Last week we headed out to Steens Mountain to do plant inventorying for two RNAs (Resource Natural Area). The purpose of an RNA is the be a “naturally occurring physical or biological unit where natural conditions are maintained in so far as possible”. They are also areas that can be used as baselines for measuring the quality of other similar environments and the effects that humans have on them, used for science, and used as a gene pool for species. The two RNAs we were to visit are called Rooster Comb and Little Wildhorse Lake. Rooster Comb is a 720 acre RNA near the base of the Steens and the Little Blitzen River. Little Wildhorse Lake RNA is about 240 acres and is documented to contain nine special status plants. We spent three days up on the Steens, staying out at a little cabin of a building that the BLM owns near Riddle Brothers Ranch.

We spent two days at Rooster Comb to cover more of the area. It was a nice hike in and out, traveling a good chunk of the way by the Little Blitzen. It was pleasant to settle in and examine the plants, asking “who are you?” and trying to listen for a response. We identified 79 plant species in Rooster Comb and I am sure there are many more we missed. A few of my favorites were Actea pachypoda (doll’s eye), Aquilegia formosa (western columbine), Populus angustifolia (narrowleaf cottonwood), Collomia linearis (tiny trumpet), and Scirpus microcarpus (panicled bulrush). We had to do some detective work since many of the forbs were no longer flowering. We used the vegetative features to figure these out.  On Thursday morning we rose at the crack of dawn and drove up to the top of the Steens. The views are spectacular, as you can see deep into the gorges of the green and craggy landscape. Little Wildhorse Lake is situated at the base of one of these gorges, where the land flattens out for several hundred meters before rising steeply again. Looking down from the top, the lake looks small and fish-shaped, the descent long. After taking the Gorge Trail a bit too far, we doubled back to the unmaintained Desert Trail. We followed it until it dwindled to nothing, and we were left scrabbling among boulders, dirt, loose rocks, and vegetation. Due to the likelihood of the feet slipping despite the will of the brain, we turned tail and headed back up, hoping to find a better way down on some other day.

Still, I was happy and excited to see two special status plants in the field above Little Wildhorse Lake. These were Steens Mountain Paintbrush (Castijella pilosa var. steenensis) and Steens Mountain Penstemon (Penstemon davidsonii var. praeteritus), both endemic to Steens. The paintbrush is a plant of similar style and structure to other paintbrushes, but with grayish-green bracts instead of being brightly colored. The penstemon is a large, brightly pink-purple and grows in mats low to the ground. Gorgeous!

Back at the top of the Steens, we met a botanist who is researching grasses (a new species!) and completing an Oregon guide to Carex species. He showed us on the map a way he has gotten down to Little Wildhorse Lake, so when we go out again we will try that way and hopefully make it down. I hope we do because I really want to see the plants down there – it is very beautiful. I would also like to find more of the special status plants and have a chance to do the paperwork and GPS boundary markings for the populations.

I went back up to the Steen over the weekend to hike down to Wildhorse Lake (a different lake from Little Wildhorse, but nearby). This is a steep descent, but has a good trail. The Eriogonums (desert buckwheats) were in abundant bloom, quilting the slopes with varying shades of yellow. Purple monkey flowers (Minulus spp.), red paintbrush (Castijella spp.), light purple wild flax (Linum perenne), the many stamened yellow blazing star (Mentzelia laevicaulis), white sandwort (Arenaria aculeata), and fuzzy pussytoes (Antennaria spp.) were also around. The lake sparkled in the sunlight and a long-beaked, long-legged wading bird stalked in the shallows.

Wildflowers at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez.

Castijella spp. at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez.

Eriogonum spp. at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez.

Minulus spp. at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez

I am now in my last month of my internship (where on Earth did the time go?!) and I am working on wrapping up the last projects I have been working on. My workload as of late includes finishing up some field work including animal activity surveys and collecting of pro v2 loggers that record temperature and humidity, massive amounts of data entry, data processing, and statistics as well as processing camera pictures and some more data entry!

It has been really awesome working on these projects from their inception to now the very end and to see how they have evolved over time and now finally seeing the results! I have learned a lot about experimental/project design, planning, implementation, trouble shooting and now data processing which will be invaluable skills for me to have in graduate school this September.

I got the walking blues.  After six years, my favorite pair of hiking boots took their last steps.  These boots have carried me across the street, across the country, and across the world.  I have hiked with them in New Jersey, Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, North Carolina, Utah, Nevada, California, Germany, France, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Australia and Tasmania.  They supported me when I worked for four summers as a janitor, giving me my footing as I hauled heavy desks and office furniture up and down flights of stairs.  They took me up and over mountains when I worked in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont.  Last summer we hiked ten 4,000 footers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  Together we hiked the Long Trail, and they stayed strong even when my knees could not.  These boots were made for walking.

Sadly, my boots met their match in the lava rock desert of the Eagle Lake Field Office.  Stumbling over loose rocks and sage brush, the soul of my boots was ripped apart.  I did the best I could, buying a tube of Gorilla Glue and trying desperately to keep them in one piece.  But when your soul is broken, there is no going back.  The soul of my boot ripped apart once again the next day.  I looked down at my dusty boots and decided that this was really the end.

Today, my new boots arrived in the mail.  They feel stiff and clunky on my feet, but I know that in time we will get along.  I hope that they carry me just as far as my old boots did.  As for my trusty old pair, I have a plan.  There is a tree on the side of Highway 395 near Reno that is home to hundreds of old pairs of shoes.  Different colors, styles, sizes, all strung up in the tree by their laces.  Next time I pass that tree, I will hoist my boots up into it.  There they can finally rest and reflect on where they’ve been.

Whatever you do, take care of your shoes.

August has been a pleasant surprise for us here at the Lakeview BLM office. With the continuing drought and our bad luck earlier in the season, we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to meet our collection goal for SOS this year. How wrong we were! Now we are just two collections away from meeting our collection goal and we haven’t even collected from any of the shrubs yet. And we even got some rain here in Lakeview. Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come, like actually having water in the lakes and not having as many fires. Other than that, I’m still doing my job and having a blast here in Oregon. Until next time!

Another month has passed here in beautiful Boise–it’s so hard to believe we only have a month and a half left! Time sure flies when you are out in the field having fun!

The temperatures have been steadily increasing and we have gotten used to working in above 100 degree weather (I commend all of you in the Mojave and Palm Springs!) From this I have rekindled my love for being up for the warm glow of sunrise and feeling like the only person awake for miles–a love that disappeared after many years of all-nighters studying and working. The earlier we go out, the cooler it is, and the more wildlife we see–Red-tailed hawks and antelope have been the most frequent. Although today Zander and I accidentally flushed around six Ruffed (potentially Dusky) Grouse out of some trees in a drainage and both nearly had a heart-attack!

Most of the work we have been doing as of late are Habitat Assessment Framework transects for Sage Grouse. There was a large fire last year that burnt several pastures that our mentor had done HAFs in that were potential preferred habitat (PPH) for the birds so we spent a few days going back to those transects and pastures and comparing the vegetation and regrowth. In a few sites they had seeded the area and I was extremely happy by the amount of recruits growing and the prevalence of native vegetation, both seeded and natural! We still plan on doing a few more collections, but at this point in the year most everything has dispersed its seed and dried up. We partner with Idaho Botanic Gardens and with some local collections our office has done in the past they are growing out native forbs and shrubs to do plantings for fire restoration this fall. Hopefully we will be around still for when those planting parties happen! Another area we are being exposed to is the fascinating riparian world. The Four Rivers Field Office is lucky to have Al Tarter– a 5th generation Idahoan, former rancher and farmer, and natural resource specialist–to work in the riparian and watershed management sector. He has spent many hours with us over the past few weeks sharing his wealth of knowledge on stream classification and potential functional condition for streams. It has been a wonderful experience hearing and learning from someone who understands the viewpoints of the many stakeholders that are affected by and affect stream health from personal experience and can read the land and water like a storybook.

This past month or so I have really gotten a feel for the office and the extent of the land we manage. It has been a great time doing these riparian workshops because Al is not only training us interns, but several permanent employees across the office. This has been great because I had somewhat been struggling with the fact although we work in an office with lots of people, we rarely get to interact with people because we are in the field or typing away at data sheets in our cubicle. Getting out with other people in our office has made me realize how much I value the human element in my career. Originally I thought it would be great to be out isolated in nature nearly every day, and granted, it is very peaceful and beautiful, but it is also incredibly refreshing to have interactions with other beings and it adds an additional element of fun to work. Noticing this has definitely made me reconsider what sort of career path I would like to go down!

Speaking of meeting people and traveling, I have made a few friends outside the office the past month and have been really getting to explore the city and surrounding areas. I also had the opportunity to explore both Eastern and Northern Idaho and had the most experience of getting to camp on a beach on the Salmon River under a full moon and beautiful starry skies. The fact rivers with beaches existed blew my mind. I had no idea there were such pleasant rivers to play in! Coming from Colorado I’ve been used to canyon rivers or cold rivers with really rocky banks and bottoms. Not the Salmon! (And apparently several other Idaho Rivers). It was so wonderful to take a midnight swim to cool off and then to wake up to sunrise and a beachy plunge! Its amazing how different North and South Idaho are, and it was great fun exploring Cour D’Alene and the Targee National Forest.

Zander found an awesome campsite for us near a creek after doing HAFs all day in above 100 degree weather–such a nice treat after a long day!

Camping on a beach of the Salmon River in Riggins, ID.

Al Tarter teaching us “youngins” about riparian health and potential functioning condition of streams.

Found this not so little Wolf spider on the way down to a canyon. Later on I found one in my house . . . hint: It wasn’t cool and exciting and was more on the side of terrifying.

Vestal and Arrow Peak catching first light in Colorado’s San Juan Mtns.

My CLM adventure began 17 months ago. At the time I was unsure whether or not I should accept the offer and move to California. I had a couple other things in the mix and having a background more inclined to the non-profit conservation world I suppose I was somewhat skeptical about a variety of things, and most certainly somewhat skeptical of the BLM. Since then, my time as a CLM intern has had two distinctly contrasting chapters, and I feel lucky that my experiences encapsulated much of the reality of what it means to work within federal land management in this day in age.

My time with CLM started out in the Alturas Field Office in northeastern California. I was hired to work with the ubiquitous upland game bird the greater sage grouse – which, as many of you likely know, has become the poster child for species conservation in the intermountain west. I had worked with the bird previously as a telemetry technician in northeastern Utah. I spent the previous summer batting around the brush of the Wyoming Basin for up to a hundred and twenty hours in a ten day work week searching out birds, following them from their winter capture near leks, through nesting and brood rearing seasons. Through the field season I got to know the birds I was following and the landscape they inhabit intimately, but through that experience I also developed a distain for the bird and the political quagmire that surrounds the species.

Working for the BLM in Alturas only accentuated the details of the quagmire. The Alturas Resource Area covers an area on the periphery of the bird’s historic range. The Modoc Plateau contains slivers of suitable sagebrush steppe habitat bracketed by the juniper and fir uplands of the Warner Mountains and the Southern Cascades. Alturas only has three active leks (leks which have had birds present during the past the three years). During my lek count surveys I counted a total of five birds on one lek within the Alturas Resource Area. I found it difficult to believe that the Nevada Dept. of Wildlife (NDOW) and the BLM were operating under a “no net loss” premise regarding the future of the bird. I struggle with this fact since our best understanding of the biology and ecology of the species warranted federal protection some 15 years ago, but that due to other vested interests it is doubtful that the species will ever be listed.

To be quite candid, my first internship was a bumpy ride. I struggled communicating effectively with my mentor and struggled with the lack of acceptance of forward thinking in the office. These challenges were only magnified by the blatant incongruences within much of the data that I was being asked to collect. I say this not to nock the agency, many of the challenges faced by field personnel and field offices are very real and stem from one of the great fallacies of federal land management – which is that its possible to responsibly manage a quarter billion surface acres with one agency comprised of a limited staff – a problem which has only gotten worse due to the sequester and the lack of congressional leadership.

Having the opportunity to work in a remote field office allowed me to realize many of these challenges and experience them first hand. I began to wonder how it’s possible to have long term goals with a short-term budget – or even worse, no budget at all. I left Alturas with a feeling that the system has inherent inefficiencies in the way it operates. I also left at a loss of what to do about it. On my way to Colorado I took three weeks to explore the northwest coast and clear my head with Cascade vistas and chilly ocean breezes. I lucked out though; back in Colorado I was offered a position to resume my status as a CLMer at the State Office working with the botanist. After some back and forth during the government shutdown and frozen funding I started work mid-winter.

I grew up in Colorado, and have spent the majority of my life in the southern Rocky Mountain region. I have studied there and identified with it as my home. Though, my work has always taken me elsewhere – so I was excited by the prospect of working for the state botanist, and to get to work in places that I have grown up with as my back yard.

My experience at the state office was something I couldn’t have predicted. A lot of the pieces fell into place and things started making sense. Being at the State Office allowed me to interact with a wide variety of specialist filling different roles within the agency around the state. Working with the procurement office was an experience that every aspiring land manager or conservationist should have. If you don’t understand how funding works, or the vast sums of money that change hands between federal, private, and academic institutions it is really difficult to understand why or how the BLM operates that way it does. Additionally, working at the state level allowed us to travel around and interact at a variety of field offices.

Since my work began in the winter I spent the vast majority of my time conducting analysis on demographic data from previous years of trend monitoring. I had always been the field technician, collecting data that left my hands for analysis (if it made it that far). Having the opportunity to practice statistical analysis most certainly allowed me to connect the dots to see how data collection affects real land management decisions as well as how to design meaningful research. Most of all though, my co-CLMer Nathan, and our mentor Carol, and myself had a very functional dynamic and were able to work successfully as a team. Having the opportunity to step up to the plate and design my own projects that contributed to the goals of the program was a big step for me, and I owe it to Carol for giving us that freedom.

All in all, working at the state office enabled me to see how to develop, implement, and nurture a program that is based on employing established and accepted methodologies to collect meaningful data that can be used to assess management practices with the goal of conservation in the face of an uncertain future (a mouthful). Working within the federal system certainly has its challenges and it’s most certainly not all peaches-and-cream, but ultimately that is the goal. I suppose in retrospect, my CLM experience gave me a complete and comprehensive picture of the struggles and the solutions to these struggles. The tides are changing in land management (albeit slowly at times) and we are in need, now more than ever, of having effective individuals doing the work of the future within these agencies – a lot depends on it.

As for my future, next week I’ll be beginning an MS program at Colorado State University pursuing a degree in Conservation Leadership. Our research and conservation project will be conducted in the Toledo District of southern Belize.

Until next time, best of luck and best regards!

Phil Krening
Colorado State Office – BLM
pkrening@gmail.com

Hi Everyone,

I hope your CLM internships are going well and you are enjoying your time! I got to take time to away and go the the Botany conference in Boise, Idaho and it was a great experience. I got to present my MS thesis (which is finally done!) and have some time exploring the city. Please enjoy some pictures below form the Idaho Botanical Gardens and the Boise

 River.

Alicia

Fire season has been ramping up down here (or up here depending on where you are) in Southern Oregon.  Not only did the largest fire in Oregon, The Oregon Gulch fire maxing out at ~36,500+ acres, just get contained roughly 20 miles south of us, but 7,000 recorded lighting strikes on Monday has lead to 12 new fires that are getting bigger as I type.  The socked in smokey valley, mixed with 100 degree days, has made going out and collecting not so enjoyable.  But being the diligent seed heads that we are, we have still been keeping up with collections and as of last week we met our target collection number of 60 and have since then surpassed it by a lot.  With the vast diversity in eco-regions and elevation in our district, our number of seed collections don’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.  It has been nice to think that maybe the seeds I collect today, will be used to rehab these burned sites tomorrow.

Oregon Gulch Fire

Oregon Gulch Fire

The top of Grizzly Peak

Since my first post, Cara (intern), Joe (mentor), and I have done a total of 11 SOS collections and somewhere around 50 habitat assessment transects. Many of our transects have been done at locations that have been assessed in the past, specifically at allotments that have been burned in the last year or so. Hearing our mentor, Joe, talk about how allotments used to look even within the last year, gives me a good idea of how superficially destructive fire can be. It’s always a welcome site to see the return of good forb diversity as well as little sagebrush recruits. On our travels we’ve come across some “friends in the foothills.” I’ve attached a few pictures below.

In addition to transects and SOS collections, we’ve also started to help with riparian assessments of “PFC” (proper functioning condition). This has been a nice change of pace as we get to work with more employees within our field office and gain more perspective into the other types of work that go on.

I’m looking forward to continuing to be involved in other projects as the collection season comes to a close and we finish up our habitat assessments. We’ve heard rumor of working with butterflies, raptors, some fish-shocking, and maybe even a river-ranger trip to monitor cow/grazing presence along the Payette River. Fingers crossed for all of those things!!

Hope everyone is learning a lot and still finding time to get goofy!

Best,

Zander

Intern at Four Rivers Field Office, Boise, ID.

Mourning dove eggs under an Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata).

Only about one more month left here in Vale, OR. Our days have mostly been spent monitoring plant populations for seed, collecting seed, and even still scouting for new sites. Most recently we found a few good rush and sedge populations. Surprise, surprise, eastern Oregon does have some riparian areas! Over half of our collections this year are from south eastern Oregon, near McDermitt NV, in the Oregon Canyon Mountains. Given how dry Malheur County has been, heading up in elevation was our best strategy. That has been a bulk of our duties right now, although I am looking forward to taking an online ArcGIS geoproccessing course tomorrow. I’m so glad we’re able to take advantage of such courses.

On a personal note, I just got back from 3 and a half days back home in Chicago. Much needed, and much enjoyed! The hunt for my next job is in full swing as well, although I do plan on applying for another round as a CLM intern too. That’s all for now, I’ll make my next and final post longer, and more interesting!

Colleen

Vale, OR BLM