On the road near Independence Rock (WY).

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

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

 Culture

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

 The sagebrush steppe

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

The moon at sunset, Crater Lake National Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Rachael Payer

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

enjoying the high desert with my little buddy

Elk!

The wild and desolate southern OR coast

Redwoods (small forests in OR)

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

Lava flow in the Cascades, the three sisters mountains

The Painted Hills

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

Crater Lake – unbelievably blue

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

Wallowa Mountains

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

A quick 5 things that this job has taught me:

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

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

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

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

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

Carefully treading through the marshes at Blackwater NWR, MD.

Grey skies at Pettigrew State Park, NC

Blackwater NWR, MD

Clear skies at Robinson Neck Preserve, MD

Farewell, friends.

The last few weeks have been full of many endings and culminations for us here at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. We had our final week out in the field, visited the coasts of Maryland and Virginia, and got to see some amazing landscapes. Though it was cloudy and threatening to rain, both of our final sites, Blackwater NWR and Chincoteague NWR, proved to be beautiful:

Our paths through a field of Spartina patens and Distichlis spicata at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

Wild ponies munching away in the marsh at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

Our visit to Chincoteague NWR culminated in an awesome show by the wild ponies there too! While collecting Smilax rotundifolia, we got an up-close-and-personal encounter with a group of wild ponies that came to get a drink of freshwater at a vernal pool next to the Smilax briers. Check out a video that we took of these guys: Wild Ponies!

We also got lucky enough to make a collection of Aristida tuberculosa, seaside threeawn, at Chincoteague…our first collection of it this season! It’s got absolutely beautiful seeds:

Aristida tuberculosa seed

Aristida tuberculosa plants

On another note, my 5-year-old hiking boots finally bit the dust. These boots have roamed many a landscape and have helped me perform tons of field work over the last 5 years. I first wore them as a Student Conservation Association high school crew member working in the Chicago forest preserves. It is quite a good ending for them to have died while working as a CLM intern. I can truly say that they have been well worn!

The sad soles of my 5-year-old hiking boots. They got a lot of use this summer on the coasts of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland!

Sadly, my minivan also recently broke down. However, during the course of this internship, she got to take me and my fellow interns on many trips to the North Carolina outer banks!

My 1996 minivan getting towed away this past week. It lived a long life and got to see lots of amazing landscapes this summer!

Today and tomorrow are our final days in the office. We’re finishing up the cleaning of our last seed collections and shipping them to the Cape May Plant Materials Center. This morning, we’re hanging out in a back office in the NCBG Totten Center, while the Horticulture Program has a meeting. It feels like kindergarten again: hanging out on carpeted floors playing with pine cones!

This internship has been an amazing experience for me. I moved to North Carolina about a year ago, and thanks to this internship, I really feel like it has become my home. I now know so much about southeastern flora and have gotten to explore both the Piedmont and North Carolina coast. At the beginning of the summer, I was most familiar with invasive plants and native prairie plants of the Midwest (I’m from Chicago, IL originally). Today, I know about 100 species of native southeastern grasses, trees, and flowers, and I’m still learning more every day! I feel proud to say that we made 234 seed collections this season, all of which will be used to restore coastal environments through projects for the Hurricane Sandy Mitigation Fund. Thanks, CLM Internship, for this amazing experience!

All the best,

Maggie Heraty

North Carolina Botanical Garden

CLM Intern 2015

Today is the last day of my internship at the Lander Field Office. The last 7 months have gone by way too fast. I will definitely miss Wyoming and the LFO, but I am also excited to be home with my family for thanksgiving. This last month has gone by in a blur, but we have accomplished quite a bit.

Early this month we finished up our last seed collection. We collected winterfat (Krascheninnikovia lanata) and finally got enough seed to become a collection. The winterfat seed took a very long time to ripen, so we had to go and collect on three separate occasions.

Winterfat, a fluffy shrub. The seeds are furry!

Our Winterfat collection site near the Owl Creek Mountains

This month we worked on editing our Seeds of Success data in ArcMap. I took a class on ArcGIS in college, so this was a good refresher for me. The data editing took a lot longer than we anticipated, but it was very satisfying when we were done. We packaged up all of our seed and sent it off to the Bend, Oregon seed cleaning facility. In total we had 14 collections, which was over our target goal of 10 collections for this season. 10,000 seeds from each collection will stay in a seed holding facility until it is requested for reclamation efforts. Any extra seed will be sent to the Meeker facility in Colorado for evaluation trials. We also created herbarium vouchers for many of the plants we found this season. Herbarium vouchers for our SOS collections were sent to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC to be part of their permanent collection, and were also sent to the Rocky Mountain Herbarium in Laramie. Other plants we vouchered ended up in the LFO’s personal herbarium.

Emma and I packaging up our seed collections to send to Bend.

This month we also did more horse monitoring in the Green Mountain HMA. There are a huge number of horse in this HMA, and it is easy to find them. I think horse monitoring has definitely been my favorite project this season. Wild horses are incredibly beautiful to observe in their natural habitat. I really enjoyed watching their behavior and how they interacted with one another. The last couple weeks of horse monitoring there was snow, which made everything seem more beautiful.

Horses in the Green Mountain HMA

Field work in the snow!

Horse monitoring at Green Mountain

This month we also did one last round of riparian area monitoring. The cows are all out of the pastures we monitor, but riparian area monitoring still needs to be done to see how the horses and antelope affect the riparian areas. Most of the areas we monitored were very short, which may mean the cows will get a limited grazing season next year.

Riparian area monitoring at Sulphur Bar Spring.

Overall, this internship with the BLM and Chicago Botanic Garden has been wonderful. Many of the employees here went out of their way to make sure we got to work on a variety of projects. I really enjoyed being able to work on so many different things. Over the season we worked on seed collecting, vouchering plants, horse monitoring, plant monitoring, riparian area monitoring, sage grouse collaring, aspen stand delineation, compliance monitoring, fence projects, reclamation projects, and creating literature for the public. I learned many new skills that I believe will be helpful to me in the future. This internship was an experience that I will never forget and that I am so thankful for. I feel very lucky to have been able to work and live in such a beautiful place. Until next time, Wyoming. I will definitely come back and visit.

Erin, Lander Field Office, BLM- Wyoming

The Wind River Mountains