because it’s raining but to guard against the pursuit of a persistent buzzing cloud of mosquitoes that find their way into my shirt sleeves and munch at the gap between my headnet and the collar of my shirt. The days of stifling heat and wildfire smoke that boil the sweat in my muck boots and give me black crusty nostrils and a splitting headache. The miles spent thrashing through alders, balancing on flexible stems and trying in vain to find the “grain” to travel with, toting a 10-foot soil auger in one hand, wondering if I’m due up yet for a surprise bear encounter after five seasons of luck.

None of this is to say that I don’t thoroughly appreciate a good ass-kicking every once in a while. Deep down, even the most timid Alaskan will admit to feeling a sense of pleasure after a day of humbling defeat in a stand of dog-hair spruce and boot-sucking muck.

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The challenge of getting through this country is one of many reasons I am currently lounging on a hillside overlooking miles of untouched valleys and hills in western Alaska, mapping its soils and vegetation communities for the first time in history, with not a cabin or cut tree or trail in sight. Alaskans are a tough and stubborn breed, and talking to us you may be led to believe that this state is one of majestic wild terrain with megafauna and endless treasures awaiting around every corner. That we eat salmon and moose for every meal and blueberries stain every pocket. Well, it’s true. You just might find our comfort standards to be a bit skewed from the social norm.

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As I wrap up the last touches on this post, I am watching rain sheet off the windows of our bunkhouse and roofing on the shack next door rattles with the wind blowing off the Bering Sea. It is back to the daily grind of waiting out weather and preparing for another week of wet field work. But as a co-worker and I learned in the evening calm last night, the blustery wind provides luxurious relief from the mosquitoes that frequent the tundra outside town, and we profited with two gallons of blueberries picked in the lovely afternoon light of 10:00pm. Up here, you learn to appreciate the little things. And, well, the little things are pretty freaking amazing.