It’s the last few weeks of our internship here at the Bureau of Land Management’s Eagle Lake Field Office and our work in the field is starting to wrap up. Lately, we have been focusing on collecting fall-maturing shrubs to use in a restoration project for a fire that burned a large chunk of our field office earlier this year. One of the plants that we collected – four-wing saltbrush – still had a bit of moisture in their seeds when we collected them, which has meant that our small office has turned into a makeshift seed drying chamber. For the past week or so, we have had seeds laid out on all vacant surfaces on our desks.  To be honest, the seeds smell a little funky and have a fair amount of bugs in them that have been escaping and finding their way into all the corners of the office before keeling over. On a more positive note, the seeds  have been a great conversation starter. Many people in the office do not understand fully what we Seeds of Success interns do all summer, and giant piles of seeds stinking up their office make very good teaching moments. #botany

Mountain biking around the lovely Susanville Ranch Park

This past weekend, I took a little day-trip down to Reno to do some mountain biking around the area and visit the art museum. Wow such wow, the mountain biking was amazing. I have really been wanting to mountain bike through the sagebrush steppe this whole summer and I finally got to do it! It was actually very hard to focus because I kept wanting to botanize over all the lovely desert plants around me while I was careening around bermed turns. The Reno Art Museum had some very lovely pieces, many of which focused on the vastness and sublimity of the west’s deserts and open spaces. It’s always very interesting to see how artistic depictions of natural spaces intersect with and sometimes contradict scientific interpretations. Also, they had an entire room whose walls were covered in paper made from chocolate. It smelled so good!

We found a train in the desert

I am starting to get very sad about leaving Susanville. I was not expecting to make so many good friends in the community here. When I was headed out here, everyone just talked about how isolated and small this town was, but really it has been anything but! It has been really nice to put enough roots down that I can go to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings and recognize a fair amount of the faces. Having to leave here after only 5 months is getting me sort of bummed out about living the seasonal field biologist lifestyle for too much longer. I am sure that my next seasonal position will take me to another amazing part of the country, but it just makes me sad that I have to leave a place as soon as it starts to feel like home.

-Jake Nash, Eagle Lake Field Office, Susanville, CA

Ye olde roadside shoe tree

This isn’t the desert! First one to guess where this is in the comments gets a free plant pun courtesy of yours truly.

“Wake me up when September ends” would also be an appropriate title here, considering how quickly September flew by. I can hardly believe it’s October. September celebrated my 6th month out west, and brought some great memories.

I was lucky enough to spend Labor Day weekend exploring the wonders of Oregon. I met up with fellow CLMer Madie from the Arcata Field Office for a camping trip at Crater Lake NP. While much of our trip was smoky due to the various wildfires in and around the park, the experience is and will continue to be unforgettable. Pictures nor words could do it justice. Some of my favorite things included the bats that came out each night, our innovative kitchen tools, s’mores, and the views. I hope to make it back to Crater Lake when the lake formed by a volcanic collapse can be seen and when more flowers are in bloom. While camping at Diamond Lake in the Umpqua National Forest and spending time at the Crater Lake, wildfire threats were so very real; the last 2 days we saw many campers leave due to the threat/smoke and our amazing fire crews creating fire line and backfiring. While I’ve always been incredibly grateful for these men and women, my appreciation grew so much more. After a few discussions with a firefighter/Natural Resource Specialist in the office, getting my red card, and potentially serving on a crew is something I see in my future. Thank a firefighter, and always remember to be smart during fire season – and off season, too!

Crater Lake on the least smoky day!

Mount Bailey, Diamaond Lake, Umpqua National Forest. A typical day during our visit to the Umpqua National Forest and Crater Lake National Park

Chipmunk that decided that Madie and I couldn’t see it if it didn’t move

Plaikni Falls, Crater Lake, Oregon

The pinnacles at Crater Lake, OR; these super cool geologic features are fossil fumaroles. They were formed under sheets of volcanic pumice that preceded Mazama’s collapse. As the surface cooled over years, steam and gas were released from the hot rocks underneath by vents and tubes that were welded into cement by the passage of the steam and gas. These are the vents after years of erosion. Nature does some pretty cool things.

After spending the weekend at the lake, I detoured to Portland upon the recommendation of my mentor, to check out Powell’s and Voodoo Donuts. Both very much worth the 3 hour detour! I could spend the rest of my time in Powell’s and be extremely happy; it’s a huge bookstore (new and used) with just about everything you could think of. I snagged some books I’ve been wanting to get and ventured to Voodoo’s to try some of the best donuts I’ve had. I highly recommend the Mexican Hot Chocolate Donut!

My return to the office has been slow since many of the plants on my list have been collected, so I’ve embarked on office work. While I definitely enjoy my field work a thousand times more than being inside, I’ve gotten to do some cool things. Right now, I am (FINALLY) finishing up digitizing the office’s herbarium! It’s been tedious, and frustrating – no thanks to my computer for constantly crashing in the middle of saving a file – but, albeit rewarding. I’ve gotten to see some cool vouchers, and I’ve definitely gotten a sense of pride seeing my vouchers among the 700+ samples we have. I’ve also gotten to clean Silene spaldingii seed, another tedious and, at times, frustrating duty. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts Silene spaldingii is a federally listed plant, and with the help and permission of USFWS, we collected over 10,000 seeds from multiple sites (while not taking more than 10% of the seed population) which will be grown out and used in rehabilitation and reintroduction of Silene spaldingii to its native landscape.

That being said, I will take any opportunity to get out in the field when possible, which includes Interdisciplinary Team field trips to mining sites, timber sales, and land assessments (which have been truly invaluable; I’ve learned quite a lot); recreation site trash duty; cultural flagging for AVISTA linework on BLM property; and National Public Lands Day! NPLD was a lot of fun, our field office partnered with Washington Trails Association, Washington Mountaineers, and our local REI to build about 1.5 miles of new trail out at our Fishtrap Recreation Site! I always managed to find the 10 feet of basalt to build trail on, but it was worth all the trouble, especially knowing that more of this gorgeous country will be accessible to the public!

Next on my list of to-do’s in October include updating GeoBOB (a database for threatened and endangered species in OR/WA) with all the Silene spaldingii sites I set up and monitored this season, writing my final report, and whatever else fun projects may pop up. Our office Forester may have some opportunities for my to do some forestry work, which is really exciting because I haven’t spent nearly as much time in the mountains as I would have liked.

These last 5 weeks or so are definitely going to be cherished, I’ve loved working for the BLM and learning from so many different disciplines. I’m going to make sure I make the last bit of this internship as memorable as possible, in and out of the office.

Over and out,

V

The last half of July and most of August have been a whirlwind of rare plant monitoring and GeoBOB! I’ve been helping out a lot with Silene spaldingii (SISP2) monitoring – I’ve been to sites with 50+ plants (not usually so robust!) – and with that comes updating GeoBOB, a geographic database used for biological observations of rare/threatened/endangered plants and animals. Once I got through the training, I was ready to go! I’ve been lucky enough to see populations of over 100 plants and located 2 new sites! It’s been a great year for not just SISP2, but most late spring and summer plants, much in part to the heavy spring rains! As the SISP2 monitoring wound down, I was lucky enough to get to spend a week at the San Juan Islands National Monument collecting seeds.

The timing lined up perfectly with the eclipse, which was ~90% visible at the Islands. That Monday morning I went out with a park ranger named Rosie (if you BLMers read the articles on Inside Passage, Rosie was featured in a story a few weeks back about working with Junior Rangers on the islands) to Iceberg Point to get a feel for the island’s plant life and for Rosie to complete the monitoring at Iceberg Point Monument. We counted about 23 people, 2 dogs (on leashes!! Go Humans!), and 23 sea lions! While there we enjoyed the eclipse; Lopez Island got considerably cooler and the sunlight dimmed, although nothing like what was experienced by those in the path of totality.

Tuesday, I was island hopping with Nick, the outdoor recreation planner, (also featured on a recent Inside Passage article) to Cattlepoint, another part of the monument found on San Juan Island. He was going out to meet with a contractor doing some work on the lighthouse, and I was going to attempt to collect some seeds in the sand dunes and coastal prairie area. Once we finished up at Cattlepoint, Nick got a message from a volunteer letting him know they had spotted a part of a broken buoy that was stuck on the shoreline out at American Camp (another part of the Monument, and technically National Park Service land). What I’ve quickly learned about the Islands out here is that everyone helps each other out. Our BLM office out there has many partners and they work together to ensure that the lands out on the islands stay as ‘wild and native’ as possible. On our way to American Camp, Nick was telling me the story about American Camp, English Camp, and the Pig War. Little did I know, but this monument was actually where the only known war (during the settlement of the United States) had been avoided.

History goes that at American Camp there was a soldier by the name of Lyman Cutlar that had created his garden and recently planted potatoes; he was quite proud of his little production. In English Camp, there was a soldier by the name of Charles Griffin; Griffin owned a pig, a rather mischievous pig. Griffin’s pig would sneak into Cutlar’s garden and dig up Cutlar’s potatoes, making Cutlar understandably angry. Cutlar warned Griffin that his pig was trespassing and digging up his potatoes; Cutlar also warned Griffin that if his pig didn’t cut it out, Cutlar would kill the pig. Of course, Griffin couldn’t stop the pig, the pig continued stealing potatoes, and Cutlar followed his threat of killing the pig.This situation was what eventually (nearly) led to war; known as the Pig War. However, before any battles broke out an arbitrator, Kaiser Wilhem I of Germany, was able to peacefully resolve the war. And there you have it, the short (hi)story of the Pig War. TLDR: A British pig was stealing potatoes from an American garden. The garden’s proprietor, an American soldier shot the British Pig. The pig’s owner, a British soldier, found out; the two sides nearly went to war over a pig and some potatoes.

Anyway, without much luck, Nick and I did not find the styrofoam part of the buoy (and hope that someone else does before it gets blown to smithereens by a storm and does some real damage to the wildlife).

Wednesday, I was able to go out with another volunteer of the monument in search of some seeds. It was a great day spend hiking at Watmough Bay (where the salmon are begging to be fished) and the Holodiscus discolor (ocean spray) was perfect for collecting. Because I was only there for a week, I didn’t get to collect any vouchers since the plants had already gone to seed, and thus no pictures of ocean spray in flower.

Thursday, I went island hopping to San Juan Island again to meet up with one of the monument’s many partners. Eliza, part of the San Juan County Landbank, was creating local pollinator seed packets, and I was going to take a tour of Red Mill Farm and help create seed packets. But of course, not without a mishap. In my early morning stupor, I managed to get on the ferry right before the one I was actually supposed to take, and wound up back in the Americas, as the islanders would say. After boarding the correct ferry, I met up with Eliza, and got to learn more about the partnerships BLM has forged out on the islands. It’s so great to see the entire community rallying behind native plant preservation and land conservation, and really just trying to be better environmental stewards. Another cool fact I learned is that the San Juan Islands have adopted and created their own Leave No Trace principles, in large part to Nick’s efforts (Thanks, Nick!!).

Friday, I also went island hopping with Marcia, the monument manager. We had plans of wading out to Indian Island from Orcas Island – having been told the tide would be somewhere between 3 to 10 inches, to collect some native seed. We got out there and were surprised that the tide was indeed not 3 to 10 inches, but we gave it a shot anyway. As the water level began to near our knees, we didn’t think it would be wise to continue since we weren’t even at the deepest part yet, and didn’t plan on needing to swim over. While I didn’t get to visit Indian Island, I can say I’ve officially been in the Salish Sea! While waiting for the ferry, we stopped at a bakery, and grabbed some of the most delicious pastries I’ve tried (their pan au chocolat definitely rivals the ones I had in France)! So if you ever find yourself on Orcas Island in Washington, make it a point to check out Brown Bear Baking. You won’t regret it. Also check out the history museum, it’s got this cool sculpture outside with describing how man came to be from an old native tale, very interesting!

As I said my goodbyes to the islands, I couldn’t help but stop by Orcas on my way back to the mainland and snag some goodies to enjoy in Spokane. Once I got back to Anacortes, I had thought I would drive down to Seattle and explore the city a bit more. But, like much of my plans, they changed, and I found myself driving to North Cascades National Park. Of course, with it being the National Park Service’s 101st birthday (Happy belated NPS!) and the start of classes lingering ominously, all the campgrounds within reasonable distance were full, so I took a quick little hike up Thunder Knob to get a spectacular view of Diablo Lake. Thanks to the rangers that recommended it, and I hope that their stations get less busy since today is the last day senior passes are $10!!

After my little short excursion, I drove through the rest of the Cascades enjoying a spectacular sunset, and found myself back in Spokane. A busy week full of amazing views; I honestly couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities CLM has given me. Here’s to making the most of the next 2 months I have left in the Border Field Office.

Until next time,

V

Odlin Beach, Lopez Island, WA

Sunset at Odlin Beach, Lopez Island, WA

Island Art that explains how man came to earth, Orcas Island, WA

Watmough Bay, BLM, Lopez Island, WA

Diablo Lake from Thunder Knob, North Cascades National Park, WA

It’s hard to believe five months have already come and gone. Writing this, I am currently looking down the last week I have of this internship, before I pack up and road-trip back to the Midwest. Last May, I departed from the bustling Chicago-land area to begin work out here in Burns, Oregon, a town that prides itself on having more cattle than people. My concept of Oregon had predominantly been formed by alleged Big-Foot sightings and shows like Portlandia and Twin Peaks. I had been completely unware of the Eastern desert half of the state, a cowboy’s paradise.

The land here is vast and open. The horizons stretch on forever, occasionally broken by juniper and sage-brush covered mountains far off in the distance. Sunsets and sunrises are humbling to witness, creating scarlet bands on the edge of the sky that encompasses your entire field of vision. The land may be dry and at first glace empty, but upon closer examination, it is teeming with life. Elk, mule deer, and antelopes dash alongside the roads. Wild horses gallop in packs up and down steep slopes with tremendous ease. On the ground, lizards and snakes dart from rock to rock, while hawks, osprey, and turkey vultures whiz by, or circle overhead. Streams and rivers lay hidden, tucked in mountain valleys, and hot springs gurgle and emerge from the ground on the edges of the desert. This is a quite place, and a beautiful place.

Being able to work out in this land has been a privilege I won’t soon forget. I have learned much, both on a professional and personal level. This job is through the Bureau of Land Management, and has been an eye-opening experience on how the government functions, as well as how there can be so many wildly varying (and often justifiable) opinions towards the government. The BLM is focused on land management, and as a result must take into account resource extraction, livestock utilization, recreation use, archeological value, and environmental sustainability, all at once, for the same plot of land. Each of these interests are overseen by different departments in the BLM office, and each of these interests have different third-party activist groups either strongly in-favor, or strongly opposed to the actions of the BLM. From my limited perspective, it seems hard to appease both environmental groups and cattle ranchers, when a land plot must be used for both cattle grazing, recreation, and be simultaneously preserved in a sustainable manner. While the BLM does its best to placate all of these array of interests, it is not always infallible. The BLM, like any organization, is composed of people who come with their own biases, and are capable of making mistakes. This is not to say the BLM is ineffective; in fact, I believe the BLM is a million times better than the alternative of having no regulatory force over these large swaths of land. In my short time here, I have discovered the BLM does amazing work and I do genuinely think it is slowly improving the land here, as well as the relationships with the large web of people it must work with.

On a personal level, working here has been pretty eye opening post 2016-election. I hail from the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, an area with a heavy liberal demographic tilt, and as a result, I was a bit hesitant coming out to this rural and conservative area after such a divisive and polarizing election. In my time here, during offhand conversations, I was bluntly asked strong political-value based questions (e.g. gun control, affirmative action, immigration policy, etc.) and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to have dialogue with people of starkly opposing opinions. Now this wasn’t always the case, and sometimes conversations had to be dropped as soon as they were started, but for the most part, I found myself having constructive back and forth talks about issues that I had formerly believed to have no middle-ground. And while opinions weren’t always changed, I think for the most part, both parties walked away more sympathetic to where the other side was coming from, even if we agreed to disagree. On a deep level, this has provided me a lot of hope for the future of this country.

In a week I will begin a road-trip home. I will leave here with many good memories much to reflect on. I am grateful for the opportunity I had to work out here, the other interns I worked with, the people I met, and the beautiful nature I saw. I will be leaving, but I think I shall be coming back in the near future…after all, supposedly Big-Foot is still out here, waiting to be discovered.

-Carter Cranberg (Burns/Hines District BLM)

Indian Paintbrush

My Cubicle

Wild Horse Rush Hour

Wild-Horse Lake

The whole Carson City team drove to the coast

To be trained at a university research outpost.

We met agency employees and consultants

Every one of whom about plants was exultant.

The instructors were such plant enthusiasts,

That we didn’t mind foggy weather forecasts.

They also knew all the local vegetation

And were able to help us through all our frustration.

The goal of the course was to learn about classes

Of California vegetation, of which there are masses.

The book listing them all is such a huge tome

That there’s no way we ever could bring one back home.

We practiced two methods for determining types,

Though agreeing on answers caused quite a few gripes.

Estimating cover was somewhat contentious

And about their judgment a few were pretentious.

Finally our decisions were all calibrated,

And similar values each species was rated.

We learned to classify both plots and whole stands

And tried out the methods in valleys and uplands.

We learned how the data would be analyzed,

And how vegetation types for each point be advised.

Each type is defined by species and their cover —

It’s quite thrilling when the right one is discovered.

Now every time we go out to find seeds

We’ll look differently at associated species.

How rare is this veg type? What patterns are there?

We see vegetation types change everywhere.

It’s a whole different way to look at a landscape

And when we look out, a map starts to take shape.

Just imagine if every type someday were defined

And on a big map communities were outlined.

This level of detail gives so much information

Vital for landscape management plan creation.

Thanks CNPS, and our amazing teachers,

For showing us a new lens for ecological features.

It’s hard to believe that I have just over one month left in my internship here in Carson City, Nevada. There is, however, still much to do with the remaining time that I have.

My team and I just returned from a week long escapade in coastal California. The first part of the trip was a mini vacation, in which we got to explore the undulating streets of downtown San Francisco, camp in the breathtaking Big Basin Redwood Forest and discover the wonders of Angel Island.

The second part of this excursion was dedicated to the rapid vegetation assessment and releve(accent over the second “e”) course we signed up for. This training showed us how to assess a given stand of vegetation to determine what plants occurred in an area and how abundant they were. This data can then be used to map the area in GIS which can then be utilized by land managers.

The remainder of the internship will be designated for SOS collections. Next week my crew and I will be heading to the Mono Lake area, which I am really excited for.

Until next time,

Jason Fibel, BLM-Carson City

The Roseburg BLM office is unique in the amount of timber land it manages. Public timber land is certainly not something I (a Wisconsin native) am used to, but I’ve come to love the coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest. And I am slowly coming to understand the very complicated and ever-changing Resource Management Plan the BLM uses to try to meet its multi-faceted objectives of supplying timber, providing recreation areas, and preserving biodiversity.

Over the past month, I have had a number of exciting opportunities to tag along with a number of foresters with different amounts of formal education and experience (ranging from a few classes to a phd). Through these experiences, I have absorbed some very big picture ideas of forest management paradigms and practices, as well as many hands-on, practical, and specific management techniques.

The first foresters I tagged along with were actually conducting a PCT (Pre-Commercial Thinning) which involved thinning out land units that were designated for timber harvest (check out the specifics here!) Much of my botany internship here focused on grasses and forbs, and I actually spent a lot of time hiking through the forest in order to find open meadows. Trees were not necessarily a destination, merely something to get through. With these foresters however, I learned to make educated guesses about fertilization treatments, thinning treatments, stand age, and land allocation types just by walking through the understory and being observant towards the average distance between trees, the straightness of the trunks, the distance at which foliage starts, the diameters, the crown development, the amount of sunlight that permeates through the canopy, etc.While flagging the boundary of the thinning unit, I learned the art of controlled slides down cliffs, bushwhacking through literally anything, and tying knots in less than a second. This was certainly a fun day and a great introduction to the hands-on, day-to-day of forest management.

In fact, it is a higher up position within the BLM that decides when PCTs need to take place. The District Silviculturist is in charge of identifying when, where, and how much to thin out a unit. The Roseburg Swiftwater Silviculturist occupies the cubicle next to ours, and was kind enough to take us out on a field trip the next week to show  us how she actually collects data on different units.

First, she creates a random set of sites within a unit. Then, she visits each site and estimates the basal area, canopy cover, and takes the DBH and age of a subset of the trees.   After enough random sites, a statistically robust representation of the entire unit can be made.

Different units have different abiotic conditions, such as the amount of sunlight, water, and soil nutrients that are available to them. This can make a drastic difference in the growth rate of the trees and the overall density of trees that can be maintained. Using growth charts that are specific to these different forest subregions, the silviculturist will then make a determination of whether a PCT is advisable, the ideal tree spacing to thin to, and when a thinning or regeneration harvest (more colloquially known as a clearcut harvest) should take place.

Lastly, some bigger picture concepts I’ve picked up on. The BLM occupies an interesting position in that we are tasked with two seemingly contradictory goals; on the one hand we are given a target in terms of millions of board feet we need to produce each year, and at the same time on the same land we manage habitats for botanical diversity, endangered species, and recreation. The BLM is often sued both by private timber companies for not supplying sufficient timber, and by environmental groups for destroying the habitats we are required by law to protect. It’s often said a good compromise leaves both sides unhappy, and this often seems to be the case with the BLM. There is perhaps no right answer, other than ultimately this is a organization meant to represent the will and interests of the public, and balance opposing interests in the most fair and transparent way possible.

But it is also important to keep in mind that the science of land management is still being improved! Researchers and public land managers are always innovating on ways to maximize the biodiversity and timber production that we can have from public land. The BLM for instance, does not do 100% total clearcuts like private timber companies will. The benefits of leaving around 10 trees per acre can result in large improvements in the ecological health by allowing legacy effects to affect future succession, while not severely cutting into the amount of board feet the unit ultimately produces. Another increasingly popular practice is Variable Retention Harvests, which essentially is removing timber from a unit unevenly, to create structural complexity instead of a monoculture of the same age and type of trees. Additionally, there are many important species that only thrive in the early successional stages of forests. While old growth forest is certainly important and needs protection, forest succession through wildfires and management by Native Americans has been taking place for thousands of years. I was very lucky to hear about the many new practices that are being adapted by public land managers tagging along with a group of graduate students from the University of Washington on their field trip to Douglas County.

I have certainly had an amazing time these past four months learning all about grasses, forbs, fires, and forests. And I am looking forward to the next month and what it will entail!

Temperatures are dropping rapidly in Idaho, and I’m ready to flee before my long route back to New England starts getting snowy.

Our work truck one chilly morning. Freezing cold in October is normal in New England. Freezing cold a week after 90 degree averages is just one of those Idaho things.

When I was first offered a CLM position in Shoshone, ID, I was honestly very hesitant to accept. I didn’t know anything about Idaho, and it was frightening to consider living in a remote area so far from everyone and everything I’ve ever known. Looking back now, I’m grateful to my past self that I took that leap! My time with the BLM was an incredibly valuable experience with awesome co-workers, and Idaho has been a beautiful place to explore.

I’ve been doing some last minute projects for the past month. We wrapped up our assessments of 5 Year ESRs – areas that burned 5 years ago and were seeded to hopefully maintain a healthy habitat. This was absolutely my favorite project of the summer – other CLM interns and I worked together judging whether seeded plants had successfully established in old fire areas, and wrote reports discussing our findings and recommending further management actions. It was awesome insight into how the BLM makes large-scale management and funding decisions.

The last few weeks have been given to sagebrush mapping, which is pretty dull work, but vital to sagebrush seed collection efforts. We often drove 7-8 hours a day checking on isolated sagebrush populations – whether we had the right species, how big the population was, how productive the plants were, insect damage, etc. We found ourselves alternating between confidence and complete confusion in regards to sagebrush ID, but I think we found our groove by the end. Hopefully we found enough good Wyoming big sagebrush populations for seed collection, which will be carried out later this fall.

Mountings of my SOS co-workers specimens, plus sagebrush mapping specimens to confirm which species we found. Many that we initially thought were Wyoming turned out to be Big basin, a less desirable species. Oops.

I recently got to check out a juniper treatment project – large swaths of juniper are removed to increase sage-grouse habitat, with the added benefit of reducing fire risks in mountain areas. It was a bit shocking to see the destruction and desolation created by the machines, but the result will hopefully be healthy sagebrush slopes with plenty of habitat for sage-grouse. Sometimes environmental management isn’t pretty, but the results are worthwhile.

These machines grind up juniper and reduce it to shreds – scary! But the downed juniper will insulate seeded plants through the winter.

Temporarily ugly. What was once a low diversity juniper forest will soon be prime sagebrush/sage-grouse habitat.

Learning about all of this management and project assessment stuff was great, because I’ve been leaning more toward a professional career in natural resources management than botany. However, I am disappointed that my botanical skills weren’t noticeably strengthened this summer. Working with a fuels crew meant that we saw pretty degraded habitats that were recovering slowly from recent fires – a whole lot of cheatgrass, Sandbergs bluegrass, phlox and not much else. It was awesome to learn a lot more about grasses, I was lucky enough to attend a Carex identification workshop, and we searched for rare plants on several occasions, but more opportunities to botanize would have been great to help me learn the families better. It’s something I’m determined to improve upon in my own time.

Like I mentioned above, working with the BLM helped me develop a lot of confidence in natural resources. But I’m 100% certain that my choice to live away from my known world for a while did more for my confidence than all of that (valuable as it still was!). To anyone who might be reading this blog after receiving a similar offer from CLM, do it. Leave your big city world, or rural corner of the country, and test yourself with something new and maybe a little scary. I moved from Boston to rural and very-much-on-fire Idaho, made friends from strangers, and learned a whole new set of plants in a whole new set of environments. Kinda doubt that anything’s gonna seem insurmountable after this.

Bye Idaho! I look forward to seeing your scenic vistas again someday.

It’s hard to believe 5 months ago I was fresh in Twin Falls, ID, starting my first botany tech job, adjusting to a new landscape that felt unknown and alien. 5 months ago I couldn’t see the end of it. I felt so far away, geographically and otherwise, to the things and places and people that felt like home. It was a rough transition, and to be honest I never quite adjusted to it. But people told me, and I knew, it would fly by. And it did. I leave Idaho in three days and could not be more excited, and am also grateful for what this experience has given me. It’s so important to step out of your familiar bubble- it challenges us to grow and communicate in different ways. It introduces us to new plants and ecosystems. It reminds us of how big the world is.

I spent a good amount of time kayaking on the Snake River. I <3 water sports

Kayak parking spot

It was an interesting experience to be the guinea pig of having a CBG intern on the fuels crew in the Twin Falls office. My official title was “botanical specialist,” though half the time I felt like I was floundering in plant identification in a place completely new to me, while having the people on my crew look to me as their expert. I was learning and teaching at the same time and it really didn’t make me feel very confident. I’m skilled in taxonomy but the speed in which I was expected (or felt like I was expected) to know these new species felt overwhelming at times. I also had almost no experience in grass identification, which was a huge percentage of what we were looking at.
There were a couple crash courses in plant ID of the area in the very beginning, but after that I felt mostly left to my own devices. There weren’t a lot of people I was able to turn to in the office. At least people I was introduced to- as the season went on I would randomly meet people to ask when I had an unknown, but it wasn’t facilitated.
It got easier, and I felt more confident as I saw plants more often, and honestly forb diversity was pretty low in most of the areas we monitored anyway, so there weren’t many I needed to commit to memory. I guess I was just expecting more of a botany mentorship.

Mimulus nanus looking adorable

Bitter root (Lewisia rediviva) is one of my favorite flowers and I got to see it more than I ever have before this summer. Look at those stamens dang.

Overall though, I did enjoy working in the fire program. I’m interested in fire ecology, and reading old reports on fires and then using them in conjunction with the new data we collected to write new reports was fascinating, and gave me a taste of what it takes to make management recommendations. It also inspired me to go out and get my Red Card next year, because I am interested in prescribed burns.
I also familiarized myself more with ArcGIS (my arch nemesis), learned to use Avenza and Collector, got better at reading maps and using compasses, learned techniques for rare plant monitoring, got really good at driving a 4wd truck for crazy amounts of hours on crazy back road mazes, and  learned how to navigate the bureaucracy that is work in the federal government. I feel more confident in applying to jobs now.
I still do wish I had been placed in the Pacific Northwest, not just because it’s familiar, but because it is where I plan on putting down my roots, therefore finding jobs. Monitoring sagebrush steppe is very different than monitoring coniferous forests, with it a whole other host of necessary skills specific to that ecosystem, which I didn’t gain here. But I do believe that my baseline knowledge and skills, along with obviously being able to quickly pick up necessary monitoring techniques and botanical skill, will be enough experience to help me find a job for next field season.

City of Rocks Natural Reserve. I got to work around here for a day last week.

City of Rocks

Truly the gem of this season though was being able to be in a part of the country that I would otherwise spend very little time in. I fell in love with the Sawtooth Mountains to the north. I got to explore Yellowstone. I met badgers and coyotes and moose and three bears (one of which I watched make off with our bag of food). I’m not much of a geology nerd, but I was constantly in awe of the canyons and valleys and volcanic history and crazy rock formations. There may not be jutting mountains or towering trees around Twin Falls, but there are beautiful swimming holes that you don’t see until you walk through farm fields and look into the canyon; and small, fleeting, beautiful flowers; and the stillness of being in an expanse of sagebrush. I appreciate the secret beauty of southern Idaho. I don’t know if I would come back on my own accord, but I am glad I got to know it, even briefly.

Secret lake, hidden from view by expanses of cornfields and pasture. My favorite swimming spot this summer.

Box Canyon- where the water is mesmerizing but frigid

The Bruneau Canyon

Dave’s Creek,The Jarbridge Wilderness. We had a work camping trip here to collect tree data.

I am obsessed with the Sawtooths

OBSESSED I TELL YOU

Monitoring Castelleja christii- a Paintbrush endemic to the top of Mt Harrison.

Anemone patens looking real good with my mani in SE Montana

So did this adorable Lewisia pygmaea- Pygmy Bitter Root

Seas of Erythronium grandiflorum in SE Montana (Glacier Lily)

Ok I did some pretty cool things this summer.

Sofia V