There is no standard day here at the Uncompahgre field office. One day, you are driving in a UTV to the edge of the wilderness and the next you are struggling to create a shapefile in an air-conditioned office. In my first months at the BLM, I have been immersed in the Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring Program or AIM. Most of the time, we drive our Dodge Ram over bumpy, rock riddled dirt roads to a randomly chosen site in the Adobe Badlands of North Delta. In the first week, when I was introduced to the 40,000 acres where our 60 plots were randomly strewn- I had some trepidations. The area looked barren and over run by the last years growth of Galleta grass and some of the hills appeared to be man made deposits, they were so bare and perfectly rounded.

But on a closer look there is something to see: bits of fossilized shells from the time that this area was an inland sea, shadscale, Spanish Bayonet, charming woody aster and -if you’re there at the right time- blooming prickly pear and strawberry hedgehog cacti. Occasionally, the hills move as reintroduced Pronghorns run over them and spooked prairie dogs scurry into their holes. All it took to begin to see the life in this area, was spending time  trekking over its clay soils and through the dried up riverbeds, all the while stopping to examine the difference between the grasses.

Being in the desert has taught me to consider the details and then, the implications therein.  It took paying attention to something as small as the pebbles covering the ground. . What does the overabundance of snakeweed indicate? Why is this Wyoming Sage thriving here and nowhere else? Did you notice the suddenly round, riverine stones?

It is easier to love something that is large and colorful- charismatic fauna that is immediately visible and awe-inspiring in its presence like a towering redwood or the snow capped peaks of the San Juan Mountains.  It is harder to love a bare soil dominated by drought stressed plants with their subdued colors, stunted growth and struggling small flowers. Everyday in the field, we must look for the story in the landscape and, honestly, I have cheered when I saw a thriving shrub. The evolving relationship I have with the landscape as my knowledge of its ecology deepens is one of my favorite things about this position thus far.

We have just completed our 46th plot out of 60 and we will be taking a break because of the heat. I am surprised that I will miss the dry land of North Delta. Thanks for teaching me patience, honing my eye for detail and showing me- so clearly- the power of learning to appreciate an area of land based on the delicate balance of its ecology rather than the colors of its flowers.

Uncompahgre Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

I’ve been keeping busy up here in the North woods. I conducted plant surveys for areas which have been proposed for timber sales, searching for listed plants. Also, I spent some time collecting data for the final year of a two year study looking at bee diversity on the forest with pan traps and opportunistic netting. Specimens were put into alcohol and sent to a third party for identification. I was responsible for three of the nine observation sites on the forest.

I checked in on the establishment of some experimental plots of Vaccinium cespitosum. The V. cespitosum is an obligate host plant for larvae of the  northern blue butterfly (Plebejus idas), a listed species which has been extirpated from most areas of the forest. Also got to spent some time working with the youth conservation corps to remove an abandoned hunting cabin from the forest which was officially considered a dump site.

The forest has been providing an abundance of delicious oyster mushrooms.

And, for some fun, here are some of the neat plants I have encountered.

While it may be tough to believe, there are in fact trees and forests in Wyoming. The state offers more than just range land and barren plains. When making a trip into the mountains, the trees are as abundant as the wildflowers and the forests are just as beautiful.

My mountains are the Big Horn Mountains and the Laramie Mountain Range. All of my time so far as been spent on Muddy Mountain, because many of the other forests are still cloaked with snow. In my short two weeks in Casper, Wyoming, I have already begun to cruise timber, mark trees, and prepare for a summer of forest management. I can now visually estimate a tree’s diameter at breast height to see if its good for a post or pole (2-6 inches) or timber (8+ inches). Every different piece of the forest has a use, and must be properly managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

And the Bureau has quite the task. Because the BLM manages public lands of the United States, a proper forest management plan is not always straightforward. They must balance recreation needs (hiking, biking, photography) with supplying goods to the public (hunting, wood products, range lands) while still preserving the natural ecosystems (animal habitat, ecosystem services, and health of a forest). With so many diverse goals, an interdisciplinary mindset is critical. I have had the opportunity to work with wildlife biologists, archaeologists, range specialists, as well as my forester mentor.

The first two weeks has been a wonderful crash course into what the entire summer will look like (hint, no two days will be the same!). I’m eager and excited for what new opportunities await me each day, and am incredibly appreciative for the chance to be a CLM Intern in 2018.

Here’s a glimpse of my office!

Forestry Intern

Casper Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

Two weeks in and I am officially feeling settled in Buffalo, WY! I am working at the BLM office under the Outdoor Recreation Planner, and having a blast thus far. Though I do have a few main projects that I am working on, it seems as though every day will be different and keep me on my toes (which I really enjoy).

On my first field day, we hiked out to a Wilderness Study Area to determine the (relatively) easiest path that we might be able to create a trail for public access. Low and behold, we bushwhacked ~5 miles through sagebrush and Juniper, up and down many steep ridgelines, to only make it half way to the WSA! After giving in to defeat and dehydration we had to turn around, and only once we made it back to the car I realized I had gained a new found love for the rolling hills of the Wyoming prairie.

My second field day we got to meet with ranchers to discuss a questions, concerns, and ideas for our management plan for a recreation area that is adjacent to where they run their cattle. This was an incredible experience as I got to be a part of a collaborative conversation with a diverse range of stakeholders, values, and viewpoints on how to work together towards a few common goals.

Since then, I have got to help coordinate a volunteer day for local high school kids, hike into and clean up remote camp sites, and be a part of an interdisciplinary team working on Environmental Assessment. I even got to go out with an Archeologist  one day, in which we found a 6,000 year old projectile point!  

When driving into this area, I was enamored by the Utah-esque red sandstone cliffs that give a beautiful contrast to the deep green pine forests. While being awestruck by the scenery beyond, it is easy to almost miss the ~1,000 foot deep canyon with towering white limestone cliffs that seems to appear out of nowhere. 

All in all, it has been a fun and exciting start for the first couple weeks that has only made me fall more in love with Wyoming. To boot, Buffalo is a friendly small town where all our neighbors made sure to make us feel right at home by baking us a pie and cookies for a house-warming gift. Not to mention, you are right at the base of the snow-capped Bighorn Mountains, which beg for your attention every day with the view right from town.

I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the summer and all the adventures that are in store.

Cheers!

Ryan DeAngelis

Buffalo, WY

BLM

Hi friends!

One Friday afternoon, about a month ago, I graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.S. in Sustainable Agriculture. That same day, I began my 23 hour journey by car to Buffalo, Wyoming. I’ve been out west a few times for short term trips. However, this has been my first experience in Wyoming and my first time living in a town with a population of less than 5,000. The past few months have provided lots of opportunities for growth and situations to adjust to. I’m so thankful for the new experiences, people, job, and scenery. I’ve been able to visit 2 national parks already (Buffalo is within driving distance of several) and witness some breathtaking scenery.

Building new friendships with people who have similar interests has been very rewarding to me. The mountains, wildlife, and vast prairies of Wyoming has shown me how different the ecosystem here is from what I am used to. I’ve been challenged to learn about range plants, animals, GIS, and a variety of other useful skills. I miss my home and friends in Kentucky, but I realize why I need to be here- for growth and the opportunity to explore. After 4 weeks it has been reinforced how much I love my state, as absence makes the heart grow fonder. I may not be in Buffalo for long, but it has already left a mark that has changed me for the better.

-Savannah McGuire

Range Intern

Bureau of Land Management- Buffalo Field Office

Buffalo, Wyoming

One of our range sites in Kaycee, Wyoming (Red Rock Wall)

Someone kindly donated rhubard from their garden to the office

Wildflowers picked in Buffalo

Making new friends at CPR Training day

Two weeks into my second summer with the Casper BLM, I am struck by the simultaneous newness and familiarity of it all. Driving for hours over highly-eroded dirt roads or hiking through public lands that haven’t been inventoried since I was four years old, I am reminded of the thrill of living and working in a place with so much uninhabited land.

A year and three weeks ago, I left behind 22 years of big city life and arrived in Casper, Wyoming — where for the first time, I could walk into a coffee shop and be the only one there.

One of the things I’ve learned about working somewhere like Casper is that the abundance of open land makes the work diverse. As a hydrology technician, I do so much more than look at water. The first two weeks of this summer have consisted of a lot of planning, some map making, exploring new areas, 15+ hours of driving, a lot of mud, a Proper Functioning Condition (PFC) workshop, processing water samples, and a family of mice found in a cardboard box of sample bottles.

When every day is an adventure, the unexpected becomes the norm.

Everything isn’t always clearcut. It’s important to be flexible because plans will change. A rancher will call with a leaky pipe that needs to be fixed immediately. A 50-year rain event will render bentonite roads untravelable for days. What appears to be a 40-minute drive on a map will take an hour and a half on sketchy dirt roads. Occasionally, an afternoon hail storm will leave you fishtailing back to the office. Planning and organization can only get you so far.

It’s interesting knowing what I know from last summer and seeing new interns experience Wyoming country and all of its challenges for the first time. It’s easy to forget that I was once that person who gawked at every pronghorn and had never navigated using ownership layers. Two hours seemed like a long drive to me. I hadn’t experienced wet bentonite and barely even recognized the rocky dirt on the side of the mountain as a road my first week in the field.

These Wyoming country quirks seem so second nature to me now. Township, cattle guard, and allotment are everyday words in my vocabulary. And yet, there’s still a particular wonder about exploring new parts of Wyoming, watching baby pronghorn frolic through the fields, driving for hours without seeing another vehicle. I’ve learned a lot in the past year, but I still have a lot to learn. I look forward to all the new adventures this summer brings and all the old memories it reawakens.

The first two weeks of my internship with the Bureau of Land Management’s Rawlins Field Office have held intrigue and excitement via a vast collection of ecosystems comprised of spectacular faunal diversity amongst an awe-inspiring landscape. With spring’s arrival shortly before my own, I have caught the biologists and associated staff’s entrance into their field season as their new projects have begun firing on all cylinders.  With a goal of surveying the herpetofauna located within the boundaries of the RFO, BLM biologists utilize an array of strategies and methods including but not limited to: dip-netting, seining, drift fencing (with associated funnel traps), pit fall traps and point-transect observations.

The High Desert of Wyoming may not be well-advertised as a home for amphibians but present in this habitat are several. Dip netting in the first week of the internship resulted in the catch and observation of Western tiger salamander (Ambystoma mavortium) larvae.  Following such we had dialogue regarding the individual’s life cycle and the possibility that we were observing a neotenic specimen, that is, it had retained its juvenile (larval) characteristics into sexual maturity.  This state, if present, would likely have resulted from environmental pressures associated with less than ideal conditions in the animal’s domain.  In the pictured individual’s case this was a small, isolated detention pool with high turbidity, limited vegetative cover and is a location utilized by grazing cattle for drinking water.  There is presumably, although not definitively, a low level of connectivity between similar bodies of water in this area although other distinct individuals were sampled at this point.

I expect this internship to be an opportunity for continued education and such will allow for perspective gain. Additionally, it will allow for the chance to perform hard sampling on uncommon species in remote regions; the idea of which should be enough to stimulate any scientist or nature enthusiast.  More to come.

This month has pretty much been all about larval collections. At 2:45 in the morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we arrive at the bridge up in Chiloquin that spans the Williamson River. We take our nets, tie them to the bridge, and let them fish the river for 20 minutes. Then we pull the nets, dump the fish into a small insulated bucket, and reset the net for another 20 minute fishing period. We do this for 4 sets and we are usually leaving the bridge right as the sun is starting to come up. After getting back to Gone Fishing we have to count out every single one. This part can get interesting on days when the catch is super high. The fish never seem to want to leave the bucket one at a time, so the whole process takes both focus and patience which can be a challenge at 7am when you have been up since 1:30. I have developed a habit of drinking a lot of coffee.
It’s been pretty suspenseful. The spawning is a little different each year so you never know the size or shape of the larval peak. The first week we didn’t catch anything. That was actually what we were hoping for because it meant we didn’t miss part of the window. On the other hand it was a little frustrating getting up at 1:30 in the morning with nothing but a 0 to show for it. On the 7th we caught our first larval sucker, on the 9th we caught 37 more, then the catch started exploding.
We have room at the gone fishing facility to stock 6000 juvenile suckers in the outdoor ponds. Accounting for larval mortality the goal is to collect 10000 larvae. The drift could be small or really short lived so during the beginning of the collections there is definitely an urge to collect as many as possible. Despite catching 922 on our third haul since catching anything we decided to add a third net just to be safe. This proved to be a little redundant once the catch per net went from 128 to 264. At this point we had already caught over 6000 fish and the catch was still going strong. We want to collect across the entire spawning period to avoid artificially selecting for early spawners, so we dialed it back to 2 nets and once we hit our target we actually released some of the larvae we collected on the high effort days. Right now we are still pulling in about 500 per day with 2 buckets. That’s far from the peak of 1700 so it seems we are winding down but you never know. There have been a couple false springs this year so we might have two peaks.

In the first week of my internship in Grand Junction Colorado I have found myself leaning new plants and their ecology. The flora here is unlike what I have experienced before and it manifests a diversity of organisms that is different depending on the ecoregion I find myself. The experience of learning the inhabitants of a space begins for me with becoming aware of them as individuals. From this point of view, it is important to identify organisms to their latin genus and species at some point, however this requires many hours of keying out plants and is secondary to an initial awareness of the variance of individuals present in a landscape. My goal is to reach the point that I previously experienced where there were few species that seemed new to me, and the ones I had come in contact with appeared familiar, while still unique.

Some of the ostensibly more exciting plants I have seen the past week were Astragalus linifolius and Skelerocatus glauca, both are considered endangered in Colorado. While surveying some trails for Sage Grouse Habitat a coworker and I stumbled upon at first an isolated A. linifolius, we then decided to do transects only to find that the area was scattered with many individuals. At this point we spent the following hours scouting and recording the gps coordinates of the edges of the population. While mapping this area I stumbled upon a single flowering S. glauca, and after this discovery we started to survey this area and found 6 other individual cacti! It was a rather exciting afternoon and that left me feeling accomplished, because both populations were previously unknown and represent a good sign for both species.

I almost cried when I saw the mountains again, I was so happy. Driving west from Chicago I wondered what my internship would be like at the BLM Colorado State Office in Denver, CO. Although I have spent a lot of time doing field work between undergrad and my graduate degrees, I had little experience with Rare Plant Monitoring, which is the focus of my internship.

The team searching for Oreocarya reveallii

Monday morning I met the team I will be working with and I remembered how amazing everyone is in this field. By Tuesday we were headed out to the four corners regions to monitor Oreocarya revealii, a fairly recently described species. It was exciting to read about all the research that informed our monitoring efforts, from genetic studies to research concerning edaphic habits. The methods used to understand this species were ones that I learned about in my graduate coursework, so I was quite pleased that the knowledge I gained in school was carrying over to work. While O. revealii is considered BLM Sensitive, it is still being determined whether it should be listed as threatened or perhaps even endangered. This is where our team’s efforts come in. By studying the demographics of the species over time, we can help inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about how this plant is doing. Is the population increasing? Or decreasing? Or is it remaining stable? What threats might endanger the species and can these be abated?

My CLM Internship mentor Carol Dawson.

After spending a couple days with my mentor Carol, and the rest of the team, Phil and Sam, I know this will be an awesome summer. I am so happy to be able to work with such amazing people doing amazing work!

Walking back to the truck after completing a monitoring plot.