Well fire season has certainly picked up around these parts. The whole valley is filled with smoke from local fires as well as fires from northern California. It makes for some interesting field work for sure. Extraordinarily dry fuels, drought, and lots of lightning don’t help either.

What it looks like outside right now

But other than the fire chaos happening, I’ve been picking up new GIS projects for the minerals department. Mineral deposits are kind of a big deal down here as southern Oregon has plenty of mining history and even some of the towns are basically old gold rush towns. I’ve been digitizing maps of known deposits that correlate to the geology maps we have. We’re doing this to see what valuable areas may be within areas of critical environmental concern. In addition to that, I’ve been writing a lot of reports of the geology of the mining districts down here to help the archaeologists in our Abandoned Mine Lands program. The geology down here is quite interesting and can vary greatly between districts even though the spatial distance between them is small. For instance, one area may be a granite intrusion type area known as a porphyry style deposit, and another may be a volcanic massive sulfide type deposit which is basically a black smoker vent from an ancient sea floor that are now on land.

Studying and learning about the mining history and all the different types of geology around here is becoming quite the interesting project. Hopefully the smoke-filled valleys will die down soon and field work will be a little easier, but that may not happen anytime soon. Anyway, I’m off to Portland to the state office to help out with some GIS projects in minerals this week.

Until next time,

Morgan

BLM Medford

We are in the BLM Monitoring Business and Business is a Boomin’!

Monitoring has been in full swing the last couple of weeks. We have been working long hours, doing three to four plots a day. Towards the beginning of monitoring, we would leave the office at 7:00am, but with the hot temperatures of the day and the huge amount of hiking we had to do to get to some of the plots, we decided to leave for work at 4:00am. You must be thinking, “Justin!? Why would you wake up that early to monitor?” There were benefits for monitoring that early. 😉  The temperature was fantastic and you did not feel tired or hot. When we got to our first site at 5:30am, the light from the sunrise was perfect for identifying many types of plants. Another reason for waking up at 4:00am was to come back to the office early after monitoring to communicate with our bosses and to pay bills.

Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva)

Some of the terrain was very difficult to navigate. Many roads that were on the maps or GPS were really nonexistent. Most of them were actually cow trails! If the site was not representative of the surrounding overall habitat, we would move the transects to a more appropriate location nearby. If the land had very steep badland terrain with many drainages, we would not monitor that place. The area would be too difficult to navigate, there would be hardly any vegetation to monitor, and rattlesnakes may be present. Sometimes we would camp out overnight, so we would have more time in the field. We could get up to six to eight plots a day if we were camping! O_O One night while camping, Sara and I saw a meteorite crash in the field across from us. The space rock split apart before it hit the ground. That was incredible!

Narrow Leaved Purple Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia).

We have been crossing off each of the allotment sites we had to monitor, and we could see the end approaching rapidly! Since many of the grasses and forbs were dying, it is a race against time to monitor everything, and fortunately we would achieve our goal in time! Our next move would be to input datum, organize photographs, update files, make maps, and help the SOS Buffalo team with collecting seeds for their SOS projects.

Rescue Rangers!

Sara and I were in one of the most isolated sections of BLM in the back country of Gillette, Wyoming. (We were on the border with the Newcastle District!!) The huge allotment known as Lawver was made up of badlands and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests. We heard there were many large elk (Cervus canadensis) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) present within the area. We were following two track roads through ponderosa pine until I heard a loud sharp gasp from Sara! I immediately stopped the truck to see what she was looking at!! There was a baby elk trapped in a barbed wire fence! Sara rushed out to investigate the baby. The little one was trying to go through a broken section of the barbed wire fence and got stuck. Its hoof was surrounded by barbed wire and raw down to the bone. The back legs were a bloody as well, but not as bad as the front hoof. The elk looked like it was there for a day or two struggling. When we approached the elk calf, it tried to struggle and just gave up. Sara was trying to untangle the wires and I could not pull the wires apart because they were barbed and very tight around the leg. Sara was trying to comfort the little elk while I was looking for tools in the back of the truck. I found some wire cutters and gave them to Sara. They were small cutters, but Sara cut through the fencing around the baby elk leg and freed it!!!!! It ran away into the forest. Sara and I were super happy that we were able to help out. Hopefully, that elk will be okay. We did report the broken fence to our boss, but we had to wait for another one of our bosses to make a report.

Baby Elk Rescue!

Moo Cows, Don’t Bother Me! D:

One of our monitoring sites was located in the Rochelle Hills allotment located near Rt. 51. This allotment was extremely difficult to get to, because it was completely surrounded by barbed wire fencing. We originally wanted to drive through the State land to have an easy route to get to Rochelle Hills. We were searching for an entrance, but we did not find one! What we did find was a herd of cattle. They were red and white cattle that showed higher intelligence than the normal red or black angus cow. The herd was pretty big and we had to drive past them to get to an area that looked like it had a gate. We stopped because one of the calves approached the front of our vehicle and started to lick it. When the other calves saw this they started to surround our truck and lick everywhere. D: We slowly tried to move, but they would not budge!!!! The heifers started to join in! We were completely surrounded by cattle who were licking our truck! Even the bull wanted to join in on the action. When we looked in all of the mirrors, all we saw were cow faces with their tongues!! >_< We had to get out of there! I honked the horn once and moved forward, but they were pretty adamant. Apparently, we were the best salt lick this side of Gillette! After five minutes of gently nudging the cows, they eventually gave up and moved aside. Sara and I were happy to see a gate up ahead.

These cows have found the ultimate treat…our truck! D:

When we arrived at the gate, we found out that it was just a gate for the enclosure corral for the cattle. There was only one entrance/ exit out of the State land and we headed back to the entrance we came through. We turned our truck around to drive back…and there they were. All standing in a line staring at us. The little calves were starting to walk forward towards us, but I quickly drove to the left of the herd. All the cows were following the truck as we drove past them. They were like zombie cows with intelligence and they craved the delicious truck bathed in different bug guts and salts collected from the saline flats we drove through earlier! We avoided them the second time and headed towards freedom. We could not get into Rochelle Hills, but we will find a way in the future to get into the allotment while avoiding the red and white cows.

The cows knew there was one entrance/ exit and they waited for us to drive past them again. Luckily we avoided them the second time around.

Found You, Sage Grouse!

Sara and I were in the Eastern section of Gillette monitoring around different oil wells and storage facilities. There was an allotment known as Antelope Draw. This place was isolated and hard to get to because the two track roads eventually changed into cow trails. When we arrived at the site we did see small sagebrush communities, but the sagebrush was dispersed amongst saline sites where nothing was growing. After we completed our monitoring, we started to drive back to the road and we noticed two birds waddling in front of our truck. They stood there and slowly walked away while staring. They were sage grouse!!! (The ones I remember out in Oregon were a lot bigger and these sage grouse were a lot smaller.) We were so excited to actually see them in our district! Usually we always hear about them, but no one really sees them. They flew a couple feet away from the truck into the sagebrush. I was super excited!! I finally saw sage grouse in this area!! I even made a special note on sage grouse evidence for the site.  Hopefully, the H₂S sites don’t impact the local communities. :/

Sage Grouse  (Centrocercus urophasianus)

And Now…. Your Moment of Zen…

Many bees love the Scotch thistle (Onopordum acanthium) flower. Unfortunately, this forb was a nasty invasive.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to show off the pleasures of the Bishop area to my friends and fellow conservationists, Dean, Sam, and Steve. With the goal of summiting Matterhorn Peak, near the northern boundary of Yosemite, our weekend was based around one main activity, but we accomplished much more along the way.

Dean and Steve arrived in Bishop Thursday evening and we took a “warmup” stroll along the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power built canal and through the desert to check out some local flora and make our way up Agony Hill; a small sandy bump in a valley between 14,000 foot tall mountains, named by the high school cross country team. Albeit small, this mound goes to show how little elevation change it takes to get a vast view in the open landscape of the Eastern Sierra. Agony Hill, just above 4,000 feet the tallest mound in a few square miles, compared to Matterhorn Peak, 12,285 feet the tallest peak in the craggy Sawtooth Ridge range and the northernmost 12,000-foot peak in the Sierra Nevada. We had a good ways to go.

Friday we got a nice early start to a fairly relaxing day. We began with a short bouldering session and followed it up a refreshing swim via rope swing into Gull Lake. Then we payed a visit to the newly opened June Lake Brewery for some after lunch refreshments and foosball, nobody could beat Steve. That evening we finished our drive north to Bridgeport where we met Sam and found a place to camp with the Matterhorn looming in the backdrop.

While no technical mountaineering expertise is needed, this is still a fully strenuous day hike. It is 14 miles round trip and some 6,500 feet in elevational gain that ends in a windswept, craggy summit.  The hike starts with a calming path though fir and pine forest along Horse Creek, but before the 2 mile mark the route cuts off the main trail toward Horse Creek Pass. Shortly after this point the lush vegetation gives way to snow, gravel, and loose, sharp rocks for what feels like a really long time before the mountain of interest and the route up it comes fully in to view. With the varying degrees of physical fitness and route-finding experience, by this point, our group of 5 had become split up along the trail within about a half mile of each other. This allowed each of us to choose our own individual routes to the summit and thus provided some time with a greater sense of serenity and exposure. On that note, if those of you reading this do happen to make this adventure someday I won’t take out any more of the uncertainty than I already have. I will say that we made it and that the burgers and beer at the Mono Village at the trailhead went down with smooth satisfaction.

Tyler    BLM – Bishop Field Office

I only have one more week here in lovely Lakeview. Kyle and I have been getting so much work done. For most of the summer we’ve been doing work for just two of the range specialists (each range specialist is in charge of a certain number of allotments). We’re almost done with everything we can do for them, which is quite impressive, if you look at the long list of work we started out with. It feels good to look back and see how much I have accomplished.

There have been a few more frustrating days where we couldn’t find our trend plots or got stuck in private land behind locked gates. One day I went out into the field by myself and went to a small allotment that is split up into two pastures, but the one I needed to be in doesn’t have a road going through it. So I parked in the upper pasture and hiked up a hill then down the other side, crawled under a fence, and arrived in the lower pasture. Then I spent a few hours hiking around the pasture looking for the two trend plots there. I found one, by a lovely little stream, but couldn’t find the second one. After hiking up a steep hill in 95 degree weather I was ready to give up.

One of my favorite days of the past month was riding a horse for work! One of the range specialists, Lori, has two horses and has been wanting to use them for work. She got the paperwork filled out and we finally were able to take the horses out. All we did that day was ride to a certain point and see if there was water there (of course there wasn’t, we’re in a drought). I spent about 4 and 1/2 hours in the saddle that day. It got pretty uncomfortable at the end, but overall I had a great time. Who else can say that they rode a horse for work?

Another fun day was going out with Anna and Lucy, the two CLM botany interns that I live with. They took me to Sage Hen Butte, a place I’d never been to before. They’ve been collecting seeds for the Seeds of Success program, and that’s what I helped them with that day. The plan was to try and collect cherry seeds and seeds from Oregon Sunshine, or Eriophyllum lanatum. There weren’t enough cherry trees to collect seeds, but we collected Oregon Sunshine and Gooseberry, Ribes sp. I enjoyed seeing what they do and all the work that goes into the SOS program.

Highlights from the past month are: riding a horse for work, seeing my first rattlesnake of the summer, seeing a coyote pretty up close, and caving at Lava Beds National Monument with two of my roommates.

Allyson Schaeffer
Lakeview, OR, BLM

It continues to be an enjoyable time here in Cedar City – full of learning and adventures!
I started off the month with a prairie dog training at, yes, a golf course. It’s quite a sight to see so many prairie dogs running around or peeking out of a burrow while a player is hitting a ball. I learned the procedure for translocating prairie dogs and got lots of practice setting traps, weighing, tagging and finally releasing them at their new location. Although taking them to a less desirable and unfamiliar habitat was not the best feeling, getting to work so closely with them was an extremely rewarding experience. I look forward to learning all I can about prairie dogs and doing my part in helping increase their population.

The next project involved installing reflectors to make a fence more visible for wildlife. Being the first time we were sent out on our own, it was sure to turn into a memorable day. It’s not surprising how you can easily start to get nervous when you are on your own, unsure of where you are, lose communication with your partner, run out of water all while it is starting to get a little late. As I look back, I smile because I know it’s all part of the learning experience!

For the past couple of weeks, I moved on to doing wildlife clearances that involved inspecting an area for signs of sensitive species and reporting on the general habitat encountered. This is an excellent opportunity to be observing all of the surroundings and practice learning plants, birds, and signs indicating the presence of animals. Although I have not yet encountered sage grouse in my outings, sightings of a golden eagle, red tailed hawk, or a Swainson’s hawk are always exciting. Of course, while being out in the field all day, things are bound to happen. Seeing how sunny days can easily turn into a thunderstorm, a cloudy day is something to be weary of during monsoon season. I learned this on Tuesday as my partner and I got soaked while running to the truck to seek cover from the hail. I have to say, these unexpected days do tend to end up being the most fun.

All in all, it’s been an awesome month. I am excited for the experiences to come!

For the last few weeks in Arcata, I have been killing lots of Douglas-fir. My pulaski and handsaw have felled or girdled seedlings, saplings, and young trees (no older than 80 years). Douglas-fir/Tanoak forests dominate the Coast Ranges of NW California. In these mountains there are pockets of prairies, offering ecological heterogeneity to wildlife and vegetation. Similar to the story all over the USA, wildfire suppression has deprived grasslands of their main safeguard against forest encroachment. And since it isn’t practical to bring prescribed burning crews and engines to all BLM-managed prairies on their historic burning intervals, I have been lending an unnatural hand (evolutionarily speaking) to the grassy strongholds.

Prairie with another small prairie across the valley.

As my hours here quickly dwindle, my fondness for this area continues to grow. The mountains and redwoods seem taller now. The eyes through which I perceive the landscape have changed dramatically over the last 4 months. As my understanding of the area increases, I have been aware of a deepening of my vision. Here follows the timeline of my blossoming understanding.

When I first arrived, Arcata was nestled between hills and coastal plains. About a month later, when from the ocean I saw a full moon rise over the town, in my mind the “hills” became mountains (of course they have always been mountains). A month after that, with my radius of exploration expanding, I could feel how the mountains east of Arcata fit into the context of ranges extending along the coast and east to the Central Valley. A few weeks after that, as I visited new vantage points, the estuaries on the coast were integrated (in my mind) with their river valleys penetrating multiple ranges. I learned the directions the rivers travel to their origins, as steep as 6,000’ above and 113 river miles from their estuaries. Recently, I comprehended the entire canyon shape of a BLM-managed tributary to a larger creek. In the diverse landscapes of The West, the potential depth of understanding is limitless! And I have only been here for 4 months, so I know that my eyes are only absorbing a fraction of what a lifelong local sees.

My ability to assimilate the details of a Northern California landscape is infinitely greater now. My two CLM internships have taught me that it takes me months to graduate from seeing a landscape to seeing a landscape IN ITS CONTEXT. This is the natural progression of understanding in general. We can only increase our understanding so much at a time. But once our circle of understanding is expanded, we can build more circles starting from that circle. Pretty soon, a bigger picture emerges – the Flower of Life. Perhaps this is the most appropriate symbolic representation of my time working for the Chicago Botanic Garden!

The Flower of Life. I’ve been seeing this all over Arcata but I didn’t learn its name until yesterday.

The Fourth of July is a big deal in a small town. Burns, OR hosts a parade, hotdog feed, and fireworks. I emerged from my house around 9:30 to walk to Broadway in “downtown” Burns where the parade was to take place. Families lined the street on both sides. It was good to see all the Burnsonians out and about. The Girls Scouts marched by holding their banner, various city trucks came by, and the Queen of the Rodeo rode her horse. The director of the BLM also came by to chat and I saw several other BLM employees. You never know who you’ll run into.

I returned home for the second activity of my Fourth of July, which was a grass identifying tutorial given to me by my roommate and fellow CLM intern, Ariana Gloria-Martinez. She knows much about grasses and speaks freely with them in a language I cannot yet fully understand. First, she patiently explained the parts of the inflorescence: spikelet, glume, lemma, palea, ligule, auricle, leaf sheath, node, blade, rachis. Next she went through each tribe of grass, giving me details about their identifying characteristics. For example, the aristideae tribe tends to have three awned lemmas. I assiduously took notes. It was a wonderful activity for the fourth of July because, in my opinion, identifying grasses is patriotic. I shall continue to practice my grass identification in the hopes of learning more of their secrets.

To finish up the fourth, I made an extremely large dinner and headed to the fireworks at the county fairgrounds. The conversation of a small child with his grandparents in the car next to me kept me entertained during the spectacular show. I certainly feel lucky to be able to enjoy such community activities.

It’s monsoon season here in Cedar City. For us intrepid field workers, this more often than not means watching it rain a dozen miles away while we bake in the sun. Sometimes, however, it can be quite the opposite. On Tuesday morning this week, we found ourselves drenched to the bone and pelted by pea-sized hail as we sprinted back to our truck from the field. Regardless of where the storms are happening, they are quite the spectacle to behold. Like everything else out here, they are (usually) reduced in comparison to the vast scale of the landscape. It is something entirely new for me to watch, from a distance, as a cloud literally falls to the ground. With the rain comes lightning in abundance, and with the lightning comes fire. There is something about watching a mountain burn which evokes a kind of fear that feels very old. When I imagine my ancient ancestors and how wildfires would have threatened their lives and livelihoods this makes a lot of sense to me.

Water and fire are hardly the only dangers out here. On another Tuesday (Tuesdays are hard for me)  I found myself alone in a remote corner of our field office, in a radio dead zone, the sun going down and a storm approaching in the distance. My partner and I were hanging sage grouse reflectors, which are small pieces of plastic which you attatch to fences to increase visibility and decrease the chance of animals (like sage grouse) hurting themselves. We had split up to cover more ground, grossly underestimating the amount of fence we had to treat. This of course was the moment when I ran out of water. After several tense minutes of unsuccessful attempts, I was able to raise my counterpart on the radio and put together a plan of where to meet (we do that beforehand now). As I slogged my way to the meeting point, hauling my equipment with me and keeping an eye on the approaching storm, I heard an unusual noise that stopped me in my tracks.

Rattlesnakes do not all sound like they do in the movies. This rattle was very high pitched and sharp, a short burst of sound not unlike a cicada or some other insect. The rattles’ owner did not seem particularly happy with my approach, with its head raised and its eyes centered on me. I took the point, backed away slowly, and the snake continued on its way cautiously. I gave it a wide berth and continued on my own.

This short but intense encounter gave me another taste of that primal fear that we as a species have evolved with, but it also left me with a profound gratitude for the evolutionary pressures which led to that unique organ that rattlesnakes wield. What if this had been some other snake, less noisy but equally venomous? When you think about it, it’s really quite nice of these snakes to warn us of their potentially deadly presence before finding it necessary to resort to violence. I’ll take a rattlesnake over a cobra or a copperhead any day of the week.

This kind of experience is, of course, a rare part of my job out here. Most of my time in the past month has been spent combing over different field sites for signs (usually fecal) of its inhabitants prior to a scheduled development of some sort. You might think that walking four miles along a proposed fence line in the midday sun, eyes trained on the immediate area around you, would be hard monotonous work, and it is, but every day I’m out there I find something new, be it as small and simple as some pretty mineral (there’s obsidian everywhere!) or a hummingbird I never expected to see, or watching a flock of over a hundred pinion jays fly by, making their laughing cries. This place continues to amaze me, and I can’t wait to see what it will show me next.

Lately we’ve been spending a good deal of our time thinking about the rain. Northwest New Mexico is currently experiencing what the USDA calls “extreme drought” (for more information about current drought conditions across the U.S. visit this website) and everyone here is holding their breath to see what this monsoon season will bring. Areas outside of Farmington are definitely getting some rain; we can see thunderstorms in the distance and some of our field sites are currently inaccessible due to flash flood conditions from rain that fell in the La Plata Mountains and elsewhere. For now, though, the plants in our district are still very, very thirsty.

Despite the drought, we have been able to make several collections from some very hardy plants. Last week we made a  robust collection of Hetrotheca villosa (false hairy goldenaster) from a population that is holding on to life in a dry wash. This species is especially fun to collect because the mature seed heads are similar to dandelions and are most easily collected using a handheld Dustbuster vacuum.

Heterotheca villosa (false hairy goldenaster) — one of the target species for the Colorado Plateau Ecoregion.

We also made our second collection of evening primroses for Dr. Krissa Skogen’s research on the Onagraceae family (more information about her research can be found here). We found a population of Oenothera pallida ssp. runcinata (pale evening primrose) along a shallow wash a few weeks ago, when the water was barely running. When we returned earlier this week, we could see that the floodwaters had risen dramatically and an area that had previously been dry land was covered in about two feet of water before receding again. Despite being caught in the flood, the little Oenothera were still hanging on! We really enjoy the opportunity to contribute to Dr. Skogen’s research and hope to spot more Onagraceae species.

Oenothera pallida ssp. runcinata (pale evening primrose). If you look closely you may be able to spot some hawk moth scales on the flower’s stigma.

One thing we  learned is that this is the season for baby horned lizards (also called horny toads). We’re really excited about this because most lizards are too fast too catch, but horned lizards are so pudgy that they are easy to scoop up as they waddle along. So far, we’ve caught several babies as well as a full-grown adult. The adult is about the size of my palm, while some of the smallest young lizards are smaller than my thumbnail. Finding horned lizards is considered good luck by the Navajo, so we’re hoping that it’s a good omen that we’ve been encountering so many.

An adult Phrynosoma hernandesi (greater short-horned lizard)

A newborn Phrynosoma hernandesi (greater short-horned lizard). Compare the size with the adult pictured above! Photo courtesy of Tess Johnstone.

We recently had the privilege to meet Dr. Richard Lee, one of the authors of the book Weeds of the West. Unbeknownst to us, Dr. Lee teaches a short course on invasive plants in Farmington every summer. It turns out that we live in a veritable invasive plant mecca! He came into town with a truck full of invasive plants that we stored in my cubicle and he was kind enough to invite us on his guided tour of invasive plants in the area. It was very useful to learn more about invasive plant species and definitely helped me learn what to look out for in the field.

My cubicle turned into a junge of a wide variety of invasive thistles, knapweeds and others for the day.

We hope to be very busy in a few weeks after we (hopefully) have some good rain and the plants perk up. In the meantime, do a rain dance for us!

Alright! So this is my real, final blog post. Not like that one from earlier in the month, that was just a practice. So, dear readers, what were my goals and expectations for this internship when I joined up, all the way back in March?

Well, my main goal was to learn as much as possible. I am, always have been, and always will be an enormous geek, wanting to learn as much as I can about the things that interest me. On that, I can definitely say I have succeeded. The CLM program has given me an amazing opportunity to learn about desert ecosystems, about life working for the Feds, and about essential land management skills. My plant ID skills have greatly improved, I got some great experience with vegetation and invasive species surveys, with seed collection, with herbicide use. Unlike most interns, I was mostly working in one particular area, but my mentor let me assist others around the office, so I do think I got to see enough of what goes on in this BLM office. All totaled I definitely got lots of great experience, and a new centerpiece for my resume.

I was also hoping to be able to stay with the BLM for a little while longer, but that was not an option. There’s just not enough money to go around. In my time here I’ve seen several people more qualified than me struggle to keep their jobs, and despite my mentor’s efforts, there isn’t any funding for me to continue on here. Obviously, I always knew this particular goal was a stretch and would have a lot to do with luck, so I’m not too disappointed. And on the bright side, I’ve just accepted a job with The Wetlands Initiative, a non-profit habitat restoration organization based in my home state of Illinois. I’m very excited about that job, and looking forward to getting started.

All in all, I have been very happy with my experiences with the CLM internship program. I’ve learned a lot, picked up some great work experience, and got to spend some time getting to know an incredible part of the world.

Thanks!
Joe