A little more than eight months ago now, I packed up all my things in the back of my Ford pick-up truck and headed cross country from Maine to New Mexico. I had no idea what would be in store for me there or any idea of what New Mexico was like… all I knew was that I was traveling West for a position within the Bureau of Land Management as a CLM intern! Fast forward those eight months and I am so glad that I was willing to take that leap into the unknown, especially as a recent marine science graduate taking a position in the desert. Now looking back after completing my eight month internship, I can now see all of the benefits of this experience.

One major benefit of being a CLM intern is the opportunity to challenge yourself in more ways than one. I was able to challenge myself personally and professionally. Personally, moving cross country and establishing yourself in an area where everything is new to you and you know no one was a challenge, however, I was able to meet that challenge head on and I know that I have grown as a person from that experience. Professionally, this was my first opportunity to work within a federal agency yet with any position there is the challenge to do the best that you can do. Over my internship I did just that and worked very hard and challenged myself to do the best job that I could do, and as a result not only did I gain more experience, but I also made great connections with my co-workers and supervisors.

Another major benefit of being a CLM intern is the experiences and new skills that you gain.  As I mentioned previously, I graduated with a degree in marine science so as you can image when I received an internship position working as a range technician, I learned and gained a whole new set of skills. Although it may seem odd, the skills that I gained through this experience will help me in the future whether my path be in marine science or rangeland science because the skills that I gained can be applied in many different biological fields. I gained skills and experience in: a variety of monitoring methods, GIS, NEPA documents, data entry, and many more! These new skills and experiences will help me achieve my career goals.

One last benefit that I will mention, granted there are many more, is the ability to make connections with people in your field office both professionally and personally. After eight months of working with numerous people in the office, I entered as an unknown intern from Maine and leave as a co-worker and friend! My relationships with the people in the office made this experience even better. I want a chance to thank everyone at the Roswell Field Office for making me feel as part of the team! Honestly, everyone at the field office went out of their way to make me feel comfortable and a part of the group. I learned something from everyone there. Thank you again!

One last thing before I wrap this last blog entry up is a little advice for any person who is contemplating to apply for the CLM program… my advice is DO IT! You will honestly not regret in joining this program. This program is amazing! In this program you will gain experience, skills, and connections!

And last but definitely not least, I want to thank all of the people who make the CLM program possible! From the application process to completing the internship, this program has made the journey easy! The steps to apply and the steps to take during the internship have been laid out for you and are very easy to follow and for that alone I thank you! On top of that, everyone in the staff who I have had the opportunity to meet or speak with has been knowledgeable, helpful, and extremely nice! Thank you very much for this opportunity to be a part of the CLM internship program!

This was an experience that I will never forget… Thank you!

Stephanie Burkhardt

Roswell Field Office

Very little has changed here since my last post.  The wet season is in full force here and my duties have shifted to mainly office work.  I have re-entered the realm of GIS.  It is definitely a good thing I am doing this work because despite having taken a GIS course less than a year ago, it seems I have already fallen out of the loop.  Although the office work is not quite as appealing to me as the wonderful amazing superb field work I get to participate in, this rainy cold weather has also caused a dramatic increase in our wintering bird population numbers.  Tens of thousands of geese, ducks, and cranes have arrived here at the Cosumnes River Preserve.  The bird watching is in full swing and is reflected in the survey numbers we have recorded in our monthly bird counts.

Occasionally, we have still been experiencing “nice” days here and there.  These momentary breaks in the rain provide much needed outdoor work time.  I was fortunate enough to have a group of volunteers assist me with a hedgerow planting that I have been working on (weather permitting).  With the help of the volunteers, we were able to plant a combination of 180 native shrubs along one of our properties which borders an interstate.  The planting will serve as bird habitat for passerine species as well as a “trash rack” to intercept pieces of garbage blowing off of the roadway.  With Christmas right around the corner, many of our employees are taking time off for vacation.  I’ll be looking forward to spending some time with family as well.  Merry Christmas!!

Everyone seems to be getting into the holiday spirit here in Buffalo! Main Street is lined with tinsel and lights and there was a huge turnout for the annual Christmas parade.  There has been no shortage of festivities around our field office either! We’ve had potlucks, chili cook-offs, and a kid’s holiday party here in the office so far. I was lucky enough to score the role of woodsy the owl for the kid’s holiday party and let me tell you it’s not easy being an owl. I was surprised how tough it was to move around and see out of one of those costumes! It was all worth it to see the looks on all the little kids faces though (half were horrified & half ran up to give me a big hug).

I have also been pleasantly surprised by how much we’ve still been able to go out into the field. Lately we’ve been mapping invasive saltcedar in an extensive drainage system.  It is awesome trekking around in a maze of drainages because the abundance of wildlife and strange rock formations; I’ve been stumbling across porcupines, coyotes, deer, and antelope on a daily basis.

Woodsy & Smokey!

Now that field season is over, I am doing a lot of mapping and even helped the state office with a map of all SOS collections for the state. I’ve also been fortunate to be sent to some wonderful training workshops: Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems in Boise, ID & LANDIS-II forest modeling software training in Portland, OR. They’ve been great learning experiences and a lot of fun!

My CLM internship and summer season projects of seed collecting and plant monitoring have come to a close. We have completed a total of 25 seed collections, which is an amazing accomplishment considering how awfully dry the summer was this year. Overall, I am so very happy that we reached our year 2012 goal for the S.O.S Program. Its amazing that I have been working at the Colorado State Office for almost 7 months and I have honestly been enjoying every minute of this wonderful experience.

Here are a few pictures of the sights I have seen thus far since being in Colorado!

P.S. Winter is here in Colorado…happy skiing 🙂

Phacelia formosula plant population in Walden, CO

Ericameria nauseosa was by far the most anticipated collections of the season (the seeds didn’t set until late October!).

Colorado Blue Bird. I followed this bird in hopes to get a good photo (the last one I took was of him giving me a “go away” stare…so I did).

Aly and I collecting seeds together at Pine Valley Ranch!

One of our last collections, you can see why. Snow on the ground can been seen just through the aspen trees.

Thanks again for the incredible experience,

Darnisha Coverson

BLM Colorado State Office

My last week here on the Modoc has finally arrived.  When I first arrived in early May I had no idea I would end up spending over 7 and a half months here.  I have gained many experiences and learned much during my season working for the BLM in Alturas, California. Even though I was extended I still don’t feel I am ready to leave.

  I have spent these last few weeks working on a project I have found to be very exciting and fulfilling. During the summer I surveyed four different plots for several rare plants. The plots are located in Ash Valley, which is south on 395 near the town of Madeline. The plots are located in a range allotment and have data recorded dating back to 1985. The three rare plants I helped monitor for are Ivesia paniculata, Erigognum procidiuum, and Astragalus andersonii. In order to keep the data consistent, we used the same monitoring techniques that were also used back in the 1980’s. These techniques included pace/frequency transects with 50 hits and photo plots.

Ash Valley Pace Frequency plot

  When surveying these plots it was noticed there was quite a bit of soil pedestaling and erosion throughout the area. There looked to be heavy range use all around several of the plots.  After recording the data for 2012, during these last few weeks, it has been my job to add and calculate all the years of data based on percent of frequency, cover and composition per key species. I then took all of the results for each of the plots added them into excel and converted them into graphs.  When calculating the data I also included a non-rare native plant, Calyptridium umbellatum for comparison. Looking at the trends represented, there has been some definite downward trends of the rare plants in several of the plots.  The data and graphs I have compiled will be used later this year to assess this particular allotment and area range use/plan.

I have worked on portions of projects like this before, however I have never been able to play a major role from the monitoring of a site to the completion of the data results. I have always said I would rather be out in the field any day than behind a desk, but when I worked on this project I did not mind the hours in front of a computer screen. I am not ashamed to say I enjoyed it! I look forward to hearing the outcome of the assessment.  My boss informed me, funds permitting, he would like to try and hire me as a full time seasonal for the BLM next year. I would love to come back to continue to learn and improve the land I have begun to appreciate.     

It has been an incredible season with many adventures and learning experiences. I have been fortunate to watch all four seasons pass across Northeast California. From the late frosts in late spring to the much colder snow flurries of winter, here are some of my favorite pictures. ..

Fall colors at the Pit River Campground

On the way to one of our collection sites. Mt Shasta in the distance

Working this season through the Chicago Botanic Garden, Seeds of Success program and the BLM, I have come closer to realizing what I want to pursue as well as ignited a desire for engaging in this type of land management.  This Conservation and Land Management internship aided me to follow my passions and kindle new ones for this type of work and landscapes. Thank you for the awesome opportunity!    

As I write this, I’m sitting on a bed of pine needles with a  spotted owl transmitter placed a few feet away on a stick while my coworker uses snazzy instruments to try and locate me in the forest. It’s the best hide and seek game I’ve ever played because I get to read my book in nature and bask in the sun all the while contributing to science! Due to the fact that I have a much more flexible schedule than most in my office, I get to help out with a lot of different projects facilitated by the BioBot staff (as we call ourselves). Currently, I’m pretending to be a spotted owl whose location is known and my coworker is following the normal tracking procedure so that we can gather information that will allow us to calculate the experimental error for a paper that the wildlife biologists are writing on a previous experiment.

In addition to pretending to be an owl, I’ve been keeping very busy at work. Last week we completed our restoration project in the Bighorn Wilderness in the transition zone between the San Bernardino Mountains and the Mojave Desert. We built a pipe and cable fence along the BLM/FS property boundary that will hopefully stop the use of unauthorized Off Highway Vehicle roads in the wilderness area. I mentioned in my last blog post that this project entailed a lot of inter-agency cooperation. I really enjoyed the experience I got in field-crew management and fostering an inclusive work environment for folks of differing socioeconomic backgrounds (we had some very different groups working together). After we completed the fence, we seeded and disguised unauthorized road beds and did our best to restore the integrity of the wilderness area. We all came away from the project with a sense of pride and empowerment because we accomplished a major effort in just two weeks of work.

Looking into the Bighorn Wilderness, what we are aiming to protect with our fencing project!

The other main project I’ve been involved with is developing a systematic protocol and geodatabase for our restoration site monitoring efforts on our Ranger District. The details are a little dry, so I’ll spare you, but I am learning so much that I feel like it won’t all fit on my resume! Enough said!

Thanks for the experience,

Lizzy, San Bernardino National Forest

November was a relatively quiet month at the office. A large rainstorm hit the Pacific Northwest late in the month, and Eugene became a bit flooded. This led to quite the change in the West Eugene Wetlands (WEW); our vernal pools have filled up, and ducks and other waterfowl can be seen gallivanting in their depths.

Two months ago, this was all dry!

Earlier in November, I assisted the Willamette Resources and Education Network (WREN) with one of its student fieldtrips. Although earlier in October, I had aided WREN with a student ethnobotany/seed-after-burn project, this was trial by fire: leading my own group of second graders through the trails that surround the WEW Partnership office. The students were excited to be out of the classroom and full of energy; I was terrified. However, it turned out to be tons of fun! The kids learned about Queen Anne’s Lace and Pennyroyal (which, although a non-native species, is a good indicator of vernal pools), and enjoyed seeing ducks and other animals in the wetlands.

In addition to my short adventure outside, I also started training in GeoBOB (Geographic Biotic Observations). The GeoBOB database works in conjunction with ArcGIS, so I’m getting to brush up on the new GIS skills I acquired during the summer.

Anyway, November was a rather quiet month. I”m looking forward to things to come!

‘Til next time!

As we quickly approach the holiday season, the office here in Roswell has shifted into holiday-mode, complete with holiday luncheons, cookie exchanges and food drives.  Overall, the office is feeling quite cheery.  Unfortunately, that is not the case for some other people in the area.  This is the because last Friday, November 30^th, the US Fish and Wildlife Service began the process to consider listing the Lesser Prairie Chicken (LPC) as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. 

The LPC range extends from eastern New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  Due mostly to habitat destruction, the LPC range has significantly decreased from historic levels. The LPC’s habitat is being taken over mostly by oil/gas exploration, cattle ranches and other forms of energy harvesting.  The listing of the LPC is upsetting to many people in these areas because there is a huge amount of the population that rely on these industries as a lively-hood.  If the chicken does get listed, it will mean even stricter regulations on these industries, potentially shutting some of them down, and thus terminating jobs. 

Some people I’ve spoken with about the topic think it is purely politics. Politics aside, the fact is that the Lesser Prairie Chicken has significantly decreased since mass amounts of people have come into its’ territory.  We need to do everything we can to rebound from this and get the LPC back to a sustainable population. 

Since this has all just occurred in the last few days, it will be interesting to see what will happen in the office.  The LPC has already been on the radar for rare species and is often talked about as is.  The US Fish & Wildlife Service will hold a public meeting in February to discuss the topic.  If I’m still in the area, I think that will be an interesting event to attend.

One thing I have loved about this internship and field office, is that we are always getting opportunities to learn new things. In the beginning it was all about learning an entire new set of plants for our range monitoring. Since then, I’ve also attended rangeland trainings, speakers, read multiple papers, and enrolled in the GIS courses online.
The first range training focused a lot on the basics of grazing management, such as what portions of the plant can be grazed without overly affecting plant growth. We did some grass clipping activities to estimate production and the effects on the rangeland. This last rangeland training was focused on a Utah ranch’s success using very frequent pasture rotations to improve grazing and wildlife habitat. They specifically kept cows that could calve on very low quality forage, thus also reducing the ranch’s cost in hay. Meanwhile, in the office during my “spare” time I’ve been able to keep up with my reading. I’ve had some time to read articles on sage grouse, lichens, big game fence interactions, climate change in the rangelands, as well as the NEPA and ESA. Having the time to read this information has helped me so much in understanding a lot of what we do out in the field.
I really do love the Buffalo Field Office. Today is the judging of the Christmas door decorating contest, and the range staff’s door is looking pretty promising. We’ve taken some liberties with the original Twelve Days of Christmas and made it into the Twelve Field Days of Christmas, featuring a few adaptations of the original lyrics, such as “an eagle in a pine tree”. And while I’m excited to go home for Christmas, I know I will definitely be missing the white Christmas likely to be here in Buffalo.

The Twelve Field Days of Christmas Buffalo Field Office Map