Shoshone Idaho is a great place. I have been working and living in this small town for 3 weeks and I really have no complaints. My co-workers in the Shoshone BLM field office are great and very excited about their jobs. Most of our time has been spent in Craters of the Moon National Monument inventorying range improvements and other structures and monitoring sage grouse leks. Yesterday morning we left the office at 5:30 am and visited 5 leks, I got paid to watch this endearing bird strut its stuff; a great way to start the day!

Recently, we started doing the sage grouse Habitat Assessment Framework training which is a preview of what I will be doing most of the summer. I am excited to hone my plant identification for the great basin and learn more about how to use GIS while helping the BLM manage our public lands.

Being from the west, I couldn’t imagine life without these wide expanses of open land to enjoy and am excited to be a part of the team of people that work to preserve, restore and make available this land for the next generation.

Stay tuned- This is going to be a great summer!

We are only a few weeks away from really kicking off field season and it can’t come soon enough! So far we have had a few days a week out in the field but still split with a decent amount of office work and I am going a bit stir crazy. I am really looking forward to seed collections, weed surveys, rare plant surveys, and everything else we will be doing this summer. I have been keeping busy in the office with designing outreach materials. My favorite is “ecosystem jenga”, it consists of a jenga blocks each colored differently to represent plants, animals, soil, and water. There are event cards that go along with the game that describe an alteration to the ecosystem which results in the addition or removal of blocks. It needs some work still but I think it worked really well to get the point across to show the fragility of an ecosystem that has been altered too much. We used it at an Earth day event and I was hoping the kids would be interested but they were way more entertained by coloring. Maybe next time I’ll bribe them with candy and stickers to keep their interest. The most entertaining day of work since my last entry had to be our ATV training. I have never ridden one before and it was a blast, I am looking forward to using them in the field. Not much to report on other than that; looking forward to some training events coming up in May (which will be saved for the next blog entry) and just getting out in the field.

Until next time,

-Nate T, proud member of Team Manatee

4/26/13

Hello! And greetings from Montrose, Colorado!

I started my second CLM Internship two weeks ago and let me tell you, they sure know how to keep a girl busy here! Aside from my first two days of work (which involved some crappy weather – snow, rain, wind, dust, etc.) which kept me inside – learning GIS, organizing the herbarium, sitting through meetings, and a variety of other busy work – I’ve been outside in the field nearly every day. Mainly in a place they call Paradox Valley – or as my mentor says, the lawless land of the wild west.

Paradox Valley

Image from Google image search – I take no credit for this image!

From Paradox Valley, we headed up nearby Monogram Mesa and then dropped down into Bull Canyon, with the Abajo Mountains near Monticello, Utah clearly visible in the distance. Our goal was to hunt down a list of abandoned mines ready for closure and clear them for any BLM sensitive plants, a variety of which are known in the Uncompahgre Field Office. This involved some daring transverses across sketchy terrain, and while we haven’t found any plants of concern, our hard work was well rewarded by breathtaking views.

Old Mines

Imagine from Google image search.

I wish I had real pictures of some of the mines we were seeing. They are truly impressive specimens of the ingenuity of man, shafts and roads built into sheer cliffs, often without the use of machinery.

While we’ve mostly been focused on finishing up mine closures, I’ve also had an opportunity to check out some of the rare plants in the field office including:

• Eriogonum pelinophilum, Buckwheat (truly an endangered species)
• Scherocactus glaucus, Hookless Cactus (a threatened species)
• Lomatium concinnum, Desert Parsely
• Astragalus naturitensis, Naturita Milkvetch
• Astragalus sesquiflorus, Sandstone/San Rafele Milkvetch

My mentor, Ken, is an excellent botanist, and though I’m fairly familiar with the flora in the area (I went to college just about an hour down the road) I am amazed and humbled and excited by how much I’m already learning from Ken and how much I’m going to learn from him throughout my time here.

I’ll end this post with a picture of the beautiful and elusive Naturita Milkvetch and a big thank you to the Chicago Botanic Garden for the opportunity for another internship!

Naturita Milkvetch

Image from Google image search.

Brandee Wills
Montrose, CO

This month, our team traveled to the Naval Air Station in Fallon, NV to participate in an educational Earth Day event. Now I know what you are thinking. Is that the Fallon, NV where they shot the majority of the air sequences to the 1986 action film Top Gun? YES. Yes it is.  It was an honor to represent the BLM at the scene where such epic cinematic history occurred. To be working in the place that singer/songwriter Kenny Loggins fearlessly referred to as the Danger Zone was literally a dream come true.

At the event, we had a variety of activities for everyone. Busloads of kindergartners enjoyed leaf rubbings and coloring Gordon Lightfoot, the squirrel who teaches the importance of treading lightly. Others tested their knowledge in our quizzical trash game and the edible/poisonous plant challenge, “Tasty or Deadly”. Ecosystem Jenga demonstrated the interconnectedness of the environmental and how disturbance can be disruptive.  Overall, it was fun to interact with the public and to provide educational opportunities to children living in and around the Danger Zone.

Every few weeks our field office will have a big meeting that brings together all the specialists, staff, and field managers.    Most recently our gatherings have revolved around data calls, that is, when the data collected by specialists, technicians, contractors etc. gets turned in so decisions can be made. These decisions can vary from grazing permit renewals, to redeveloping legislation at the federal level.

During a data call it can be easy to get overwhelmed with the years of unprocessed field data to wade through, particularly when given only a few days to assemble the information.  At times the sheer volume of information can feel insurmountable. This past week, the importance of these data calls were underlined at our field office meeting where we watched a congressional hearing that, among other things, highlighted data supplied by our office.

If you’ve ever held a position in which you were collecting/processing data for projects that were developed before you and will carry on after you, you know that occasional feeling of doubt where you question your place in the process.  Watching the hearing proceed, calling on our facts, it was a reminder that good data relies on good collection and management methods. It was also a reminder that while at times we can feel swept up in the transience of seasonal positions, we as the collectors and processors are integral to the system.

Earlier this week, a group of high school girls dedicated an afternoon of their lives to restoring the ecosystem in Patagonia, Arizona. I was lucky enough to work alongside a few masters of their field – permaculture goddess Kate and rainwater harvesting guru David – as they facilitated the construction of permaculture earthworks.

These girls are spending the week at Windsong Peace and Leadership Center, an educational facility located just outside of Patagonia. They’re learning about many different forms of justice (social, food, environmental, etc) and even spending a few days in Mexico learning about the influence of the border to people living on both sides. The forward-thinking facilitators at Windsong put together a program to involve these kids with the Patagonia community in the hope to inspire these future leaders to get involved with their local communities. My work with the Chicago Botanical Garden’s partner organization, Borderlands Habitat Restoration Initiative, afforded me the opportunity to be a part of the growth of these girls.

After a quick tour of Deep Dirt Farm Institute and the habitat restoration efforts that are underway there, the seven high schoolers, their two mentors, the five representatives from Windsong and four of us from Borderlands Habitat Restoration Initiative got to work. Together we built rock structures that will counteract erosion while capturing rainwater. We set in motion the framework for ecosystem reconstruction. The erosion control structures we built will hold on to more water, supporting pollinator-attracting plants which are the base of the food chain. An abundance of these plants will support a stable pollinator population (and food for migrating pollinators) which will in turn bolster our food system through reliable pollination. And a resilient food system will create a resilient ecological community (for both human and non-human beings alike).

Engaging with the youth, about our connection with the ecosystem was so fulfilling to me. The steps our group set in place to restore the ecosystem were paralleled within the group. The kids were presented with the experience of Kate and David, while the youthful energy of the girls nourished us all. I’m excited for the future resilient relationships that will form due to my work with Borderlands Habitat Restoration Initiative.

How strange (and wonderful!) it is after almost 8 months of muted earth tones to see a little color on the sagebrush steppe. For the past week or so I have been mapping out populations of key sagegrouse forbs for seed collections later this season, and today was a particularly heartwarming experience. Bunchgrasses and sagebrush have been greening up for the past month or so, but I almost forgot how many beautiful flowers can fit in between them, and how much that burst of color in the springtime can brighten a week.

The low sage (Artemisia arbuscula) site I visited earlier today was a jackpot, with almost 10 key sagegrouse forb species (important food source forbs for sagegrouse and sagegrouse chicks during the spring), almost all of them beginning to bloom.

Two more interns will be starting here in Lakeview within the next couple weeks, and it’s perfect timing. The flowers will become more and more prevalent (especially if we get any more much-needed precip), and hopefully their seed set will be just as productive. I’m looking forward to spending the first colorful months of the botany field season with two more plant ecology enthusiasts!

From high desert paradise,

Lisa at the Lakeview, OR BLM

Greetings from the Taiga Biome! Here in the Central Tanana Valley, the snow is just beginning to melt, and under it, much of the soil will remain in permafrost. Aside from evergreen needles of the white spruce (Picea glauca), green flora of any kind has yet to make an appearance. Indeed, in contrast to the experience of many other CLM Interns, my field season has yet to begin at the Eastern Interior Field Office (EIFO) of The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Fairbanks, AK.
I have spent much of my first week here at the EIFO on orientation, training, and meeting all of my wonderful, colorful coworkers. I will be taking courses in aviation, bear, firearm, and ATV safety, as well as extensive online courses in various GIS applications. Beyond their obvious relevance to my work here with the BLM EIFO, these courses will no doubt prove invaluable in advancing my career in the natural sciences, and I am very grateful for these opportunities.
When the explosion of chlorophyll does finally arrive, ushered in by up to 24 hours of continuous sunlight, we will find ourselves incredibly busy; attempting to cram a year’s worth of field work into an approximately three month window. The focus of my work will be invasive plant management. I will monitor and inventory invasive plant populations, take voucher specimens, and coordinate removal efforts. White sweet clover (Melilotus alba), perennial sowthistle (Sonchus arvensis), and bird vetch (Vicia cracca) are some of our serious invasive concerns in the EIFO management area. Possibly the single aspect of this internship that I am most excited about is the opportunity to work with the fantastic herbarium collection at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in identifying and cataloguing specimens. The most exciting aspect, that is, besides getting to fly in helicopters and floatplanes 🙂
By most measures, Alaska lags behind the lower 48 in levels of non-native plant invasion. Therefore, invasive plant management is especially pertinent here and now in Central Alaska, as it is often significantly more feasible to prevent large scale infestation by exotics than it is to eradicate such populations once they are established. I can hardly wait to begin!

So we have just finished our third week interning with the BLM in Phoenix doing rangeland and wild horse and burro monitoring.  The days so far have involved a healthy mix of office work with data management and venturing out in the field.  This week we spent four out of five days travelling slightly north of Phoenix through mountainous terrain full of spring blossoms and sunshine.  The rangeland monitoring involves a lot of species identification, so I am confident I will be a Sonoran Desert botany pro by September!

The most intensive part of our internship so far has been learning how to drive vehicles over massive boulders, through washes, and over rocky cliff trails.  The field driving has definitely been an experience!  We have come to respect the importance of a high clearance bed, seriously durable tires, and four wheel drive.  Also, on the off chance you find yourself stuck in a pit of sand, inserting large, dead branches directly behind the back tires and reversing is a great way to get out of a sketchy situation 🙂  I look forward to getting our ATV  certification so we can ride on even tighter trails… everyone loves an adventure!

I am very grateful we were able to start the internship in the spring so we could bask in the warmth and pleasant desert breeze before summer hits.  Hope you enjoy my desert pics!

Smiles – Emily M. with BLM Phoenix

Congratulations Team Henderson! It has been a month since we started working together and in that time we have managed to hit our fist milestone. Within the month, we finished collecting all the samples associated with annual, as a result we got home from the field last night, a day early, and will be having a celebratory lunch today!
This is an especially important event in my eyes for two reasons. First off, celebratory lunches are an amazing morale booster for continuing to do hard work. It is a reminder to us interns that our mentors are impressed with our work and that they see us as human beings deserving of positive reinforcement. Secondly, for me, this celebration represents the end of the introductory period. Whenever you meet new people, start a new project, begin living in a new place, there is always an introductory period where you test out the water. You start getting to know your mentors, your roommates, the city you live in, you start making opinions on all the people surrounding you and deciding on how well you mesh together and how enjoyable the time together will be. After this month of adventures I know we have become a well oiled machine, unlike all of our personal gear after camping at the dunes, with no sand grinding our gears.
Though we work in the desert we have experienced some extremely cold temperatures. As a team we conquered the rain storms, sand storms,the grapple/hail storms, washed out roads, three flat tires, one broken jack, the unfortunate forgetting of our food bag, over 30 hours in the car, temperature fluxuating from 40’s to 80 within minutes and of course emergency improvisation of all the equipment that doesn’t work when you most need it.
Once again, team Henderson (we need a better name), I look forward to the following months with great pleasure knowing that we still have much more to learn about each other but thoroughly satisfied knowing that each and every person on this team is dedicated to quality research and will work together, and help each other out to achieve it!

Thanks go to Lesly, Sara, Mary, Carson, Elizabeth and Laura, team Henderson.