With the last of the 2014 season’s seed collections wrapped-up and shipped away, our attentions have turned to other projects. A major portion of the work now involves the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). During the past few months I have had the good fortune to work on several interesting NEPA projects.

Kelso Peak Grazing Allotment, within the Bright Star Wilderness

One such project involves developing and analyzing alternatives to determine the level of future grazing use, within the Kelso Peak Allotment. The allotment is situated mostly within the Bright Star Wilderness, an especially interesting location that receives influences from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Great Basin Desert, and the Mohave Desert, making the location extremely diverse botanically. One of the many interesting plant species of the project area is the Kelso Creek monkeyflower (Mimulus shevockii), a BLM sensitive plant species, which is known to occur in only a total of eleven populations on the planet.

Cottonwood Creek, National Wild and Scenic River

Work for another NEPA project is set alongside Cottonwood Creek, the only National Wild and Scenic River in the Ridgecrest Field Office. Here our field office is assessing the impacts and requirements of conducting a fuels reduction burn in an area of old-growth sagebrush.

‘Old growth’ sagebrush at Cottonwood Creek

A third Environmental Assessment (EA), to which I am contributing, analyzes proposed range improvements within the Deep Springs Valley and South Oasis grazing allotments, at the northern end of the Ridgecrest Field Office. This project area, located in the Great Basin Desert, offers an interesting change of plants and other scenery, compared to the Mohave Desert that forms the majority of our work area. One of the highlights of the field work required to prepare this EA involved trekking cross-country through the wilderness, in order to locate, assess, and document a spring, which no present BLM employees had ever visited. A less pleasant aspect involved discovering approximately 125 contiguous acres of Russian thistle associated with a water trough site, on one of the above mentioned allotments.

Russian thistle (a.k.a. tumbleweed) infestation on the South Oasis Allotment

As far as NEPA writing is involved, I have mainly contributed to the vegetation and non-native, invasive species sections, two areas for which I possess a high level of interest. The NEPA process required for an EA requires the consideration of a range of reasonable alternatives. I enjoy the process of looking at issues from various perspectives, in order to analyze different scenarios and their possible effects on the multiple resources stewarded by BLM.

Non-functional watering trough at One Tub Spring, on the South Oasis Allotment. BLM is considering repairing this and other grazing allotment improvements.

Another important and useful part of the process of performing NEPA analysis has involved using GIS. Examples include consulting the California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB) for the known occurrences of Special Status Species and NISIMS (National Invasive Species Information Management System) for the locations of invasive plants. A related aspect, which I also enjoy, involves the utilization of mobile GIS. For each of these NEPA projects I have used a Trimble device, running ArcPad, to collect geodata of features such as fencelines, burn piles, springs, watering troughs, and invasive species infestations.

Wildlife utilizes available water from One Tub Spring

I have also used GIS to create several maps for EAs, which display project areas and the measures that would be implemented under each of the possible alternatives. These maps generally undergo changes as projects develop, enabling BLM staff and members of the public to understand proposed actions.  This, and all NEPA work, is intended to contribute towards the making of well-informed decisions, better decisions being the ultimate goal of the NEPA process. Viva NEPA!

Marcus Lorusso

BLM Ridgecrest Field Office

Hello Stranger,

I’m happy to report that this is not my final blog post, and that I get to spend another exciting month working for the BLM, Jarbidge Field Office.

As interns, our primary objective has shifted to conducting transect inventories for the proposed endangered slickspot peppergrass (Lepidium papilliferum), and mapping its critical habitat (slick spots).  These slick spots create a unique heterogeneity in our field office, and have been compromised by common rangeland threats such as fires, trampling, and invasive species.  We have mapped many slick spots, but have not found any slickspot peppergrass.

Walking through the high desert all day has proven to be a very meditative experience.  I enjoy listening to music and taking in the vastness of the sagebrush steppe.  Fall on the range is beautiful.  Everything is golden.  The air is smoky and crisp.  To top things off, I saw a bobcat last week!  I followed it with the pickup before it jumped into the brush to crouch down and stare at us.  Talk about a once in a lifetime experience.

As always, thank you for reading.  This continues to be an incredible internship.

Jonathan Kleinman

Jarbidge Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

Golden grass: A picture I took while inventorying wetlands

This has been fun. I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I am grateful looking back at all the people, plants, and places I’ve had the privilege of experiencing. Seasonal work is pretty cool, too. A lot of my time here in Boise has been spent talking with Cara, our mentor, Joe, and many other people from the office about where we want to go or where we’ve been as far as jobs and careers are concerned. I think there’s an unfortunate expectation and pressure for young adults to have an idea of what they want to be and how they plan on getting there as fast as possible. From a financial standpoint I understand this mentality if you are in debt or want to avoid debt in the future or even if you just need to know that you can afford to live and maybe one day afford to support a family. Personally, I am so incredibly grateful for the privilege to not need to stress about whether I have something lined up next. But that’s a hard thing to be okay with. I often have to make a concerted effort to remind myself that it’s okay to not know what I’m doing or even where I’m going. It’s okay to not know if I want to go back to Grad School. It’s okay to not know if I want to embark upon another internship. It’s even okay if I don’t want to go into land conservation and anything remotely involved in Biology as a field of work! Who knows maybe I’ll go into culinary arts or physical therapy or criminal justice.

All of this is to say that as much as I’ve truly appreciated learning to ID plant species, remembering the plant codes, and so many other skills for land management/conservation work, above everything else, I have appreciated being a part of something genuine. This wasn’t some cookie-cutter, superficial, resume-boosting couple of months. This was hard work. Physically and mentally, we invested ourselves into this experience just as others, both people and plants, invested in us. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I’m most excited about from this internship is being able to return to the allotments we worked on in ten, twenty, even sixty years and hopefully see the actual efforts in the land. Who knows, maybe I’ll just throw on some gloves and start planting sagebrush plugs when I’m ninety.

Anyhow, much respect to all of you fellow interns for your tales and toils and I look forward to seeing where we all go from here! A big thanks to the Four Rivers Field Office staff and our mentor, Joe, for your friendships and knowledge. And many thanks to the CBG staff that are really the source for the sincerity and meaning that this program holds for me.

All my best,

Zander,

Four Rivers Field Office, Boise, ID

Osage oranges near Anderson Reservoir at the border with Oregon.

A banded orb-weaving spider (Argiope trifasciata) found while collecting Eriogonum strictum.

National Public Lands Day in the Owyhees.

The Snake River at Swan Falls Dam.

Full moon setting after the lunar eclipse.

Western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis) hanging out while collecting Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus.

The past month everything has moved so quickly. Maybe it’s the shorter span of sunlight, or the dwindling days of that familiar summer sun. Perhaps, it was the realization that this internship was coming to an end. It seemed so weird to me, that just like that, I was going to be out on my way, on to the next adventure.

When I moved to Boise I literally knew no one, and was in the same situation as most interns probably were in. However my situation slightly differed than some in the fact I was living completely by myself, in a neighborhood that was full of retired people and young families. No roommates, no college housing that was around. Which was fine with me, but I will admit, it was much more of a conscience personal challenge to go out and make friends with random people than I had ever dealt with before. I learned from this experience that moving to a new place, or really facing any new experience should be taken as an opportunity and it is what you make of it. At first I was hesitant to go out to restaurants and dine by myself and to join in on events in the community–but I’m so glad I did. On a whim I started going to yoga classes in a park and happened to meet a girl who was a nursing student at BSU and told her I was new to the town and didn’t know anybody and asked her to join me in grabbing some coffee at the local saturday market. She was very welcoming and introduced me to several of her friends and great local places in town. For a semi-introvert like myself this was definitely pushing my comfort zone but I’m so glad I personally challenged myself this way. I hear and know of seasonals who move to new places and never go out and experience it. From this effort I made to do so, Boise will always have a special place in my heart.

My co-workers at Four Rivers also will have a special place in my heart. Each and every person in our field office truly wanted us as interns to succeed and learn. I know this sounds silly but I never thought people would be so willing to go out of their way to help a couple of newbies gain experience. I appreciate the positive attitude and support the members of the Four Rivers Field Office gave to us more than they know. It also was an eye-opening experience that no matter how much experience or time you have under your belt, managing natural resources is a constant and ever changing learning experience. This, and working with various people who have different and varying opinions has really helped further form my natural resource opinions.

One thing that was most rewarding to me was the plantings we just did. As a hands-on learner I have always gotten the most out of physically doing things, but something I enjoy most is physically being able to see the results of work I have done. I have come to that realization over the course of this internship. Over the past two weeks Zander and I have planted several hundred plants for both landscaping and habitat improvement. In the process we were able to see Idaho’s rarest plant–Packard’s Milk Vetch–which only occurs in a 10 miles radius around Emmett, ID. We also had the opportunity to work with several volunteers and at one point, 140 volunteers from the Lineman school nearby. During this experience I learned that I really enjoyed teaching people with little or no background about the world around them and why it was important. Those volunteers planted nearly 1,400 sagebrush yearlings in approximately 2 1/2 hours which was incredible!

I’m so grateful for this experience working as a Conservation and Land Management Intern and would like to thank all of you at CBG for the wonderful program you have created and being so accessible to communicate with.

Boise–it’s been real. I’ll miss your amazing food scene, microbreweries, Saturday city market, rolling hills and rushing rivers, that giant white neon cross that looks over the city and meets the stars, and most of all, the wonderful people that live there. Something I won’t miss? Medusa-head and cheatgrass. Cheers.

-Cara Thompson
Four Rivers Field Office–Boise District BLM

Atop the Hills near Emmett looking for Packard’s Milk Vetch–a scenic view that summarizes what most of the Boise area looks like

The complex geologic history of Idaho is seen everywhere. The grey patch in the center is where we hiked in to do our plantings to increase native pollinators to the area

The rarest plant in Idaho! Packard’s Milk Vetch in all of its post-seed glory

Parry’s alpinegold (Hulsea vestita parryi)

A late-blooming San Bernardino Mountains bladderpod (Physaria kingii subsp bernardina)

Rock loving oxytrope (Oxytropis oreophila var. oreophila). This species occurs in AZ and UT, but in California it’s known only from high elevations in the San Bernardinos. This picture was taken at a new population in southern California.

In my last blog post, I mentioned a potential new location of fringed chocolate chip lichen, Solorina spongiosa, which is rare in California.  Kerry Knudsen, a lichenologist and curator of the lichen herbarium at University of California Riverside, verified the specimen in September.  This is a new record of the species in the San Bernardino Mountains; the other known locations are in the Sierras.     

I’ve been continuing to monitor populations of T&E in areas around the Mountaintop Ranger District, and especially focusing on older occurrences.  San Bernardino Mountains bladderpod (Physaria kingii subsp. bernardina, pictured) is one species that I’ve been monitoring; it is federally endanged and grows on carbonate slopes around Bear Valley.  In mid-September, I spent a few days working with the Urban Conservation Corps in the Bighorn Mountains Wilderness; we surveyed the wilderness for recreation impacts and removed weeds.  The Bighorn Mountains Wilderness is a little-used and little-known wilderness, but it’s one of my favorites.  The view over the desert from the relatively inaccessible Granite Peaks is amazing.  Many of our plant species endemic to carbonate soils occur in areas of this Wilderness.    

Mountaintop Ranger District

San Bernardino National Forest

We’ve returned from Central in one piece, and it was definitely an interesting stint. We were out in the field from September 11-22, which proved to be well into the Alaskan autumn. When we arrived, the birch leaves were aglow in all their ochre glory, and by the time we left, the trees were bare and the flurries were falling.

Central, as seen from the helicopter

It was a bit challenging (and admittedly sometimes frustrating) to ID Salix spp. that lacked catkins entirely, and sometimes with senescing leaves.

Mornings were often in the mid- to lower-20s (Fahrenheit), and midday rarely exceeded the mid-60s. It was a dream come true. And, to add to the whimsicality of it all, I saw my first aurora borealis!

But the wonder doesn’t stop there. The ranges surrounding Central — the White Mountains, the Crazy Mountains, the Victoria Mountains, etc– are interesting because that region of Alaska was never glaciated. Thus, the rolling topography there hasn’t been scoured by glacial retreat or carved into arrêtés and valleys. It isn’t the scenery one typically envisions when imagining Alaska, but its shrub-dwarf/lichen expanses are majestic in their own right.

Still, there remain many exciting things ahead in our final 90 hours as CLM interns. Today we checked the final box on our SOS-organizing checklist (at least from the herbarium end), and our vouchers are on their way to the Smithsonian (and to Fairbanks) as I type.

And, at the end of this month, there will be not one but TWO conferences at which to publicly botanize! The first is the Alaska Invasive Species Conference, for which Katie, our co-intern in Fairbanks, will be visiting! The second is the 2014 Alaska Botanical Forum, at which Charlotte and I will be presenting on our CLM adventures. Good stuff, no?

Hope all is well in the lower 48!

BB

Today would have been my official last day of the five month internship, but luckily I am here for 6 months and possibly more thanks to the princess sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata var. wyomingensis and A. cana). One of the big goals of this internship, according to my mentor, is to acquire huge sagebrush collections and since seeds won’t be ready until November sometime, I get to wait until they do. And according to all the rumors, they are late bloomers this year; they are just so special.

The sagebrush seeds will hopefully be used for restoration projects; I am hoping for crested conversion fields and other weed-infested plots of land where straight up broadcasting of seeds wouldn’t be enough. The plan is to grow up seeds so that 2-3 year old plants can be transplanted (by willing volunteers). I wish I could stay on to see this come into fruition. Although I may not be here for that, I did recently get to observe and take part a little in the second process after seed collecting; the growing. The BLM has a partnership with Special K Ranch, a working community for high functioning adults with mental disabilities. It turns out for the past several years they have been able to help out BLM offices in Montana with the space and labor it takes to grow up seedlings for restoration projects.

I met up with some folks from the Dillon and Missoula field offices as well as Wendy, our state botanist, who heads up this partnership and cheerfully describes it as her rogue operation.  I was amazed to see an entire greenhouse filled with 2 year old baby sagebrush plants, which actually were destined to be transplanted by a MCC crew this fall in northern Montana. Woohoo! So good to see stuff getting done. Not only were there sagebrush, but a few river birch and other wetland plants to be used for riparian stabilization next year. They, too, were collecting seeds at the ranch, although from grow-out plants (so they were at least all in one easy to get to place) the fall forbs being some asters such as Prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) and Hairy golden aster (Heterotheca villosa). I left after helping lay out a weed cloth for next year’s garden (it’s expanding!) feeling refreshed and inspired by the wonderful people and the wonderful work they are doing.

I recently was granted another opportunity to interact with the public outside of BLM. I volunteered for the 7^th grade science teacher at the local junior high school to help with a river monitoring field trip at the local Big Spring Creek. This was an amazing science experiment that the teacher, Mr. Paulson, had been conducting for the past 22 years! Measuring things like stream depth, velocity, macroinvertebrates, dissolved oxygen content, total phosphorus and nitrogen, and total fecal coliform, his science class has collected a fairly good amount of historical data. Not only have they collected the data, but their findings have been used to make important changes. One year when the total fecal coliform levels were extra high, they brought it to the attention of the town who quickly found out there was a sewage leak that had gone undetected.

I got to play the part of resident “scientist” for the day and perform the chemistry tests with some of the students. I have to say, I was really nervous at first not having dealt with 7^th graders in a while, but they were surprisingly fascinated by what we were doing, were really fun, and super well-behaved thanks to their teacher.  If there are seeds left in the next couple of weeks, I plan on taking the students out for another hands-on experience to help me with seed collecting (yes! Free labor!).

These past few opportunities along with working at the BLM have allowed me to explore a few different avenues within science/botany, since I’m not totally sure if working for the BLM is for me. Although, now that I see there can be more to the BLM than policies and NEPA documents, maybe it is.

A few random photos because I didn’t take any of what I talked about.

In the North Moccasin Mountains

Bugling elk at the Missouri River Breaks, and yes, I did take this picture with my phone.

Theodore Roosevelt statue at TR National Park in ND

A prairie dog t-shirt found at the local sports store

I have now finished my work as a Conservation Land Management intern for the BLM Bishop Field Office. In the 2014 field season I successfully completed the target amount of 15 seed collections. This was probably my favorite task for the season. I was given the independence to scout over an approximately 750,000 acre area and make my own decisions on what to collect and when. This project helped me to improve my individual organization of field notes, data, photographs, and voucher specimens. It was also perhaps the most official work I have been a part of; this gave me a great sense of pride in what I was doing, especially when it came time to submit all of my vouchers to The Smithsonian. I feel honored to have been a part of the Seeds of Success program.

Sage grouse are a topic of major concern in the Bishop Field Office; which contains a majority of the population and habitat for the distinct population segment of the Greater sage-grouse, which is currently a candidate for listing on the Federal Threatened/Endangered Species Act. I was tasked with measuring vegetation monitoring plots at sage-grouse nest sites, one of the top three priorities for the field office. These plots are a thorough method of observing vegetation specifics in and around birds that nested this year. Data collection involved locating the nest site; which required driving many miles on rough dirt roads, hiking off-trail through dense shrub covered hills, and finding the nest itself upon arrival. Reading these plots called for the following of a strict protocol. After becoming familiar with the protocol by working with my mentor, I was able to lead a volunteer in data collection. It was a good feeling to be given this responsibility. Similar to gathering nest plot data for sage-grouse, I also completed or established post fire vegetation monitoring plots and riparian condition monitoring transects. For theses plots I was also given the responsibility of leading a volunteer or co-worker.

I worked on many other projects over the course of the season as well: rare plant surveys, invasive plant survey/treatment, sage-grouse radio telemetry tracking, boundary marking for fuels reduction treatments, bat-surveys, educational youth outreach, stream restoration construction, herbicide spray treatment vegetation transects, greenhouse construction, baseline wilderness survey, and many more. It has been an inspiring and engaging field season filled with personal development and skill building. I knew coming in to this internship that I had been offered an amazing opportunity, and it has gone above and beyond my expectations. My mentor, Martin, and I got along exceptionally well, and he truly is someone I aspire to be like. Thus I have been offered the chance to return next season, I have proudly excepted and am already anxious to build upon all that I learned this year. Until then it will be Tamarisk removal all day, everyday. Preserve the good, remove the bad is now my season to season dichotomy. I would highly recommend the Conservation Land Management internship to anyone looking to expand their relationship and appreciation for public lands. Thank you to the Chicago Botanic Garden for supporting such a meaningful and productive program.

Tyler

Greetings all,

I spent the previous five weeks walking the desert surveying for rare plants. As I’ve mentioned before, I was doing surveys for rare plants on areas where herbicide treatments intended to restore grassland in areas that have been converted to shrubland through grazing as part of the Restore New Mexico program. In my previous posts on the subject, I’ve mostly talked about Peniocereus greggii, partly because that is all I was finding and partly because that is all I expected to find. However, since then we’ve found the other, and much more exciting, of our target species: Pediomelum pentaphyllum, a.k.a. Chihuahuan scurfpea, a.k.a. (for those who like USDA codes) PEPE27!

Pediomelum pentaphyllum is quite rare. As of 2008, there were a grand total of two known populations, one near the small community of Sunizona in southeastern Arizona and one in Hachita Valley in southwestern New Mexico. In 2010, a third population was found, southeast of Safford in southeastern Arizona. These three populations gave us a total of around 2,000 known individuals. There are also historical records from additional sites in southeastern Arizona, northern Chihuahua, and, maybe, western Texas. However, searches to rediscover these additional populations have failed, and none of them have been seen in the last 50 years. Maybe they’re still out there, who knows?

That western Texas record is a story in itself. A specimen was collected during the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey in 1853, but the locality is very uncertain. The specimen’s label says it was collected “chiefly in the Valley of the Rio Grande, below Doñana”. A note anonymously handwritten in pencil says “Fields nr the Presidio del Norte, August, Presidio Co., Texas”. This presents multiple problems: Doña Ana (in southern New Mexico) and Presidio del Norte (now called Ojinaga) are 240 miles apart; Ojinaga is in Chihuahua, Mexico, not Texas (although of course “fields near” Ojinaga might be in Texas); we have no idea where that “Fields nr the Presidio del Norte” locality comes from or on what basis we should take it to be accurate. That last problem turns out to be relatively easily solved. The “Presidio del Norte” locality comes from the Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey. We’re still left with the first two problems and no good way to resolve them. I’ve encountered this kind of confusion before; specimens from the boundary survey have one locality on the specimen label and a different locality in the report and you don’t know which one (if any) is correct. So far as I can tell, locality information on boundary survey specimens just isn’t particularly reliable. So, we don’t know if that specimen came from New Mexico, Texas, or Chihuahua and it is our only basis for believing Pediomelum pentaphyllum has ever been seen in Texas. Ugh. By the way, you can see this specimen for yourself:

It’s amazing how easily things like this can be tracked down these days. The report is online, a photograph of the specimen is online, it’s all right there! I’m still left with an irritating uncertainty, but at least it didn’t take me weeks of waiting for letters back and forth and schlepping things from the library.

OK, back to Pediomelum pentaphyllum. It’s rare, and most of the surveys for it have come up empty-handed. I did a couple of weeks of surveying back in 2010, for instance, during which I did not see a single individual except for a few at the Hachita Valley population to familiarize myself with the species at a known population. More extensive surveys for the Restore New Mexico program in 2012 had the same result. For this year’s surveys, I basically expected that we’d get to wander around in the desert for a few weeks, see some wonderful places, put a couple hundred miles on our shoes, and not see any Pediomelum pentaphyllum. So it took a while for me to believe what I was seeing when I stumbled across the first one:

And another:

And another:

By the end of the day, the crew and I had found 29 of them. By the end of the survey, we had found about 270 across an area about 8 miles long and 2 miles wide northwest of Lordsburg on Lordsburg Mesa. Now we have four known, extant populations of Pediomelum pentaphyllum. This should also help us determine what habitat it likes. Our new population was in looser, dunier sand than the previously known populations, in Prosopis glandulosa / Atriplex canescens / Artemisia filifolia shrubland with a number of sand specialist plants that are uncommon in the area, including Amaranthus acanthochiton, Heliotropium convolvulaceum, Chamaesyce parryi, and Dalea lanata var. terminalis. Conveniently his habitat is fairly easy to spot on aerial imagery, so I’ve put together a list of similar areas to check. Maybe we can find a fifth population!

Some of the Pediomelum pentaphyllum was in flower, too, allowing me finally to get a good series of photographs of it:

Other notable events in the field surveys:

First, I had the best field crew ever. Seriously, these folks were awesome. Here’s one of them (Jeanne Tenorio) taking notes Pediomelum pentaphyllum:

Second, we found a lot more Peniocereus greggii as well. I’ll spare you all the photos of them… at least for now.

Third, we found a bunch of other uncommon species, including four that are new records for Luna County, New Mexico: Simsia lagasceiformis, Mortonia scabrella, Ipomoea cardiophylla, and Anoda pentaschista. I also got to photograph a half-dozen species I hadn’t photographed before.

Fourth, we got stuck in the mud a couple more times. I forgot to take a picture of the first one, but here’s the second:

That’s the Mexican border at the left. On the border road, they’ve put in concrete blocks through the muddier parts and I was hoping these would be shallow enough that we wouldn’t just sink into the mud. I was wrong. Luckily, we had two vehicles and the second could quickly pull us out.

Hello all,

I was recently asked to help law enforcement with a marijuana clean-up in Clear Creek which is located in Central California. Clear Creek was an awesome experience, especially because not many people are allowed to go into the management area due to the naturally occurring high levels of asbestos.

From Fort Ord (Monterey Bay) it took about 3 hours to reach the gate to Clear Creek, and the road leading up to it had not been well maintained which made for a rough ride. We finally made it, however, and the BLM Ranger I was riding with got his gear ready as we waited for the rest of the team to show up. There were three clean up sites that had already had the marijuana removed but our job was to remove tubing (used for irrigation) and trash from the camp.

The rest of the team showed up, including another BLM range and a Department of Fish and Wildlife officer. Our team leader handed us a packet with information on how to execute the clean up; it was surreal to be involved in a project like this even though I am not a member of law enforcement.

After receiving our assignments, we proceeded to the opening of the grow site and waited for the helicopter, or “bird” as they called it, to show up. Once the rangers established communication with the bird, they dropped two more army personnel to assist with the clean up. Watching a helicopter land in a very small clearing like that was a really cool sight to see.

The trail was steep and our progress was slow-going as we scrambled down the trail to the heart of the site. I was required to stay behind everyone else, because I was the only person without a gun. They had done a flyby the previous day and hadn’t spotted anyone, so I wasn’t too worried about it anyways. We finally reached the grow site, and there was trash everywhere: cans, toilet paper, razors, ramen noodles, plastic…the list could go on and on. After I gathered the trash, the helicopter dropped two nets to collect it (this is the way the trash had to be removed due to the remoteness). This whole process was a rather shocking experience: the helicopter gets really low, its wind blows everything into your face, your hat flies off, and you feel like the “bird” and/or the nets are gonna fall right on top of you. Thankfully, they didn’t fall on top of us, and we quickly filled the nets with all the trash, and I learned how to hook them to the helicopter so they could be carried off. It was a lot of work, but it was also an awesome experience.

Until the next fun adventure,
Manny