Fall is here in the Southeast, and some new seeds have ripened! Over the past few weeks, we’ve been collecting from a few plants that we have not seen ready thus far. One in particular that we are most excited about is our Rhexia mariana collection. We’ve seen this pesky Rhexia in just about every preserve and park we’ve visited, but until now it has not been ready. Luckily, we found some at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, and our long wait to collect came to an end.

Rhexia mariana flower

Rhexia mariana seed capsules. They look like little vases.

We also recently made our first collections of Polygonum sagittatum and Rosa palustris. Polygonum sagittatum has quite aptly received the common name of “arrowleaf tearthumb”, because of its prickly, recurved spines. Alongside the thorny Rosa palustris, both of these collections were a bit challenging at times. We had to be sure not to tear our thumbs.

Polygonum sagittatum

Rosa palustris. Look at those thorns.

Finally, we were able to make two collections of Aralia spinosa (which is also laden with spines along its stem and leaves!). Both collections were a lot of fun. It is easy to spot ripe Aralia spinosa by its bright maroon inflorescence. This made it easy for us to find as we drove throughout Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and Vandell Preserve at Cumberland Marsh.

Aralia spinosa with ripe, maroon inflorescences.

Dark purple to black A. spinosa berries.

– Maggie Heraty

North Carolina Botanical Garden CLM Intern

Well, my internship has drawn to a close. It has been an immense pleasure to be able to spend the greater portion of five months in the field. The opportunities that avail themselves when living in the rural west are incredible.

I’m pretty happy with the work I was involved with. I think SOS is an awesome program, and I’ll be interested to see how it develops in the next decade. I’m very proud of the accessions I was able to add to their collections-and doing so was a very rewarding experience. I was able to make 24 collections; but they are sorely lacking in some vouchers and pictures-of the original 30 plants I took vouchers from and monitored the progression of only a handful were able to be collected-but opportunity can be found in any parched, scorched, ravine in the steppe, again…and again… I spent a bit of my spare time studying genetics, plant demography, plant communities, and reading other assorted things to help guide my collection techniques and choose/prioritize plants; I think that this was an incredible way to study this sort of material.  I’m also really happy to be able to feel like I’ve got a really good feel for the sage steppe flora.

sitting in the snowfall.

I was enthralled to be in a ‘seasonal town’. For the last few years I’ve just been flat broke, that means only like 5-10 hikes a year. Having a job and basically already being in the mountains changed that! I’ve done a lot of the best hiking of my life this year. I still botanized a lot in my spare time too. Highlights looking back were: I went to this canyon (Swakane) to learn most of my sage-steppe plants early in the season, I recently learnt that the gentleman who wrote our flora (PNW-Hitchcock) use to do study weekends out there for decades with his friends. Another highlight were the endemic plants of the Wenatchee mountains. I think I saw about 20 endemics there this year- most of these rank in my (mental) top ‘most aesthetically appealing plants’ top 100. A final highlight was spending a lot of time in the sub-alpine and alpine and becoming familiar with those plant communities too. These are two groups of plants that I had no experience with until this year; and I’m very happy to now feel comfortable with my knowledge of the alpine, sub-alpine, east side forests, and sage-steppe areas of the PNW.

learn to ID dead things!

So I’ve learnt a lot about: plant ecology, orienteering, navigating, scheduling, planning, paperwork  (!),  dealing with people, keying a handful of new families, genetics, and monitoring. I’ve also cemented a lot of undergraduate knowledge that I would have probably ended up forgetting in a few years! I feel like a much more competent field worker now than I did five months ago, but I also still think I can grow significantly before pursuing formal instruction again.

So how does someone follow up something like this?

Well, easily discernible from the blogs is that most folks go to graduate school, right on! However, I’m not doing that, I’m going back to the analytical chemistry lab I work in as a phytochemist. I’m very excited to be able to reflect upon many of the interesting chemicals and their distributions throughout the steppe flora as I’m back at the bench. I’m also excited to hike the West cascades and Olympics for another year. I’ve also resolved to earn another bachelors as a part time student (I work in my old college town); this time in Plant Ecology (to supplement my B.S. in Plant Biology). I see how having a wider framework can be valuable for interpreting the natural world, and how a enhanced skill set can be an asset for various projects.

Thanks for opportunity Krissa, Rebecca & Molly.

SMILES

hey Justin, the fifth stratovolcano!

“And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay
And night comes so quiet, it’s close on the heels of the day”

After writing a lot of generalized blog posts that summarized my work and travels, I decided to dedicate a post to America’s favorite ungulate- the cow!

Dramatic cow photo. Such mystery, so aloof…what are they thinking about?

Every day I encounter hundreds of cows to, from, and during work. We drive by packed dairies carpeted by manure and spotted with black and white heifers during our commute. But mostly we encounter free-range beef cattle on BLM lands at work. When we see the cattle they are usually either crowded at watering areas or in repose among the sagebrush and grasses. They also play chicken with the truck, giving you the blankest, emptiest cow stares until the truck is literally inches away and they bolt and scatter.

Usually the cattle are well-fed and calm, with lots of clumsy and chubby calves that gallop around, always less than a year from being full-grown and ready to have their own calves that will replace them after slaughter. There are also the occasional unlucky individuals that get separated from the herd. It’s usually a lame bull, a skinny cow, or a fatigued calf.

A lot of cows.

We’ve also become experts at spotting sun-bleached cow bones from our truck and our hikes to our monitoring sites. We’ve even collected a few choice bones for our balcony museum of dead things (several cow bones and skulls, a dog skull, and a coyote skull)

But the constant exposure to these ungulates is starting to get to me. Sometimes I’ll spot some cows on the slope of an extremely steep mountainside or floundering in the dust of a veritable desert and just laugh. I know they’re deceptively surefooted and extremely self-sufficient (I mean, they turn wimpy grass into BURGERS), but most of the time they just look completely lost or out of place.

We’ve also encountered a couple calf-dumping sites which, as you can imagine, are considered bio-hazards. About a month ago we spotted four dead calves decomposing next to a trailer. As we drove past, two herding dogs came out of nowhere and chased our pick-up. It was a little creepy. We’ve been told that sometimes dairy farmers will dump their dead calves on BLM land as a show of hostility that stems from a dairy vs. beef ‘beef’ that has grown in recent years. We spent a lot of time at that particular allotment, which has gained some infamy at our field office for having less than desirable grazing, habitat potential, or diversity in some pastures.

That isn’t to say that this is representative or typical for our field office’s lands. On the contrary, we have an enormous range of different ecosystems from lush and green mountainsides covered in Douglas firs and snowberry to your classic sagebrush steppes, and of course, a few cheat-grass dominated sites.  And it’s rare to see any sick cows. But after encountering thousands of of beefy bovine and a fair amount of areas nearly desecrated by grazing, drought, or erosion, I wanted to learn more about the other less obvious implications of cattle grazing.

The last Habitat Assessment Framework site we did at Muldoon Canyon

I’m from Florida, which has almost 1 million head of cattle that supplies $2 billion of our state’s economy. Historically, we are the first state to have large-scale cattle ranches. At the moment, the majority of the beef produced in Florida is shipped elsewhere, like Oklahoma or Texas, due to there only being one industrial-sized slaughterhouse located in Florida (Florida Beef Council).

A few Floridian cows hanging out under the palm trees at my friend’s family ranch in Loxahatchee.

This is in stark contrast to Idaho’s beef industry, which caters its own products within the state and has more than double the amount of cattle in Florida. The profits from Idaho’s beef industry are only surpassed by that of Idaho’s dairy industry. Despite having gigantic corporate operation headquarters, the majority of the cattle in Idaho are raised on privately owned feedlots and ranches. More than 2/3rds of the state’s lands are owned by state and federal government, which means most cattle spend a portion of their lives on public rangelands (Idaho Beef Council). They’re a pretty big deal out west, and the BLM grants 18,000 permits and leases for ranchers and  puts aside 155 million acres for grazing.

Cows are arguably the most important domesticated animal that has ever existed and the “second most influential mammal in North America” (you can probably guess who’s number one). Some consider cows to be the oldest form of wealth and today is one of the most resource-intensive forms of agriculture (Cowed). We use 25% of the world’s land to graze cattle. It costs 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef and producing one pound of grain-fed beef has the equivalent ecological footprint of burning one gallon of gasoline (Rise & Fall of Cattle Culture). These gentle giants are as tasty as they are costly.

Our obsession with the ungulate can be traced back to humanity’s first attempt at domestication 10,500 years ago. We started with 80 of the first domesticated cows from Turkey, which grew to between 1.3-1.5 billion cows worldwide (UCL). The effects of this milestone has altered our landscapes and resources. It started as a symbiotic relationship where cows converted grasses into food, labor, and fertilizer, and we provided them with water and protection from predators (Cowed). However, taking into account global warming, declining soil quality, contamination of our water systems, the spread of invasive species, heart disease, erosion, and even wildfires– the symbiosis is equivocal at best.

Drill-seeded crested wheatgrass

On the other hand, cows are a celebrated resource- a seemingly endless supply of hamburgers, steak, cheese, milk, ice cream, fertilizer, leather etc. Our obsession with cows is evident in our favorite foods as well as scientific research. Cows are the only animal to have their entire genome mapped (and share 80% of their genes with humans). They also played a crucial role in settling the west. As the demand for beef grew, so did the need to expand westward in the 1900s (Humane Society). As a result, cattle culture is completely ingrained here in Idaho. There’s a new rodeo in town every other week, a surplus of western wear outlets, and trucks with unfathomably long trailers absolutely stuffed with bright yellow hay, ready to be munched on by dairy cows.

Most of the work we’re assigned (directly and indirectly) is a response to these animals’ existence and their profound effects on the environment. We monitor vegetation at long-term trend sites to gather vegetation data on pastures that will be used to inform allotment management plans and we perform grazing reintroduction surveys to determine when and if pastures can be grazed after a wildfire occurs.

These grazing reintroduction studies are conducted a few years (usually 2-3) after a fire has occurred and restoration efforts have begun. Some sites are naturally regenerated while others that require more intensive management are drill-seeded. Data on species type, count, and how established the root systems of the grasses are collected to determine the health of the pasture and when cattle or sheep can be reintroduced.

A grazing reintroduction monitoring site that burned about 3 years ago. The vegetation that followed was naturally regenerated and surveyed to determine when permittees can let their cattle graze in these pastures again.

We frequently encounter cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) during our monitoring. Cheatgrass is an invasive species that thrives in fire-prone ecosystems and is also an incredibly flammable fuel source. They’re also prolific reproducers, peaking at 10,000 seeds for every square meter of established cheatgrass and are expert competitors when stacked against most native flora (Greenwire). The Fish and Wildlife Service predicts that “in 30 years we may have five times more cheatgrass dominated areas in the Great Basin than we have today”. Between 2012-2014, 3.7 million acres of suitable sage grouse habitat went up in flames– and that number is rapidly increasing after this year’s sporadic incendiary fire events, like the Pooping Cyclist Fire in Boise (National Interagency Fire Center).

To combat this, the BLM has been pushing to plant more native grasses since the 80s, as well as introduced species like crested wheatgrass (a non-native that’s good for grazing, wildlife cover, and less flammable than cheatgrass) and forage kochia that tend to fare better than natives when it comes to out-competing cheatgrass and happen to be extremely palatable to cows (Greenwire).

Bromus tectorum, aka cheatgrass, aptly named for its poor forage value. It ‘cheats’ cows out of nutritious grass!

Although a strategic and calculated maneuver, it hasn’t been enough to deter wildfires. The recent fires in Idaho have created a lot of controversy and pointed fingers between the BLM and ranchers. Idaho has battled 21 wildfires this year. Ranchers and the Idaho Cattle Association have been very vocal about their opinion that the BLM could have drastically reduced the size of the Soda Fire. Many ranchers are arguing that had the BLM allowed more grazing this year to reduce the fuel load, which has increased due to higher than normal rainfall, the Soda Fire would not have reached the size or intensity that allowed it to destroy hundreds of acres of land. In an interview with KTVB, BLM state director Tim Murphy explained that the extreme weather, conditions that have not been seen in the area for nearly 90 years, was to blame and that increased grazing would not have affected fire behavior (KTVB).

BLM Director Neil Kornze recently toured Owyhee County to survey the Soda Fire which burned 280,000 acres and is now the agency’s priority rehabilitation site. The project to restore the lands may cost as much as $10 million. Grazing permits are an important factor when considering the complexity of how rangelands are managed in the future. This in combination with restoration efforts are exceptionally crucial for next month’s USFWS decision on whether the sage grouse will be put on the endangered species list at the end of September (Idaho Statesman).

I hope to write a post about at least one more human-rangeland topic (i.e. the BLM horse round-ups) before my internship comes to an end in October. Until my next post, I hope to speak to ranchers, range conservationists, and wildlife biologists to develop a better understanding of this complex interface of people, weather, flora, and fauna. It’s a sensitive and contentious time for Idaho’s ranchers, natural resource agencies, and public lands–but it’s also an invaluable opportunity to observe the sociology and ecology of this unique state.

Poorly organized sources

In the past couple weeks, my field offices’ SOS collection season has come to a bittersweet close. With the drought in CA still in full swing, it was difficult to meet our target, as water-stressed plants in our area consistently showed a lack of viable seeds.

A collection of redbud (Cercis orbiculata) in Bear Valley was our final collection. The fruits we were finding generally had one or two seeds, where those of a healthy tree would’ve had four to six. Although we had to sweat to meet our target of 10,000 seeds, my mentor Graciela and I couldn’t complain too much – the occasional cool breeze and the view out towards Yosemite made the day.

groovy lichen

just gorgeous!

pronghorns!

Wetland plants in the burn

Another handsome guy

collection buddy

the dread plant yellow starthistle

Keeper of the sheep

Update # 1: The Northwest is on fire, as many of you know. The Canyon Creek fire just east of our district began over a month ago caused by a lightning strike, has claimed over 40 homes and gobbled up over 110,000 acres. It got real to me when the smoke of a fire to the north hazed up town each evening when the wind shifted. The day I could finally see the Cascade mountains again was incredible. Firefighters died tragically battling the Okanogan Fires in WA, and it will be a struggle to protect an ancient grove of giant sequoia’s from crowning to the south in California. The USFS has spent over half of it’s operating budget this year just on firefighting attempts. In the ring of fire, volcanic mountain chain, we are surrounded by a non vulcan type of blaze. Locally it is looking like it will wind down, but it sure has opened my eyes to the issues with fire that the west has to look forward to in the years to come. With climate change (causing drought) , the takeover of invasive annual grasses and past fire suppression, it’s the perfect storm. The seeds we are collecting are so important! Not just for sage grouse or pollinators, but for entire landscapes. We are the post-firefighters. It will be the West’s great challenge to thrive in this fiery environment.
Interesting sidenote if working in burned areas or fire ecology enthusiast: Have you noticed the plant community in past burned areas? I kept going to burned areas and vaguely puzzling over the plants I saw there, but didn’t give it much thought. Then I heard about this study that shows that after a burn the trees that died are tapping water out of the earth no more, and this actually causes the water table to rise. This makes water near the surface more accessable to plant life then previously, and you get a early successsion of wetland plants. Weird, but good good to know the fires might not be all bad.
Update # 2 : Assisting the weed technicians with invasive species mapping on our GPS’s, one of our most startling discoveries was an infestation of yellow starthistle, Centaurea solstitialis. This weed was only known to be present in a few places on the district and is of high concern, so recording it is important so that plans to control it over the next few years can be made before it spreads. Yellow starthistle can rapidly decrease water availability to desirable native plants and thus result in large economic and environmental costs. It is also toxic to horses. Myself and the weeds gals spent two whole days manually pulling this prickly weed to aid in its eradication.
Update # 3 : I will never tire of seeing pronghorn antelope, I’m sure of it. These are some seriously cool animals. Did you know scientists think that their incredible speed is due to co-evolution with the now extinct N. American cheetah? I just think they are beautiful, and their cute white butts make them easy to spot.
Update # 4 : I have had the pleasure of tagging along with the wildlife CLMer’s to record western long-eared bat roost site data. I think that working with other people in other areas of focus in your office is one of the most important things you can do as an intern. I would echo this for land managers in general. We need to work together within our offices, our agencies, our communities, and the world. Anyway, I got to use forestry equipment that I haven’t used since a breif lab session in school so I was grateful for some real-world experience. I also learned something new about the western juniper.
How do you determine it’s an old growth juniper? Well overall it just looks old. Better indicative factors however, include: copius growth of macrolichens on branches, no leader creating pointy-topped silloheute, instead rounded. Deeply grooved and twisted bark (lots of bat roost sites) and many (often dead) sprawling lower branches. two or three of these characteristics and you got an old growther. They are supremely beautiful.
Update # 5 : Fun fact, listening to NPR is a good thing to do when you have to drive a lot, alone, as I do. You learn about new science discoveries, local happenings, cultural phenomena, history, geography, and become a more informed world citizen.Your IQ may even rise. Also, I have found that NPR is often detectable when other good music stations are not. Try it out in the field.
Last update (# 6) Fun botany vocab of the month, as taught by using wordy and confusing dichotomous keys: Cordillera: mountain range chain. Secund: inflorecences situated on only one side of the stem. Glaucous: powdery stuff that makes plants look misted. Blue-white until rubbed with finger, then green. I love that botany has a special word for that.

It was long, but my blog is overdue and I had many random thoughts to share. Until next time!

We have been busy busy interns at the BLM Eagle Lake office. We have been monitoring several species of special status plants in addition to our Seeds of Success collections.

Saving the world, one SOS collection at a time

Although  grass collections such as Squirrel Tail and Great Basin Wild Rye go much faster, I have a soft spot for berry picking.

My beloved Bitter Cherry

Although I do enjoy the work itself, my favorite part of this internship is spending everyday out in the beautiful field office. It is amazing how one day we can see for miles, and the next day be surrounded by thick smoke from the surrounding wildfires.

Cheers to lunch with a view!

Of course the job does have its down sides…

You think LA traffic is bad? Try the Eagle Lake field office! We have been caught in numerous traffic jams.

We certainly enjoy our weekend adventures, both local and afar.

I recently visited McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park for a full day of hiking. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through the park, and I was lucky to meet some thru-hikers who have been going strong for 1,418 miles so far. I’ve been inspired to attempt the trail myself someday!

The beautiful Burney Falls

Other adventures include Yosemite National Park, Lassen National Park, and Lake Tahoe. I certainly do not like wasting a single weekend in such an awesome part of the country!

Cheers,

Rachael

Hello everyone!

August was a pretty exciting month! I was able to pair up with the local DNR office and assist in some of their prairie dog projects. Part of the week, I participated in the capture and relocation program. Since the Utah prairie dog is federally listed as a threatened species, how “problem” populations are handled is a delicate process. The DNR has been trying to work with property owners who find the animals troublesome or undesirable and relocate them, so that more drastic measures by the land owners can be avoided.  This process allows the animals to form a new colony at the relocation site, where they can thrive, and relieves some of the tensions that human-prairie dog interactions can cause.

I was also able to participate in a slyvatic plague research study. This allowed me to get a little bit more hands on experience with the prairie dogs. Essentially, we set traps in a location where the SPV (sylvatic plague vaccine) was distributed a week earlier (using sugar cube baits) and collected data from the individuals that were captured. Once caught, there are several steps to processing them, a few examples are: checking for fleas (which can carry the plague), collecting a fur sample (which will contain a biomarker for the vaccine if it’s been ingested), and marking them with pit and ear tags (in order to identify them in future years). For a little bit of information about Sylvatic plague and the work being done to immunize populations of ferrets and prairie dogs, read this brief article by the USGS.

A colony of Utah prairie dogs near our SPV site.

Although the prairie dog work was the highlight of the month (maybe even the internship), I have been keeping busy helping the range technicians finish up some of their trends, check riparian fencing, fix said fencing if needed, visit future prairie dog relocation sites and collect vegetation data, and participate in PFC (proper functioning condition) assessments of a few riparian areas. Next week we’re going to start helping with the rangeland health assessments.

During one of our riparian PFC assessments we came upon a stand of ponderosa pines. This was my first up close encounter with this wonderful tree. If you sniff the bark it smells kind of like cream soda or caramel. It’s pretty wonderful, and I highly recommend it!

This is my co-intern Zach and I with Mike and Lindsey from the range crew.

In my free time, I’ve gotten to explore a bit and see more of Utah and the National Parks (NP). I think in this month alone, I’ve visited Kolob Canyon, Zion NP, Capitol Reef NP, Bryce Canyon NP, and the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Being a midwesterner, I’m really trying to make the most of my time in the southwest!

Looking out at Capitol Reef National Park from the trail. It was quite a view!

I’ll leave you with this gem. Burrowing owls are often found in close proximity to prairie dogs, because the owls will utilize old mammal burrows for nesting sites. I’ve been dying to see a burrowing owl all summer, and as a result of this behavior and my work with the DNR crew, I was able to visit a spot and see an entire family of owls. It was a pretty amazing sighting! I believe there were 5 present during my visit.

One of the burrowing owls.

This past month has seen a variety of efforts here at the office, field season is still in full swing and we have been busy! We have been trapping fish in Tule Lake just across the border from California. We have had a little bit of success, but we were largely catching small fish and have not found suckers in the lake. We moved our traps to the deepest part of the lake, which was more successful. We managed to catch larger fish, mostly chub species. We also caught the largest sucker we have caught all season, most likely a short nosed sucker. Unfortunately we are having problems with our boat, so we may be unable to set traps for the rest of the season.

Short nose Sucker caught in Tule Lake

We have also been trapping at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. We have caught three suckers so far in the largest pond, the only pond where we are supposed to have fish. We were able to get a pit tag ID on the last two suckers. They were placed in the pond last year and have doubled in size over the winter. This is really good data to have because it suggests that we can take salvage fish to be reared to a more hearty size in a relatively quick manner.

Sucker of unknown species caught at Lower Klamath National Wildlife National Refuge

This past week the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) needed help conducting sampling at the Fish Evaluation Station (FES). FES is a way of estimating how many fish, with an emphasis on suckers, get entrained in irrigation canals throughout the season. In the past the BOR has sampled for 24 hours, they found that fish rates were higher at night, so they began sampling from 8pm to 2am for intervals in 30 minutes, pulling the trap net every half hour on the hour. Suckers are measured and weighed and evaluated for physical abnormalities. The number of other species caught is also estimated.

This year we wanted to figure out if 1) the fish we are catching are all unique individuals or if the same individuals are getting recycled 2) if we can keep suckers and rear them to a more hearty size and then rerelease them. To figure out if the same fish were getting captured in the trap net we VIE tagged sculpin and chub. These species were chosen because they are showing up in a manageable number; the sculpin was also chosen because its life history is similar to the suckers. We conducted the experiment through August, when we stopped because of low fish numbers. We are still analyzing the data from this experiment, but we think it will give us really valuable data that will help us better determine the number of fish that are being entrained in the irrigation canals each year.

We also held half the suckers from each pull to help determine if we can rear suckers caught in the FES trapping effort. We held suckers in tanks for the week and took the survivors to net pens in Upper Klamath Lake. We were unsure how well this experiment would work because the suckers coming through were believed to already be in bad health. While the data is still being analyzed from observation, it appears that as the sampling went on we were able to hold less suckers because less were coming through the traps. However, it looks like a greater percentage survived. It will be interesting to see if this holds to be true after the data is analyzed statistically. We conducted this experiment through August as well and stopped because of low sucker capture.

This past week I helped BOR conduct the sampling because they were short staffed. While we did not continue the recirculation study, we did try and hold suckers. However there was a low fish catch which included suckers. We caught just seven suckers all week and were only able to hold one. We are unsure why the fish capture is so low this year, though there are several theories including bad water quality and that it was a low spawning year.

Trap net at the Fish Evaluation Station

Sucker holding tanks at Fish Evaluation Station

My internship is wrapping up, as I have about a month left. That means that it is final report time! I am analyzing the data for the monitoring at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. I am really excited to see what the data can tell me. I am especially excited to do some analysis with Geographic Information Systems. I have a lot of GPS points for predator evidence and I am interested to see if it there is a pattern to where predator activity is occurring. I am also getting to write a field note for the project, which will be a great chance to work on public outreach. The last month should be busy but rewarding.