Wyoming. It’s a state I can honestly say I never had any intention of visiting. I knew nearly nothing about it until I moved to Buffalo in May. It sounded exotic to me. The environment, culture and language felt foreign upon my arrival here from the northeast. In many ways they still do, yet I’ve somehow managed to finally feel at home.

With only a few weeks of my internship remaining, I’ve been trying to get as much done as possible for the Buffalo Field Office (BFO) before a new set of interns come in May. Most of the remaining work to do involves georeferencing aerial images from the 1970s. The work is tedious, but I like to think it will help somebody at the BLM in the future who might not have the time to do it themselves. There has been no shortage of coworkers offering to take me out to their field sites. The wildlife biologists even managed to take myself and another CLM intern to The Wildlife Society – Wyoming Chapter conference in Jackson last week where researchers from across Wyoming presented on their findings on all sorts of study organisms, ranging from pollinators to mule deer. Of course, we also made sure there was time for site-seeing:

Moose siting along Route 16 as we drove through the Bighorn Mountains on our way to Jackson, Wyoming.

The Tetons greeted us as we entered Jackson after our long truck-ride from Buffalo.

Dream home beneath the Tetons.

Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) gathered around to lick the minerals off of our truck. Their historic range spans the American West, but sadly today their range hardly compares.

As much as I love botany, it’s hard to not immediately fall in love with wildlife.

My last bighorn sheep picture. I promise.

I still can’t believe I get paid for this. A summer of backpacking and vegetation monitoring, the opportunity to further develop GIS skills and understand the inner-workings of a federal agency, learning to interact with stakeholders and landowners (and even coworkers) with worldviews vastly different than mine. This internship has allowed me to gain and develop a skill set more elaborate and wide-ranging than I could have imagined. I’m hopeful that, eventually, I will find a full-time permanent position someplace that I will love as much as I’ve enjoyed this internship. Not to say it hasn’t been difficult at times (particularly the office days…those can be tough), but the hardships are what have made the experience rewarding.

I’ve begun the countdown to the end of my internship. I will work through the beginning of January, and then afterward head west to California where I have another seasonal position, this time with a private company. I am certain that my experiences with CLM will translate across state boundaries as I immerse myself in an entirely new ecosystem with countless new flora and fauna to identify. I’ll probably have one more blog post or so before I leave my internship, but to anyone out there reading this and considering accepting an internship with CLM: it has been an invaluable experience for me, it has embellished my resume, and I have met too many wonderful people during my time in Wyoming than I can list. Seriously consider taking it.

Reflecting on the past 8 months, all I can say is it’s been an adventure. I came into this internship expecting a simple job, a few new skills, and a relatively easy summer wandering around the prairie. I definitely got more than I bargained for… but in all good ways.

We successfully completed a “pilot” AIM program for our field office, participated in and contributed to a variety of projects, saw new country, tried new things, learned something new every day, and despite all of the challenges a field internship can bring, stayed remarkably sane. The skills and experiences I gained through this internship are truly invaluable. I’m grateful to have been in such an awesome field office learning to manage land that means so much to me! Thanks CLM Internship Program, it’s been a blast.

To conclude my internship, here’s a few pictures of things we’ve been able to do in the past month:

A view of the Bighorn Mountains from one of our final AIM monitoring sites.

The view from Middle Fork Powder River Campground, where we spent some time doing maintenance.

30+ pounds of nails we pulled out of a litter site in Northeast Wyoming. There was never a shortage of litter to clean up!

A sagebrush seedling – we spent a couple days planting these babies in reclaimed road areas.

We stopped by the National Elk Refuge by Jackson, WY. No elk but plenty of Bighorn Sheep, including this adorable lamb!

We were able to attend the Wyoming chapter of the Wildlife Society’s annual conference in Jackson Wyoming. A beautiful place and a great way to celebrate an awesome internship.

Greetings everyone! My internship is over, and sadly, it’s time to say goodbye. I am going to miss the Taos area and the BLM field office there. I spent the last stretch of my internship happily organizing the TAFO herbarium, entering label data into SEINet, making labels, and mounting specimens. Since returning home, I’ve been reflecting on my internship experience. It turned out that collecting seed was both a simple and complicated endeavor that encompasses a mix of strategic planning and luck. I am very grateful for the experience and for the amazing people I have met along the way! Thank you CLM for this wonderful opportunity!

Rio Grande Gorge Bridge view.

There were numerous times this season, looking upon the vast mountain ranges of Oregon, I stopped and asked myself how did I get here? I’m so thankful that one cold winter day in Upstate NY I found the CLM internship in an my colleges job listings and months later I ended up on the other side of the country; What a dream it has been!

I am always amazed with the infinite knowledge in science, it is exciting but often overwhelming! Before coming here I was intimidated by learning the flora of a whole new place but week by week I was piecing together the species of the region.

I had the pleasure to take a few classes this summer and am proud of the knowledge I accumulated. I took a botanical drawing course, expanding my botanical terminology and observation skills. I also attended a Graminoids course, trying to grasp the minute parts, microscope skills and general ecological discrepancies. When I thought I had a grasp on most of the common species of the area I took a bryophyte class and was yet again astonished at the diversity of life, even on one small rock or tree bowl. There are over 400 species of moss in Oregon, I’m pleased to say I know 10-20 of the common ones!

Just being around people with a vast wealth of knowledge and passion really inspires me to try my best and I hope someday I can be that person for others.

Throughout the season I have created a small study book of plants I learned throughout the season. Packaging tape and index cards make a great little book to learn and review species. It has been incredibly helpful for me to learn the plants this way! It’s sort of like stamp collecting but more fun for botany nerds!

Apart from traditional botany knowledge I was able to help out in a variety of unique tasks. From rafting the Rogue river, driving a huge pick up truck on the scariest roads, building fences to protect endangered plants, entering stacks of contract data using ArcGIS ….to name a few. Botany careers are not all about the plants!!

I have grown immensely from this unique experiences and would 100% recommend this program to anyone – well anyone who doesn’t care if they get dirty, sweat in the blazing sun, hike miles to see rare plants and come home exhausted and sore; In my opinion, its absolutely worth it!

Thanks to everyone who has helped me on my journey! Especially my mentor Stacy (she’s awesome – couldn’t have asked for a better mentor) and crew Shannon and Andy – wouldn’t be as fun without you guys. Cant wait to see where I will be next season!

Sienna M

Grants Pass, OR BLM

Congratulations!

Today is your day .

Your off to Great Places!

Your off and away!

You have brains in your head.

And feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

Any direction you choose.

You’re on your own. And you know what you know.

And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.  –Dr.Suess

As the tiny amounts of water vapor in the air have begun to freeze and form wispy cloud-like blankets in the sky, I am reminded how much has changed over the past few months working in New Mexico. From the intense heat and crispy plants of the early summer to the sudden greenness of post-monsoon season, the high desert of NM is truly an ephemeral and magical place. I will never forget the smell of pinon burning and lightness of the air welcoming me to Santa Fe in June. While it seemed like just a temporary home when I first moved here from rural New Jersey, the beauty and diversity has grown on me and pulled me into wanting to stay. New Mexico really is the “Land of Entrapment”.

Thrown into a dust devil of meeting new people, leading an important rare plant monitoring project for the BLM, endless exploring, and taking on new hobbies, my CLM internship has been nothing but an exciting learning experience. Who knew you could fit climbing, alpine running, dancing, birding, cooking with green chile, soaking in a hot spring, and work in one week? Looking back at myself before moving out west, I’ve realized the amount of personal growth that has occurred. Despite being naturally shy and reserved, I’ve definitely become more outgoing and overall just more stoked about life. I can attribute this to the wonderful people and opportunities I’ve been surrounded by at work and in Santa Fe, but also the massive change of moving across the country by myself (and maybe the high elevation).

Even though I worked on rare plant conservation for a couple years back home, I had never thought I would be applying almost every single thing I’ve learned in school and in the field. I’ve utilized everything from putting on my “rare plant goggles” to spot plants to countless hours in Excel spreadsheets to writing code in R and analyzing GIS data. Tasked with designing and installing demographic trend monitoring for a variety of imperiled rare plants has been both challenging and rewarding. The realization that our efforts and dedication are the start of a long-term monitoring study, and may influence decisions that aid in slowing the disappearance of an entire species, was very fulfilling.

Working for a federal land agency has also been a huge shift from the realm of private, state, and research-based management back east. I’ve grown to enjoy the challenges of multi-use land management as it makes every decision more thought-provoking. Something as simple as choosing between aluminum or plastic plant tags becomes complex when you consider the abundance of curious corvids, hungry rabbits, and cattle. In addition, designing protocols and presenting at conferences has made me more in tune with effective scientific communication. Many people may not know what belt transects or phenology or matrix models are, but these can be easily explained if we as scientists truly understand their meaning. It is always difficult to express the importance of preserving rare species as their role may not seem as important as those which are more common. But if we look at the role of a single human, whose impacts and connections spread far beyond what we can observe, is this really that different than a single, unique, rare plant species?

One of my goals going into this internship was to narrow down my interests in the field of ecology. I’ve realized that I’m becoming increasingly more curious about how management affects plant communities and the cascade of effects this has on other ecological communities through the disruption of food sources and habitat structure. While the idea of exploring this question in greater detail sounds very appealing, I’m not sure I’m quite ready or equipped to undertake that venture just yet. Accepting the CLM internship, and all that has come with it, has been by far one of the most influential decisions on my life.

A wonder of nature in Chiricahua National Monument, AZ.

On the way to Sandia Crest

We are in the middle of the last few weeks of field weather here. Lately I have been fortunate enough to work with the Wild Horse and Burro Expert applying a new population control technique that includes getting up close to each band of horses. Approaching bands without a single set of eyes detecting your every move proved much tougher than I had originally thought. The task has been time intensive and difficult to say the least, and tactics to get close to the bands have been continually refined, but as of yet there has been very little success.

As I sat on the edge of a water catchment yesterday, I began to think of these past eight months. I remembered the small amount of office work I had to complete when I first started this internship, the small infrequent rainstorms we had to be aware of in the spring, and the muddy roads that we risked trying to not get stuck. Then I recalled the bulk of the internship. The hot, dry, and dusty conditions and how the light of day seemed to last so long. But now, I looked across a vast landscape of sage brush steppe, steep canyons, and numerous rock slides. All of the willows surrounding the catchment were barren and the once murky water was healed over with thick ice that croaked and groaned as it tried to thaw and come back to life. This frosted landscape before me seemed like a far cry from the work season I once knew. There have been a lot of great connections and experiences made on this internship and as the season comes to a close… the office work closes in.

This CLM internship has been my 4th seasonal position in the natural sciences and has afforded me many new experiences. To start, I was in a hotel on every trip rather than a tent (verdict is still out on my preference), and I was working with professionals and not only other young adults. I have come to find that this difference means a lot in terms of how you engage in your work and the people around you.

Carol is also one of the first mentors and this internship is one of the first that was not strictly structured from the moment I started to the moment I ended. I was allow to create my own projects, look at the data with my own interests in mind and actually create something that would be helpful to the program as a whole. Although daunting, I think that it created some productive struggles for me as a person, namely the confidence to follow my own path. There are so many different ways that each data set could be viewed, so many different emphasis that could be placed on work done with a land management agency and so many projects out there waiting to be created.

The next step is up in the air, as is always the case after the field season, and I look forward to seeing where the wind takes me. As of now I will be assisting the family business, learning the ins and outs of Stanton hats and getting a healthy dose of the Sonoran desert.

Stanton hat and me

So here is to raising my glass to another season of field work, to the good, the bad (it ends) and the future.

Taryn

COSO

I apologize for the title, but when you primarily work in grazing compliance for six months the puns just start flowing. My personal favorite was finding sneaky cows at a water trough and saying “well, well, well…,” (my poor field partner).

It has been an awesome season working for the BLM in the Lander, Wyoming field office. While reflecting on my time here I recalled first driving through Wyoming and noticing, a little nervously, how flat and tree-less it was compared to the forested Pacific Northwest. Now, having been able to spend hundreds of hours driving to every corner of the field office that distant concern seems silly. This state has provided the ability to see some of the most picturesque landscapes (blue skies and snow capped mountains), kooky and majestic wildlife (think badgers flinging soil feet into the air and hundreds of wild horses running through a valley), and land that has been untamed. I am going to miss the chance at experiencing something new in the field every day but I am thankful that this internship has provided me with even more of a perspective focused on the “little things.”

Being in the field for much of the season was another great chance to prove to myself how much I love working in the outdoors. I’ve realized over the past six months that whatever career I move towards, it needs to be one that incorporates hands-on field work and the ability to get outside and get a little muddy. That being said, I was also able to learn a great deal about the inner workings, policies, and politics of the BLM and worked on everything from administrative tasks to NEPA documents, which was an equally valuable experience.

This internship has provided a comprehensive overview of what it is like to work for a federal agency. Before working with the BLM I had little to no idea how public grazing worked, the extent of the role that the BLM plays in managing our lands, or what challenges surround multi-use management. My views have definitely changed this season, going from more strict, conservation based ideals, to understanding that sustainable management means utilizing resources for multiple purposes. I think that this position has helped me to gain a more realistic perspective on how to apply natural resource management principles to satisfy the major aspects of sustainability.

I am thankful for all of the things I have gained through this internship, including a tan that is already fading, friends I will have for years to come, and great insight into what my goals are for a future in environmental work. It is bittersweet to say goodbye to one chapter but I am excited to see what the next one will bring.

Cheers!

It is bittersweet to be leaving Wyoming right as winter hits. It would have been fun to experience another weather season here.

I ALWAYS had to stop the truck to watch the wild horses when I was in the field.

The leaves hadn’t quite yet started to fall in New England when I first noticed that my morning commute had become consistently longer. At one “T” in the road, I rolled to a halt, but at least the setting was scenic. A tunnel of trees grew around the road there. The sun’s rays trickled through in the morning hours, alluding to the fall colors to come. I spotted a yellow school bus in the line of cars ahead of me and it occurred to me that it was the first year that I was not returning to school in the fall. I had graduated college in May 2017 and I was instead in the midst of my 6-month CLM internship outside of Boston. I had heard about the CLM internship program from a 2015 CLM intern I had met in summer 2016 and I was intrigued by the description.

• Explore your careergoals and expand your resume
• Experiencenew landscapes, habitats, and species diversity in the United States
• Apply your education to important conservation projects

Check, check and check. Yes, my experience as a CLM intern was just as the three bullet points above promised me. Perhaps we spent more time driving than I had expected. I shrugged as I counted the cars in front of me. Even without including my drive to the carpool meeting place, our daily roundtrip could easily be three hours.

There were four of us who traveled together, scouted native populations together and split the duties of seed collection and data keeping. We had all studied a form of biology as undergraduates and shared an appreciation for natural landscapes, especially for plants. We traded the plant identification books around and swapped stories of our previous field experiences. That day in my sedentary car I was smiling and thinking about the CLM field experiences that I will share in the future.

One of the interns was an avid hiker and usually had an upcoming trip in the works, whether it be to Acadia National Park or Mt. Greylock, the tallest mountain in Massachusetts. Never lagging behind on the trail, this intern liked to point out lichen and mushrooms and guess their classification. I had always liked plants, but this intern encouraged me to widen my appreciation for other forms of life, especially in this temperate region. I was also surprised when this intern admitted to reading my CLM blog posts, adding, “I would read a book you wrote.” I saw some beautiful flourishes of nature during my internship, but I liked them even more after experiencing them with this intern and sharing our reactions. Our experiences in nature are meant to be shared.

Another intern had a knack for recognizing many plants, despite being new to the area. “They’re medicinal and my mom used to take me and my siblings out to collect this,” the intern explained on day one. Our mentor bypassed plenty of these “weeds,” explaining that they wouldn’t be of use to the landowners for whom we worked, but this other intern showed me that they nonetheless had another purpose. On another occasion, all of us interns estimated how many collections we would make by the end of the season. This intern came up with a number much higher than the rest of us. When collection days started, this intern always encouraged us to make at least one more collection near the end of the day. On one collection day when we were short-handed, this intern kept up the spirits of the team enough to haul in the year’s highest number of collections in a single day–thirteen. We didn’t reach the high collection number this intern predicted for the season, but the goal motivated us to make every collection count.

The other intern was juggling aspirations of being a food scientist after working with plants at the molecular level while working in a lab during college. This intern’s love of food was not lost on anyone based on our conversation topics during lunch hour. We were all surprised when one day this intern brought a hefty sandwich into the field and cut it into four slices; a pan bagnat. None of us touched what we had packed for ourselves after digging into this gourmet treat. It was the start of a tradition of trading food with each other. Through this generosity we learned about each other’s cultures and built a stronger camaraderie. This intern also had a strong talent for understanding the emotional states of the other team members. Through offering to take on additional tasks in the field, prompting a smile with an impromptu dance or surprising us with milkshakes on a dreary office day, this intern taught me how to maintain team morale.

As I thought about how my career goals had changed and of the astounding sights we had found in the field, I realized that what really made this internship special was my intern team. When I applied, I had barely considered with whom I might be working. There was no description of the personalities with whom I would be matched. There is no way I could have anticipated my partners and their personalities and what they would teach me about life and teamwork. There is much more to a CLM internship than the job description.

Our last day at one of our signature New Hampshire field sites.

I’m missing the field season these days. Although I feel lucky to have had my internship extended and the opportunity to further my knowledge of things like GIS and NEPA, it’s hard not to feel antsy after a summer of intense activity. Soon, the field office will begin planning for the 2018 field season, and I’ll begin to uproot my lifestyle and move on to the next one. My daydreams of wandering around Wyoming’s public lands will dwell as I zone out to aerial images from 1976 that need to be georeferenced.

The Thanksgiving holiday was a nice break. I traveled from Wyoming to the Pacific coast of Washington where I was reminded how dark canopies can make the forest floor, the smell of wet soil, and what precipitation feels like. Hiking in Deception Pass State Park reignited my interest in ecosystem diversity and forest ecology. I am now a firm believer in the importance of stepping away from your (temporary) home to gain some perspective. Although I’ve managed to travel a fair amount during my time in Wyoming, pushing yourself out of your element, or back into your element after stepping away for a while, serves as an excellent reminder that no matter where in the world you are, there’s still more world out there.

Viewpoint off a Washington beach in Deception Pass State Park.

Deception Pass State Park bridge.

In a few weeks, I’ll be off to new places. I’m not sure where yet. Reading some of the other CLM blog posts feels discouraging. Complaints of not finding another job to move on to or applying to graduate school as a result of not having other options seems all too common in environmental and botanical fields. I am also pondering the thought of graduate school, only to shrug and put the thought away. There are seasonal opportunities in warmer climates where plants continue to bloom through the winter, but it seems to be competitive for a full-time permanent position in a generation where people are arguably over-educated, a graduate degree might be necessary in this field. Please somebody correct me if I’m wrong.