Hey People!

I’ve been out here in the Vale Office for a few months now and have really found myself enjoying my time out here. I’ve faced some pretty cool challenges and am proud to say that I have come out on top … until a couple week ago, where I suffered a pretty terrible loss.

STORY TIME!

Back during my first week of work, I went to a workshop for S1 Mobile  for Android Training. S1 Mobile is this really interesting GPS app that might become a big deal in the future for federal agencies like BLM and FS. It puts you in mind of Collector. Anyway, my mentor asked me to learn all that I could about this app, from downloading data, to collecting it, to making maps for the app, uploading and sharing. She wanted me to learn about each step in the process, so I could help others in the future. It was, and still is a pretty big challenge. Naturally, everything doesn’t go as smoothly when you’re exploring something new on your own, compared to doing it in class where only the basics are covered in detail, but I could handle it and took pride in my growing knowledge of this application.

Fast-forward to June, and I finally think I have a good understanding of most of the important concepts and techniques with using S1 Mobile for Android. It was good timing too because, the office just received a ton of new mobile devices that I was told to prepare for both general and GPS use. Set up involved, updating the devices, downloading S1 mobile, installing SIM cards, putting on their cases … and their screen protectors. Easy enough, right?

Installing those screen protectors was a literal nightmare. No matter what I did, or what method I used, perfectly installing these screen protectors on 10.1″ screens was impossible for me, so I settled for installing them with as few bubbles as possible. I mean who cares if there are one or two small bubbles in the corner, but NO, some of these literally have dozens of small bubbles ALL OVER the screen.

I’ve never felt like such a failure. It was terrible, defeated by flimsy screen protectors. My only saving grace was that no one else in the GIS office, seemed to be able to do a great job with it either, though it was clear that the worst of the worst screen protector installations were done by myself.

                  Burns, a small town of roughly 3,000 Oregonians, lies tucked in between miles of ranch land and sage-brush near the eastern border of the Beaver state. Make no mistake though, this is no ordinary small town. Burns, a city originally built around the practices of logging and cattle grazing, now serves as a spring-board for any and every outdoor activity imaginable. With 3.4 million surrounding acres owned and operated by the Burns-Hine’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the possibilities for outdoor recreation are infinite.

                  A little over a month ago, I began an internship for the Chicago Botanic Garden as a contractible employee, able to serve and work for various government agencies (I like to think of it as a mercenary internship). When hired, I was offered a position as an Outdoor Recreation Intern for the BLM office in Burns-Hines, OR. Looking back now, I could not be more grateful to have accepted the offer.

                  This place is extremely different from where I grew up, in the North-West suburbs of Chicago. I was born and raised to be a city-boy; however, this is the land of hunters, cowboys, and mountaineers. The cultural difference between my home-town and here was almost tangible on my first day. Although, as I am writing this, I find myself leaning more into the way of life out here and am beginning to see the bliss found in an area of such natural beauty and solitude. I am eager to see what else this town can teach me.

                  Speaking of learning, my partner (a Twin-Cities, Minnesota suburbanite) and I have been presented with many new challenges and adventures. The BLM has had us go on hikes in the local Steen’s Mountains in order to monitor campsites, help scout out a new trail, and assess Wilderness areas. We’ve also begun to utilize ATVs in order to traverse some of the more rugged landscape. The work here can be long and physically draining, but we always manage to come home proud of the job we did.

                  Camping season is upon us and we will be spending more nights out “in the field” in order to work on some more long term projects. Updates and more pictures to come in future posts.

-Carter Cranberg out of Burns-Hines Bureau of Land Management

Alvord Desert: Looking forward to doing some R&R in a tent out here

Fog on The Steen’s: One of the my favorite moments so far – standing near the top of the Steen’s as a cloud rolled over us

A Gorgeous Gorge

Hello,

I am on the last month of my internship and cannot believe how fast it has gone by! The past month I have learned some basic GIS skills, such as drawing polygons. We have also conducted some monitoring of our pupfish ponds to check populations as well as remove the plethora of invasive that find their way into these ponds.

Pesky crawfish in pupfish habitat.

I am also working on the finishing touches for SOS collections; picture uploads, herbarium labels and shipping vouchers. In addition, I have begun the process of uploading herbarium specimen pictures from the plants we have collected and identified this season.

Eschscholzia parishii herbarium voucher

We also went to check out the aftermath of a fire that went through part of Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. It had gone right through a riparian area that is home to two birds of concern so plans for restoring the area are now under way.

Aftermath of a small fire in Big Morongo Canyon Preserve

Palm Springs, CA

Wasn’t it just last month I was saying that roads were flooded, we were concerned with getting stuck in mud, etc? Well, that was short lived. With the close of May, came the start of fire season. It wasn’t much longer after that the fire crew started on and reminders about how not to start wildfires were sent out. “Summer” is here.

While fires aren’t ideal, the drier weather means that the road I’ve been so (im)patiently awaiting to open is accessible! After 3 months of being flooded, I can now cross Telford Road to explore the northern half of our land! It is such a contrast to Telford South! South is more of a scabland like habitat.

The North Telford Road landscape is still dry, but it gets more water – as you can imagine, seeing as the road was flooded the first 3 months of my internship! The first day I got out there to explore I was so happy. Sticky geranium was everywhere, and there were more Rocky Mountain Irises, so you’d either find a bright pink or a deep purple depending where you were looking. I found a trail and decided to follow it to see where it would lead, hopefully not to the cattle, which were on a grazing rotation in a nearby allotment. Along the trail, I was pleasantly surprised with a gorgeous Penstemon which I had seen scarcely scattered along Telford South, but was growing in abundance in the Northern half. I brought it back to the office to ID. After giving it a go, I keyed it out to Penstemon gairdneri, Gairdner’s Penstemon. I took it over to my mentor’s cube and had her verify; she was pretty surprised that I had found it. She told me that as far as she had been aware, this species wasn’t known to be in the area (score another one for the budding botanist)!! It has been an unusually wet spring/summer for the northwest, and the last 10+ years have been decently dry, so it’s a great time to be an intern out here. I knew I’d be returning to Telford North plenty of times this season. I found thin-leafed owl clover (Orthocarpus tenuifolius), another one of my target collection plants out there, as well as a ton of ragged robin (Clarkia pulchella), which I’ve grown quite fond of as of late.

Ragged Robin (Clarkia pulchella)

After the workshop, I returned to summertime Spokane. Temperatures are nearing or in the 90s every day, and fires have broken out in central Washington. Hoping all the firefighting crews and red-card volunteers stay safe out there! For all my fellow interns – don’t forget to stay hydrated. Heat stroke can happen very quickly and isn’t any fun!

After getting caught up on my emails and going ons in the office, I went back out to collect seed just to make sure my first collection would be sufficient (and hopefully enough to request excess back to use for sagegrouse habitat) I stumbled upon a moose! Yes, you read that correctly, I found a moose in Spokane in July walking amongst the sage! I was ecstatic because I love moose and it was the first one I’d seen in person – they’re definitely not a part of the Indiana landscape! I attempted to snag a decent picture but I was too far away for it.

That same week, I returned to the location of my moose sighting to scout for new plants and found another surprise! This time it was one of the botanical nature! I found poppies growing naturally in Eastern Washington! Another unusual find! I brought the sample of Blindeyes (Papvera dubium) back to the office to show my mentor. After talking it with her, she thinks the poppies are either part of an old homestead (likely the Miller Ranch that is on our land) that has stuck around. Even though they’re introduced and uncommon, it was a cool find.

Blindeyes (Papaver dubium)

Until next time,

V Cancino

My name is Mira and I’m one of the BLM Botany Interns in Roseburg, Oregon. My partner in crime/seed collection/field exploration is fellow intern, Aleah, and we’ve started the season helping with a project underway to collect native grass seed to eventually plant along roadways throughout Douglas County. As we’ve learned and observed extensively from getting to know the BLM land in the Roseburg district, roadways tend to be conduits for nonnative and often undesirable plants to form monocultures. While manual and chemical treatments can reduce these populations, a more ideal solution would be replacing them with robust populations of native grasses.

To find these populations, we’ve been using an old dataset from past seed collectors (including the CLM interns from our site that were here 5 years ago!) These past collectors recorded geospatial data with population estimates across a number of sites in the patchwork of BLM land in both the Swiftwater and South River Regions. This data has been extremely helpful, as most of these populations are still present in the same areas.

We took this photo at the North Bank Habitat Management Area while looking for populations of Achnatherum lemonii and Melica harfordii…originally documented by past CLM interns. We did eventually find them!

We’re also working on scoping out new sites, with the help of our supervisor, and the two botanists from the South River and Swiftwater regions. An unguided, exhausted manual search of all the BLM land would be impossible–there is an enormous amount of BLM land in the South River and Swiftwater regions of the Roseburg district, and much of it is difficult to access. Instead, one strategy we have been using is to overlay layers showing different features (stream, rock outcrop, etc) along with LIDAR data showing tree canopy in order to find likely sites where grass populations may be. We can further look at these potential openings in different ecoregions and classify these ecoregions by their temperature and rainfall in order to approximate what types of plants might be ready for collection.

Here’s a spot we hiked up to based on a GIS overlay…you can’t tell from the road that there is even an opening here, much less that it happens to have a number of native grass populations ready to be documented and collected.

With our (usually) trusty GPS and seemingly unstoppable truck, we’ve been driving out to sites we’ve identified as well as revisiting sites from past CLM interns and other BLM employees. Needless to say, fellow CLM intern Aleah Querns and I are now expert 4-wheel truck drivers and we’re certainly better at hiking up and down ridge lines. So far the four main species we’ve collected are Elymus glaucus (Blue wild rye), Festuca roemerii (Roemer’s fescue), Danthonia californica (California oat grass), and Bromus carinatus (California brome).

In the coming weeks, we will continue to scope out and collect grasses, as well as process them to be ready for the Bend Seed Extractory, where we will send them. And as we survey grass populations, we’re also keeping a lookout for a number of native species that attract pollinators, which may be our next project.

We’re also just keeping a lookout in general…we’re both new to the Pacific Northwest and every day in the field really is a treat for us. Here’s one last parting photo of the beautiful landscape we somehow managed to find ourselves working in!

Like many other interns, I came out West from the East Coast- specifically Boston, though I grew up in Vermont. A supervisor from a previous job recommended I get some interesting western experience to help my resume stand out back east, so when I was offered a CLM position in Shoshone, Idaho on a fuels crew, it seemed to fit the bill! I was apprehensive at first about transitioning to such a different area so far from everything I’ve ever known, but Idaho has, surprisingly, been feeling a lot like home.

A typical day’s habitat, cheatgrass galore

When I first arrived at the Shoshone office, I was informed that I would actually be working in the Burley field office from now on. I was a bit disappointed, as Burley is quite the drive from Twin Falls, where I found housing, but quickly changed my mind. The Burley field office includes a large mountain range on the Idaho-Nevada border, so I’ve been getting experience with an exciting variety of habitats – from the typical sagebrush steppe to juniper forests. My field crew was incredibly welcoming from the start, and after only a week, I felt more comfortable with them than any other field crew I had ever been on. It must be something about firefighting – there’s a camaraderie about them that welcomes even “rookies” (even a botanist like myself who won’t be fighting fires in any form this summer!) into the family.

My crew were very excited to see my terrified reaction to this ~60 degree road we drove up

Our field work is fairly straightforward – areas that have been burned in past years are quickly reseeded with a mixture of grasses, forbs and sagebrush, and then monitored regularly in order to assess how those plants are doing versus the ever-present cheatgrass. It can be disappointing at times, since most 1,2 and 3 year plots are still generally 50+% cheatgrass, but sagebrush and other established grasses look promising in some of the older areas. It’s unfortunate that the diversity is somewhat low in these plots – I started my time here in a whirlwind of plant ID, trying my best to learn all of these Western plants as fast as possible (grasses are the toughest), but haven’t had many new plants to learn since starting the fuels work. However, the presence of a new or showy plant in plot does become more valuable to me as a result (prickly pears are blooming! Castilleja too!)

Prickly pear definitely have the showiest flowers around

I’m in love with Castilleja

While I’m not doing as much straight botanizing as I expected, I’m glad to have been chosen for a fuels position. The work focuses more on management, and though I don’t have any plans to continue working on fire projects in the future, I have been hoping to shift my experiences from botany to more general natural resources management. As this position is all about assessing whether a fire management tactic is working as hoped, I feel more confident in habitat and project assessment, as well as project planning. We should be switching things up from the fuel monitoring projects very soon, so I look forward to new challenges and sights!

-Bureau of Land Management, Burley Field Office

Wow, so much to catch up on. Field season is in full swing. Running between monitoring, meetings, and trainings this internship is flying by.

I’ve been fortunate to work with the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) quite a bit this past month. They are a local nonprofit whose mission is to “conserve native species and habitats through restoration, research, and education.”   The Upper Willamette Resoure Area botanist has agreements with IAE to perform some of the restoration and monitoring work throughout our resource area. Some species of focus have been Bureau sensitive species Lathyrus holochlorus, Sisyrinchium hitchcockii, Frasera umpquensis, Horkelia congesta ssp congesta, as well as the federally listed threatened species Lupinus sulphureus ssp. Kincaidii.

Frasera umpquensis at Upper Elk Meadow ACEC

Me enjoying a fen at Upper Elk Meadows. Elevation ~ 4,000 feet

Some restoration activities IAE has so far implemented to benefit these species are mechanical removal of trees and shrubs to expand meadows and prevent encroachment, burning of invasive grasses to limit their cover and spread, removal of invasive species such as Scotch broom, false brome, and blackberry, and post activity seeding with native seed (including seed collected through Seeds of Success!!). At one site, restoration activities included tree removal or girdling between meadows to make corridors for the federally listed Fender’s blue butterfly who uses the Lupinus sulphureus ssp. Kincaidii (Kincaid’s lupine) as a host plant.

Kincaid’s lupine at Oak Basin ACEC

Monitoring of these projects often includes a complete census of the population or a variety of quantitative sampling, such as density or cover. Although monitoring can be disheartening if plant populations are declining, we have seen some remarkable progress resulting from the restoration activities at one of the Sisyrinchium hitchcockii where the population has increased and now covers an area approximately 4 times larger than before restoration took place.

Sisyrinchium hitchcockii

Lost Creek meadow, Sisyrinchium hitchcockii site

Andy Neill, of Institute of Applied Ecology, and me doing monitoring of the Sisyrinchium population

In addition to field monitoring, the past month has been packed full of training and workshops. Beginning with Chicago Botanic Garden’s Conservation and Land Management Internship Training Workshop in June and continuing in Southern Oregon at the Siskiyou Field Institutes Graminoid Identification Course, I’m beginning to feel more and more confident working in the realm of Botany and understanding the important role that federal land management agencies and their partners play in the conservation of plant communities.

Sisksiyou Field Institute: Our wonderful teacher, Linda Vorobik, leading the class through a Darlingtonia californica fen near Selma, Oregon

Siskiyou Field Insitute’s front porch. A beautiful spot to relax after a long day of keying grasses, sedges, and rushes.

One major event happening in my internship this week is the retirement of my mentor, Cheshire Mayrsohn. Congrats Cheshire!   I want to say thank you for your time, patience, imparting of your expertise, and ceaseless guidance. The information and experiences you have shared with me are invaluable and I will carry them forward with me throughout my career.

Cheshire Mayrsohn, Upper Willamette Resource Area Botanist, Northwest Oregon District

The second week of my internship consisted of the CLM workshop in Chicago. It was a lot of fun, and nice to be in a big city for the week. It also made me appreciate the lack of heat and humidity back in Wyoming.

The day after I arrived back in Buffalo, I drove to Newcastle, WY and met a group of 8 middle schoolers that had all signed up for a science camp. We drove up to Summit Ridge in Black Hills National Forest and set up camp. For the next four days, teachers from Upton middle school and BLM specialists from various offices came to teach lessons and facilitate activities. Some topics included Astronomy, Wildlife, Gold panning, GPS, Forestry, and Water Quality testing. I helped teach Orienteering and Water Cycle lessons, and put my Master Educator certification to good use by teaching a Leave No Trace lesson and a game. The kids were great and really enjoyed and learned a lot from the week. It’s hard to believe I’m getting paid to go camping!

Helping kids build bat boxes at the Upton Science Camp

Leave No Trace lesson- notice my diy backcountry white board 🙂

The next week started out with a long and hard day. A trail at one of the sites was being rerouted by a Montana Conservation Corps crew because of some old bison bones that had started to become exposed along the old trail. Rachel and I hiked the flagged out route for the new trail carrying carsonite trail markers and the heavy, awkward beast used to pound them into the ground. Once we got to the end of the trail, we turned around and hiked the old trail so we could dig out the old markers. Although I expended a lot more energy than I normally would on a hike, the trail and area were both stunning and I was glad to be spending the day outside recreating.

Tuesday and Wednesday consisted of some more necessary trainings- GIS and ATV, the latter being quite exciting.

ATV Training

On Thursday, I got the chance to teach another Leave No Trace workshop for some teens on a camping trip through an organization from Casper. Outreach and education is probably my favorite part of my job so far. I’m really passionate about LNT and love getting to introduce it to others!

One of my favorite LNT games- Okay! No Way!

I’m loving the variation in duties that a “recreation intern” has, and the amount of time spent thankfully outside. My days off are also amazing, being only a few hours from some of the best and most beautiful climbing, hiking, and National Parks in the country.

Got to spend a weekend in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks- only a 4 hour drive!

I started my internship on June 15 at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center in Staten Island, NY.  The first couple of days were spent getting set up at the office, exploring the nursery and doing some work in the Seed Lab.  The next week began with three days in the field on the east end of Long Island.  We visited several different habitats and learned numerous native species.  All in all we hiked over 20 miles through dunes, high salt marsh, pitch pine lowlands, inland coastal mixed hardwood forests and freshwater wetlands.  Having lived on the east end of Long Island for the past 3 years, I am ashamed to say I had been to only 1 of the sites that we scouted.  In this part of the state where residential development continues at an unrelenting pace, the profound beauty and tranquility of these natural areas provides a stark contrast.  I am inspired to be doing work supporting the resiliency and protection of these precious resources.  I look forward to many more adventures and to starting our seed collections in the weeks to come.

Sarah, Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank

High Salt Marsh, Hubbard County Park

Juncus gerardii

Eubotrys racemosa, still holding last seasons beautiful seed heads, common in the adjacent pine barrens

Hither Woods in Montauk, mixed hardwood coastal forest carpeted with Carex pensylvanica

Native thistle breakfast for a bumble bee

Walking Dunes Trail in Montauk with Quercus ilicifolia, Hudsonia tomentosa and Ammophila breviligulata

The “Wind Tunnel” with Napeague Harbor in the distance

Calopogon pulchellus, a rare orchid we were hoping to find in bloom in one of the bogs among the dunes

Otis Pike Preserve, Pinus rigida showing evidence of a prior burn

More Carex pensylvanica, I love the contrast of lush green and the scorched, denuded trees

Comptonia peregrina, rarely able to be collected, which we found in great numbers and loaded with fruit

Catalpa speciosa blossoms, I have never gotten to see this tree in bloom

I am so late on my blog post because I have been busy, busy, busy!!

The last month and a half since my last blog post has been full of crazy awesome happenings! We have had projects galore here at the Klamath Falls Field Office and I just got back from an incredible American Association for the Advancement of Science conference on the Big Island of Hawaii!

The AAAS Conference was everything I’d hoped it to be. The conference was located at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy which included several lecture halls, a dining facility, outdoors facility and dorm rooms. Because everyone was able to stay right there on campus, it created a very tight-knit environment. I got to meet all of the speakers, admins, AAAS employees and organizers, and so many more! I feel as though this allowed me to network a lot better. I made some wonderful friends and connections while I was there that I’m hoping will allow me some opportunities in future endeavors!

What I really loved the most about this conference is that it hosted a wide range of the latest research in science topics from Environmental Science to Anthropology and from Psychology to Conservation Biology! I sat through some incredibly interesting presentations about hammerhead shark conservation, algorithms for conservation biology, and the death of the Hawaiian Ohi’a tree. Seeing everyone’s passion for their research has me really motivated about specializing and pursuing a Master’s degree (and maybe one day doing a presentation of my own at this conference!). Doing research or working in conservation in Hawaii is one of my ultimate goals! The islands are so secluded and their wildlife populations so specific to the island that conservation is of huge concern there. It would be so rewarding to be able to make a difference for such a unique and beautiful place! I want to thank Chicago Botanic Garden and my mentor for allowing me the opportunity to do my alternative training at this educational and unforgettable conference. It has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life!

A really beautiful hike that I got to do around the conference in Waimea, Hawaii!

On top of the excitement of the conference I attended, we have worked on several projects here at the field office! One such project led Jeff and I into the Fremont-Winema National Forest to check for evidence of cattle grazing in the riparian areas of the North Fork Sprague and Sycan Rivers. Lo and behold, we found evidence of those darned cows, trampling around where they weren’t supposed to be! Photos and GPS points documenting where everything was should hopefully lead to future projects and initiatives to keep those cows out!

Fremont-Winema National Forest is rull pretty! Working here wasn’t so bad!

A second project that we were very fortunate to help out on with was with Canada Goose banding! Early in the morning we had about eight kayaks and two air boats go out on the water while everyone else stood along the shore lines to deter the birds from fleeing onto the road or into vegetation. Using the air boats and kayaks, we corralled the birds into one large sitting group in the center of the lake. After that, the air boats and kayaks “pushed” the geese into a large net at the other end of the lake. This mostly amounted to us slowly paddling behind them while they nonchalantly swim into our trap 🙂 After the birds are all rounded up, we take each bird and sex it and band it! It was such an experience unlike any other! I am so thankful for the opportunity to be able to work on such a fun project!

Banding a Canadian Goose!

How hilarious is this photo? Me driving an air boat for my first time. Yes, I am yelling.

Aside from these fun little side projects, Jeff and I have been working on a couple of bigger projects that should keep us busy for the entirety of the summer. One of them involves taking endangered larval sucker fish and testing them in different scenarios (having or not having vegetation, etc.) at our ponds to test for rates of survival. A second project involves using a computer program to trace around the heads and mouths of sucker fish to create an analysis for future identification. Both should involve some scientific writing and statistics so that is exciting (I need a refresher)!

So far this internship is exceeding my expectations! I’ve been able to add a plethora of experience to my resume. I’ve started applying for several jobs and I should be taking the GRE within the next couple of months so that I can apply for some graduate programs. The future is unknown, but I am hopeful and excited!

Marissa – Klamath Falls Field Office – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service