Today I had the pleasure of going out in the field with Virginia, a botanist from the research branch of the Forest Service. We had many missions in mind for the day, some of which were accomplished. The main reason that we went to High Peak (near Mt. Ida, Arkansas) was to get a good picture of the woodland sunflowers in bloom, which grow almost in a monoculture in some areas of the open forest there.

Virginia has been monitoring the vegetation in areas of High Peak since 2011 when a lightning strike started a wildfire there, and the FS decided to let it burn instead of sending out the fire suppression team. Some people worried that the overstory trees would all die, but it turned out that one year later 95% had survived, as well as 33% of the understory trees less than 15 cm. This research has had real-life management implications, as the FS has let a few more low-intensity natural fires burn since then. The sunflowers were just starting to bloom at that elevation, so we didn’t get the majestic photo we had hoped for.

Woodland sunflowers (Helianthus divaricatus) beginning to bloom. Photo by Virginia McDaniel

We bushwacked around recording what species were present. We also found a fair number of crystals, which the Hot Springs area is famous for. We dragged a white piece of cloth to collect ticks for a researcher in Texas. Somehow no ticks ended up on the cloth, but at least 10 ended up on us! We were finding them the whole way home.

Tomorrow Virginia, my mentor Susan and I are heading to the Ozarks FS office to give another invasive species workshop, so V and I collected invasive plant specimens while we were out like kudzu, stiltgrass, sorecia lespedeza and autumn olive, as well as their native lookalikes. Luckily we didn’t find many out in the field– we had to go over by the Dollar General to find kudzu and I will be walking around my neighborhood tonight to find mimosa and nodding thistle.

Me with kudzu (Pueraria spp.) taking over trees by the Dollar General. Photo by Virginia McDaniel.

Until next time! Take care! -G

       Answering the call of nature presents an interesting challenge for CLM Interns and other outdoors people alike. The vast majority of our lives are spent in civilization where we feel comfortable and can achieve privacy easily, but when you are out in the woods or on the steppe, answering this call of nature may not come very… naturally. In order to dispel some of the awkwardness that comes with “going number two”, I wanted to write a blog post to educate fellow and future interns on a topic that isn’t frequently explored. I know it’s easy to be immature about this topic but we are no longer in grade school and frankly I think there are some worthwhile points that merit discussion. We all poo. I poo. You poo. Your mentor poos too. Get over it.

An Intro to Poo

What is a poo?
I’ll keep this brief. Poo is a combination of waste material and bacteria. It is mostly made of water (~75%) and the rest is all the bacteria that helped digest the food, fiber, waste material, etc. It is usually brown because of a compound called bilirubin, which is a pigment that comes from the breakdown of red blood cells in the liver and bone marrow.

What is fiber?
Dietary fiber is a carbohydrate and the undigested portion of food derived from plants. Basically, it adds bulk to your stool and make it easier to pass. Good sources of fiber include whole grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables.

What does healthy poo look like?
Your poo is a troubleshooting tool. Just as we use species composition and alteration as indicators of streambank stability, we use our poo to tell us if we are properly nourished. Flushing without looking is like hiking to a mountaintop just to hike back down. You went through all that strain, but what about the view? Think of it like a check engine light in your car. If you don’t do something about it now, you might have bigger problems down the road. Feel free to consult the Bristol Stool Chart, a visual guide for stools. Ideally you want to achieve a Type 4 or 5, which are considered “normal”.

How often should one poo?
Everyone is a little different – but you should typically poo at least once a day. Signs of constipation include pooing only a couple of times a week, not ever feeling quite empty, and hard stool. On the other hand, going 5+ times a day is stepping into the realm of diarrhea. When this happens it is important to rehydrate your body to make up for lost fluid and to consume fiber to add bulk to your stool.

Poo Protocol

       This is a topic that I want to take rather seriously. Our work revolves around helping better manage the land, resources, and ecology around us. Careless pooing does exactly the opposite of that in that it adversely impacts environment quality and the aesthetics of the land we use to recreate and share with others. I suggest getting familiar with all Leave No Trace guidelines, but the ones concerning waste disposal are as follows:

1. Minimize the chance of water pollution
2. Minimize the spread of disease
3. Minimize aesthetic impact
4. Maximize decomposition rate

       The most practical method is to dig a hole and bury your poo. We always have a shovel in our truck for this very purpose. First and foremost, locate the toilet paper. Agree to keep it in one spot so you can all find it easily.  Find a private spot far away from water, trails, or campsites and dig a hole at least 6 inches deep. In desert environments, waste has a harder time breaking down so it is recommended to dig shallower holes (2-6 inches) to maximize decomposition. Once you finish your business, toss in the toilet paper and cover the hole completely and disguise it. Because we usually work in very remote public land, this method is adequate. In many popular, high-use areas however, you may be required to pack out your waste. Remember to sanitize/wash your hands afterwards!

Other methods

Toilet: . . . . .

Groover: I first saw one of these when I went on a float trip on the John Day River. It’s essentially the most miniature of porta-potties, a large canister with the sanitizing blue chemical in it and a toilet seat attachment. They’re called groovers because they used to not have the seat. Use your imagination. Here’s a good article about them.

Holding it in: So you decided to go this route, eh? Think you can make it a day until you get back into town? That’s cool, but keep this in mind — If you decide to hold it in, water will absorb back into your body, dehydrating your poo, making it harder, which can lead to unnecessary constipation. Also, because your brain treats a stretched intestinal wall as a stimulus to excrete, a prolonged stretch will dull the signal to empty, and will result in more effort when it’s time to go. It’s not harmful to hold it in from time to time, but you shouldn’t make a habit of it.

What to Wipe With

1.) Hopefully, toilet paper.

2.) Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) is a biennial forb that is native to Europe and Africa. It’s a common weedy plant in the United States and prefers well-lit disturbed soils. The soft, tomentose leaves make it nature’s version of your favorite triple-ply extra deluxe TP from your parents’ place. Except it’s right here, on the other side of that sagebrush over there. Go ahead… try it out and you’ll see that miles and miles away from your house (or another human being for that matter), you’ll feel right at home. You can also sleep well at night knowing that you contributed marginally to curbing the population of an invasive weed.

A word of caution: Be very careful to not use plants that you are not familiar with. For one, they can have adverse conditions and be harmful to your health. They may also be listed as endangered and under federal protection. I’m really preaching to the choir here and I trust that all you botanists-in-training will recognize that.

3.) Alright. You found a safe place to poo but you’re out of TP and the vegetation looks abrasive at best. It’s time to get creative. When my fellow technician Wyatt first suggested this, I thought he was just messing around. I thought it was some sick joke until I actually tried it so hear me out:  rocks. A river rock, a chunky lump of upland basalt, it doesn’t really matter. It all works equally as well and there is no shame to it. So if the world ever puts you in that desperate position… just take the leap and join the club.

Technique

       Just a few quick tips here. In the field, you are essentially reduced to pooing as our ancestors did. There is no tall porcelain structure to support you, so you have to essentially squat in order to go. Research has found that this is actually the healthiest posturing to poo because sitting puts pressure on your rectum and impairs bowel movement. The most stable and best way to squat is the 3rd world squat, a basic human movement which many of us cannot do. Try it. If you are one of those people, you may like to learn, or, you can always support yourself with a shovel/tree. Another problem concerns keeping your clothes clear from the line of danger. For this I would advise the following:
When crouching with your pants around your ankles, reach in from the front of your legs and grab the back part of your pants (middle of your belt) and pull it forward. This will keep your clothing clear of the danger zone.

Some Workplace Considerations

       Out in the field, our bodies and minds have to put up with many factors, whether they be the heat, humidity, rain, mosquitos, fatigue, hunger, etc. Each one of these wears on us over the course of the day. The urge to go is just another one of these distractions – pulling your focus away from the task at hand, making you irritable, lowering morale, and negatively affecting your interactions with coworkers and ultimately your productivity and the quality of work you put out. Why put yourself through that?

       I feel very fortunate to work in a crew where we talk about mostly anything. We spend looong days in the field — I’m talking regular 10-day monitoring trips. It’s impossible to not get a sense of everyone’s poo schedule. So when one of us is off beat, the others notice. Take it from me when I say it’s really nice to hear someone ask “Did you remember to go today?”. Honestly. For one, yes. Yes I did forget to go. But two, that means I won’t have the urge to go during the middle of the day when we are in the thick of monitoring. It is an unnecessary disruption to the workflow that can be mitigated and, like I said, a senseless tax on the brain to deal with the urge otherwise. I would invite you all to communicate openly and maturely about with topic with your coworkers.

Thanks for reading, y’all.

Happy pooing, everyone!

Michal Tutka 💩
Prineville, Oregon BLM

Every day in the field is an adventure. I do my best to be prepared, to take precautions, and to not take needless risks. Most of the time I work by myself, so if anything happens I’m on my own to figure out a solution. I have a truck full of supplies and gear, but I’m still just one person – there’s only so much I can do. For example, I can’t pull a truck out of a mud pit by myself.

“Oh, did you get stuck in a mud pit?”

Yes. Yes I did.

Normally I drive an F350 4×4 with super-duty tires. It’s a big truck, and I’ve skidded it sideways through several long, deep muddy pools on old forest roads with towering Ponderosa Pines crowding in on either side of me. It handles like a boss. As long as one tire was gripping, I’ve been fine. I thought I had mastered mud.

Yay truck!

But I don’t always get to drive the F350. It had to go in the shop for maintenance, so I had to scrounge for an extra truck in the vehicle pool. I got an F150  – it had all-wheel drive, it was cleared for off-road field work; a little closer to the ground, but that’s ok. I didn’t think too hard about taking out to my seed collecting site on Camp Creek.

The thing about the Camp Creek location is that it’s part of a grazing allotment. Grazing allotments have well pumps to shunt water to cattle tanks all over the parcel. The little road that I needed to get on has such a pump, but it leaks. The leak is bad enough that the road is always muddy, and now that the cows are on the pasture it’s just a rutted, trodden wallow.

When I arrived, I walked the wallow & scouted my path: I kept two tires on dry ground & made it through just fine. I found the excess barbed wire the rancher had trimmed off the gate so the cows could access the creek & tossed it in the bed of the truck. I felt so smart: no flat tires on my watch! I flipped into low gear & eased the little truck down the steep bank & across the creek. I was so happy, I’m really getting the hang of this off-roading stuff. I did my site assessment, and made my way back to the main road.

The crossing at Camp Creek. It’s hard to judge by the photo, but the road on both banks is about a 40* incline, and there are some big, pointy rocks hiding in there. The water isn’t too deep, but you have to stay right on the track – there’s exactly enough room for the truck, but not much room for error.

Except this time when I came back, there was a herd of cows in my way. In the hour or two since I had crossed, about 30 cows decided it was time to get a drink, and they were standing around in the mud puddle where I needed to cross.

My path on dry ground is blocked by cows. The bush in the left foreground is growing out of a nick point where the drainage has carved out a deep cleft – can’t really go that way.

Ok, so there’s cows. Hm, and a bull. I don’t really want to get out & charge at the bull – the cows should move if I drive up to them, right? I started forward, trying to politely edge between the cows & the mud. My left tires were sliding into the mud, but that was ok – my right tires were on dry ground. I was doing fine.

But then I wasn’t. One of the cows got jumpy & dodged into my path. Not wanting to hit her (of course), I turned to the side. And slid totally into the mud pit – now no tires were touching dry ground, they just spun in place.

Hey, I can get out of this. I’m not that far in, I’ll just dig it out a bit & reverse it. So, I got out my shovel & started digging. I dug out the wet, sloppy clay full of cow manure. I dug dry earth with clods of dead grass & packed it under the tires as best I could. I was ankle deep in the mud, my feet were sliding around in my boots. The cows thought this most irregular. I continued this exercise for about half an hour.

It’s not every day you see something like this.

I put everything back in the truck & started it up. I put it in reverse & eased the gas, slowly rocking it until the truck moved backward. I moved! Awesome!! I’m going to get out of this mess, I was so proud! Until I slid back toward the corner of the mud pit where the drainage goes underground. The crevices are a few feet deep, and my back tires were sliding towards them. I stopped.

Another foot or so & I’d have additional problems. So close to freedom, but so far.

I got back in the truck to think. The novelty of being stuck in the mud had worn off, and I was angry. The cows were increasingly intrigued. Why couldn’t they have found some other water spot? Why did they need to stand around this muddy puddle?!?

You’re not helping, cows.

I stared at the cows. I stared at the sagebrush. I pondered how the indigenous people here peeled the bark off the sagebrush to make sandals. I had an idea: I could use the sagebrush too! I could cut the sagebrush & pack it under the tires & across the mud to get some traction! Ooh, I felt smart again!

I grabbed my pruners and leapt out of the truck, nearly hugging the first bush I tripped over. But, my pruners wouldn’t cut through the tough bark. They twisted and frayed the branches, but the damn stuff just wouldn’t cut. The cows inched closer to see what was so interesting about the sagebrush they stood in all day. One was so close she was breathing in my face. I was furious: I screamed at the pruners, I screamed at the cows. I waved my shirt at them, yelling and stomping after them. First they looked surprised, then they actually started, a little taken aback. I ran all around the truck like a manic monkey, screaming & jumping & swinging the shovel trying to make the stupid cows leave me alone. They actually turned and ran off a bit, but only when I was running directly at them. I ran at all of them in a big arc, hollering like an idiot. One of them stopped. It turned and gave me a look like it had suddenly become aware of its relative size. I was chasing the bull.

I stood still and stared down the bull, brandishing my shovel at it. He let out a low growl that shouldn’t come from an herbivore. I stood even more still, but glared at him just as intently. He eventually blinked and licked at his hoof. I backed towards the truck & got in the bed. (Sorry I don’t have pictures of this part.)

Standing in the bed of the truck I watched the cows listlessly walk off, kicking up a dust trail as they went off in search of less animated company. The bull followed them. I looked down at the toolbox, and upon opening it I found a hand saw. It was dull and rusty, the tip was broken and bent, but it was better than my pruners. I jumped down & started furiously hacking away at the sagebrush. Just then, a truck rolled along the adjoining main road. As it approached the crossing herd, I waved with both arms. Much to my chagrin the cows turned away from the road back towards me, and the truck passed by without hardly slowing. I kept sawing.

Having seemed to forget that just minutes before I had been charging them with a shovel, the cows gathered around again to watch. The bull seemed to grant me permission to cut sagebrush on my side of the truck, and he entertained himself on the other side. Once again I dug out the tires, wedging the sagebrush as deep as I could under them. I made a little bridge of sagebrush across the mud, hoping that if I could just catch one piece well enough, I’d pull myself out of there.

I tried so hard.

Sagebrush bridge constructed, I once again chased off the cows. I didn’t want them to obstruct what could be my only chance to get out of their most favorite mud puddle in the entire allotment. But, my wheels only spun in place. The sagebrush got mangled a bit and sucked down into the mud, but the tires were so slick by this point they just couldn’t grip anything. I’d been in the same spot now for two hours, self-sufficiency was no longer productive.

“Lane to Dispatch on Grizzly…” The cows wandered off almost single file, the show was over.

The desert was silent. I could hear the wind gusting over a hill, I thought I could hear it turning directions. Sometimes a bird would peep. There weren’t any bugs, just me and the sky and the muddy trickle of the broken well pump running under the truck and into the crevice.

About an hour and a half after getting in touch with Dispatch, a Forest Service crew rolled up in a giant rig with a winch. They affirmed my sagebrush bridge attempt, and affirmed how well I was stuck. One of the crew members kicked the tires.

“There’s your problem right there. Just road tires on this thing.”

With the winch hooked up they pulled me out without any difficulty, and even followed for a stretch to make sure I didn’t have any further problems with the muddy tires.

The next week I returned in my trusty F350 and its super-duty tires. I drove clear over the sagebrush, avoiding the mud altogether. There were no cows that day.

– Stefanie Lane, BLM, Prineville, OR

I’m getting my bearings here in central Oregon: I started at the Prineville BLM office on May 1, and after a few days of trainings and general office setup, I’ve started scouting for SOS collections by tagging along on plant monitoring trips.

The Prineville office has an herbarium specimen of Phacelia lutea var. lutea that was collected in 1985, but hadn’t been found or collected since. It was found in the Northern Basin & Range, which is my target ecoregion for this year’s SOS collection. My mentor thought this would be a great opportunity to go out with Hannah (BLM Botany Tech & former CLM intern!) to both search for this rare plant, and keep an eye out for potential SOS collection populations.

The notes on the herbarium voucher were thorough: the population was recorded within a square quarter mile on a south facing slope on the north side of Camp Creek. It seemed like a straightforward task: we had the herbarium mount as an example of the plant, thorough directions, and a relatively small swath of land to survey.

I was so excited to be following in another botanist’s footsteps: “This is it!” I thought. “This is what real botanists do! I’m a real botanist, out to find a really rare plant, maybe we’ll even find a new population of them!”

Herbarium mount of Phacelia lutea var lutea back in its original habitat, three decades later.

We drove along the gravel road up to the two-track jeep trail where we needed to cross the creek, only to discover one of the seasonal irrigation spigots was leaking to the point of creating a silty, marshy wallow completely covering the trail. Although it meant hiking an extra mile, we left the truck at the road since hiking was a better alternative to getting stuck.

After a long walk (because botanists do not walk quickly), we made it to our square quarter mile of creek where the samples had been taken years ago. We scrabbled down the loose, sandy hillside & perched on little protrusions of bank where the soil had compacted, intently scouring the slopes for these tiny plants. The largest sample taken was at most only 5cm (2.5in) across, and although it was recorded as flowering on May 8, we weren’t sure if it would be delayed this year because of the long, cold winter Oregon just received. For all we knew, we could be looking for recent sprouts that might only be 1-2cm (1/2in)!

Habitat for Phacelia lutea var. lutea. Southern exposure bank is left side of photo. Camp Creek runs through center of the valley, in this section more overland flow than an actual dedicated channel.

Coming to the end of our quarter mile section, we were starting to look at the context of our supposed habitat: “Look at the sharp bank on the south side of the creek…look at how the water flows overland, then cuts back into the channel…look at that headcut!” We began to wonder whether the banks we were sitting on were even the same banks that had been there 30 years ago. For all we knew this creek had been busy meandering, flooding, downcutting, and depositing over the years, and the sunny slope our predecessor had sat on was now buried under a broad floodplain or high above our heads where erosion forces had sheared away the soil into a flat wall.

A headcut and plunge pool just below our sloping “habitat”. Note the incision in the plunge pool already acruing. In 30 more years time, the slope I was sitting on won’t exist.

We still scrabbled along, hoping to find a plant or two that had survived or blown to a better location. We got down into the marshy floodplain and looked on either side in case it had found a new niche; we got as high as we could on the steep bank and looked into the tiny draws that formed along the top of the cliff faces. All to no avail – Phacelia lutea var. lutea does not appear to live on the southern-facing slopes of Camp Creek any longer.

This is the real reality of botany, and much conservation work. Habitat loss is almost always the top listed reason for species decline and extirpation, and P. lutea lost its habitat due to erosion. The other reality of botany is that the records we make and samples we take are invaluable time-points. Maybe if we had photos of where the botanist sat in 1985, we could compare to the current terrain. Better yet, a GPS point could have shown us whether or how far the old banks had moved. All the data we collect and notes we take might someday yield a clue to a future botanist about the conditions we see today. I’m going to think about this as I write my field notes and leave descriptions for someone else to follow. Even photos and GPS points can’t replace first-hand experience, so the more descriptive and complete information I can leave behind might make a future expedition a little more fruitful.

– Stefanie Lane, BLM, Prineville, OR

Well, add another entry to my list of stories about loading up on coffee and heading out before dawn to chase birds.  This time, I had jumped at the chance to help Jay Carlisle, a researcher from Boise State University, track and capture long-billed curlews at the base of Heart Mountain, north of Cody.

Spoilers: We were successful. Meet “JT.”

Continue reading →

I keep expecting it to snow one last time, as a kind of parting shot from this past winter, but for now the dial seems to be pointed squarely toward “spring.” The road into Yellowstone was opened a few days ago, and the Bighorn Basin itself is greening up nicely.

Castilleja sp. (probably chromosa), a.k.a. Indian paintbrush

Continue reading →

Hello Folks and Welcome to Oregon!

This summer I am excited to be starting my third CLM internship working with forestry in Baker City, OR. I’m super excited to be working with forestry, as trees were the thing that I always missed most from home. 

I have been working for about a month already and while I have been doing a lot of forestry work I also have been getting a lot of important training in. Some of the training include 4-wheel drive and utv/atv training. These were fun hands on trainings as I got to take vehicles out and drive them through various terrain, including an OHV area and a sand dune. There has also been the many not as fun videos and computer trainings.

After the obligatory training was done I got to start working on forestry related stuff. Most of the stuff I am working on is related to timber sales and timber cruising. Timber cruising is a way of evaluating what is present in a timber stand and an estimate of the merchantable lumber. This can be done by establishing a number of plots within a sale unit, collecting data and then using that data to estimate for the rest of the sale unit. However, instead of doing plots we are using the 100% method. With this method we measure the diameter of every tree and the field computer that we use makes calculations for us and gives us strike trees. These strike trees get more extensive measurements including diameter, height, the number of 16 ft. merchantable logs we can cut from the tree, and the defect present in each log. The field computer then uses those numbers to estimate for the entire sale unit. This helps to make sure that our error is not too high and ensures that we do not have to go back into a sale unit to insert more plots. The data tells us the species and density which can be used to make an appraised value of the timber stand. This information is used in the sale of the stand. I got the opportunity to witness a timber sale of an already cruised stand and it was neat to see what the final result of all my work will be.

I also have had the opportunity to participate in other projects not related to forestry. The two main ones being installing a fence to assist with fire rehabilitation in a burned area and helping reflag a fuels reduction project.

I look forward to seeing what other new and different thing I get to do throughout the summer.

AZ