My internship is at an end. I was able to land an awesome job. I am going to miss Fort Ord more than I want to think about. I am already at my new position and I am loving it but it is still unfamiliar and a little scary. I am working on the campus of CsuFresno as their Biology Greenhouse manager/instructional tech support. I am surrounded by plants and people who like learning from them. I used to work in a greenhouse and I am very excited to be working in one again.

My 7 years in Monterey County seems to have come and gone in the blink of an eye. It feels like only yesterday I moved away from home and started my life there. I graduated from CSUMB, made friends, got my first real job in my field and had an internship at the place I loved to explore. I am hoping this place starts to feel like home again (I am from Fresno) because I feel like I need to be getting back to the bay everyday. (even though I am working here haha).

I am excited to be here and to have a job that I love and that is providing me security but I would have given a whole lot to stay on Fort Ord.

Thanks for the Memories,

Wendy E. Cooper

I just got back to Twin Falls from being in Chicago for the CLM workshop at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The week was well timed as a break from the regular field season and as a chance to meet the other interns, Krissa, Rebecca, and several other great professionals. It was a good chance to hear about how CLM started, the relationship with the BLM, and to get a lot of insights on fieldwork and working for a federal agency.

The seminars covered a lot of information, some of it very basic, but all of it incredibly useful. Often it was good to go over basic concepts particularly in monitoring. Personally, the last time I covered a lot of these topics was in early college or early field jobs. Going over ideas such as what kind of quadrat or transect to use and how to set up a spreadsheet in order to give you the most data manipulation options, was a really good thing to revisit. As someone with a wildlife background working in a plant-oriented position, one of the most helpful courses was the overview on plant families and identification. There were definitely people proficient with the topic but I think that the majority of people found the class helpful in some way. We’ve all had experience keying and identifying plants, but having a clear set of characteristics to fall back on was very useful. It was also a good crash course reminder after not having used dichotomous keys for a few years.

As someone planning to go into management with a focus on wildlife, it was interesting to see the line being drawn so clearly between wildlife people, represented by Fish and Wildlife Service, and botanists. I was a little frustrated by how often the wildlife people were characterized as being unable to look at the system holistically or from an ecological standpoint rather than from a species standpoint. Although I have no doubt as to that being true in many cases, I think that the reverse is also applicable. Characterizing the two groups like this at a workshop could only perpetuate the divide and be off-putting to wildlife-oriented people. It is incredibly important to develop the ability to look at systems from both perspectives and for current and future managers to approach their stewardships through a multi-level view, no matter what their original preference. In a more positive light, hearing from underfunded and underrepresented botanists did highlight things in the current systems that need to be changed in order to better manage the land and resources. Being aware of this can only be a positive thing.

Altogether the conference was very useful and extremely well timed. I always get a little myopic a few months into a field season and being reminded that the rest of the world exists is extremely welcome. It was also great to get connected to other interns in the area and to meet people interested in many of the same things. I especially got a kick out of discussing rope-making with Dean Tonenna. He gave an excellent ethnobotany lecture about the Numa people. It was fascinating to see that their method of rope making is essentially the same as the Ojibwe and the Aboriginal language groups from Australia. I’m planning to collect some sagebrush bark and give it a shot soon.

Growing up in New England has made me appreciate the vast landscapes of the high desert. Deciduous forests, humidity, fall foliage, and an hour’s drive to you’re vacation spot creates an image of home. My parents ask me if I miss living back east, which I do, but nothing compares to the views of the Sawtooth Mountains while kayaking down the Salmon river. If you have not been to Stanley, Idaho then on your next day off…go! Grab hiking boots, a kayak (you know, just throw it in your back seat?) and a bathing suit for an end of the day hot spring soak. Stanley is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to and may have New England beat.

Salmon river and the Sawtooth mountains.

Though livestock grazing is happening back east, I’ve never had to rescue week old lambs on my drive to work. Just like any day Avery and I are driving to a plot listening to NPR, when we spotted a lone lamb outside of a grazing fence. Naturally, I slam on the breaks, we get out of the car and obsess over how cute this baby is. While I continue to stare, Avery is chasing the very clumsy lamb until she catches him. After taking a few pictures, we feed him water and try to figure out what to do with the lamb in our truck. We thought it would be nice to have a pet at the house, maybe give our neighbor’s 17 cats a new friend. After serious contemplation, we drove past a sheep herder and returned the lamb. Avery and I felt relieved that we did not just have to leave the lamb on the side of the road. After that we continued with our day, finished a plot and returned home, only to find two more lambs. We went through the same process as before, took more photos, and laughed at the phrase “No Sheep Left Behind”.

Friends

A lot of interesting things happen when you’re in the field, that’s one of the reasons why I love seasonal work. One day I will return back east and have a different gratitude for home. Until then, I will continue to explore the hidden gems of the west coast!

Happy trails,
Alexi

Bureau of Land Managment Shoshone, ID Field Office

Larva in Tetradymia canescens shrub.

Horny toad hanging out

Gilia aggregata

Hi Fellow Interns!

I have now spent almost a month here in the little town of Newcastle Wyoming where I have been working under the BLM State Forester.  Newcastle is a small, industrial town up against the beautiful ponderosa pine forests of the black hills (they offer a much better view than the oil refinery!) with a BLM field office, a ‘pizza barn’ and not much else.  It is easy to escape civilization entirely and I have been able to explore the Bighorn mountains, the black hills and I am planning my first trip to yellowstone in the near future.

I have been laying out and marking timber sale boundaries for forest restoration and habitat improvement projects in the scattered BLM forest parcels.  It’s nice that these areas are small, so each silvicultural treatment can be personalized to that area.  Most of our treatments focus on meadow restoration for raptor and ungulate habitat.  Meadow habitat has been replaced by pine forest in many areas since wildland fire suppression began, so removing this timber allows grasses and forbs to thrive.  We’ve come across several forest friends that I’m sure will love our new meadows like bobcats, owls, deer (and fawns!) and hawks.

I’m very happy to be able to implement my academic knowledge on the ground here in the black hills, and I’m lucky enough to be doing a variety of tasks such as marking boundaries and designing a management plan independently.

I feel very fortunate to be here in Montana. Even on days like today, where we went out to do some monitoring in a place called ‘Big Sheep Creek’ and there was an all-out blizzard. Strange to feel that winter feeling in the middle of June, especially when the previous weeks have been gorgeous. All this precipitation is wonderful for our area, but we sure are itching to get back in the field!

The Dillon Field Office where I work is really collaborative.  The photos above are from ‘Bear Trap Spray Day’, a joint effort to spray noxious weeds from the first designated wilderness area of the BLM along the Madison River.  Since it is designated ‘wilderness’,  no vehicles are aloud on the lands so we carried backpacks of weed spray into the forest.

I also recently helped the BLM foresters re-plant white bark pine, Pinus albicaulis in an area that was burned in 2012.  Several factors are threatening the pine including blister rust, japanese beetle, habitat loss and climate change.  Its seeds have a high fat content making it valuable food for birds and mammals such as grizzly bears.  Foresters and horticulturists have been growing out plugs of the pine and plant them in the burned area near Pony, Montana.

Here is a photo of a sensitive plant known as Alkali Primrose, Primula alkalina.  It’s a regional endemic growing only in east-central Idaho and south-west Montana.  It is found on salty, wet soil that is actively grazed, so we have been monitoring it very closely to measure the effects grazing has on the primrose.

For the next few weeks I will be monitoring riparian areas on cattle allotments to assess stream health.  The photos above are from our training week where we went out and learned the ins and outs of all the different methods we will use to assess stream health. This helps the BLM decide which cattle allotments can safely be grazed.  Earlier this week we monitored a stream called Alkali stream, salt covering the ground so densely it looked like snow and then the next day it really did snow!

Best,

Leah Murray
Dillon, Montana
Summer 2014

*All photos from the Dillon, Montana BLM Field Office

Work at the Kremmling field office has been pretty slow the past few weeks since my last post, due to seasonal training. The seasonals and I had a week of training consisting of ATV, HazMat, Trailer towing, Radio use, and more. After that I went to Chicago for CLM training at the Chicago Botanic Garden.  Even though the training didn’t relate all that much to my specific job (Weed spraying) it was still useful information, and a good time. I met some good people and got in touch with a few people from the Lakewood district that said I could help out with some rare plant monitoring.

It is good to be back to work though, and we have a big week ahead of us. We will be spraying invasives at a burn site on Yarmony mountain and doing a campout on Thursday to make the most of our time. Once the water level goes down we will be floating the CO river with our raft sprayer and possibly camping again. I am really looking forward to getting some work done.

Kremmling BLM Office

It’s hard to believe it’s already been a month since my last blog post. We’ve been crazy busy here in Vernal and time is flying by!

Since my last post, we’ve revisited the White River and set up our monitoring plots. We had a larger crew this time as we were joined by two crew leaders from Utah Conservation Corps – as they’ll be in charge of cutting down the Russian olive this summer, they were scouting the area. One of the leaders was from Minnesota and we bonded over duck, duck, grey duck and how we pronounce the word “bag.”

Whilst on the White River, we hiked to “Goblin City” and got this great view.

The following week, we went into the field with folks from the BLM in Meeker, Colorado and from the Colorado Natural Heritage Program to scout for White River penstemon (Penstemon scariosus albifluvis). The first day was pretty uneventful, but on the second day we discovered a new population! We spent the day scrambling up and down steep shaley slopes, mapping the population. One of the women working with us later confided that she was 87 years old! She was trekking up mountains just as well as the young bloods. I’m totally going to be that person when I get older – still working field days in the desert after retirement age.

My partner in crime, Hector, taking in the view.

Hector and I also revisited some plant populations that we had been monitoring. Our first collection was the Streptanthella longistrosis at McCoy Flats. Collecting the long siliques  spoiled me as the seed picking was relatively quick and easy between just the two of us. Later that day, our field office hosted a safety day for all its employees and I got to change a flat tire and use an extinguisher to douse a fake fire.

For the rest of the week, we teamed up with botanists from SWCA, an environmental consulting firm, to conduct yearly Sclerocactus monitoring. We used quadrats to collect data on canopy cover, including that of Cyanobacteria and lichen. One of the women from SWCA had done her thesis on biological soil crusts and told us that in some desert environments, Cyanobacteria is the only nitrogen fixer present! Protocol also dictated that we collect 10% of the cactus seeds which was pretty cool since I’ve never seen cactus seed before.

All of my gear for Sclerocactus monitoring, including a stylish pink tool belt.

This past week was devoted to the CLM Workshop at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. The majority of this year’s interns were present and it was great to be around so many other young people with similar interests. Not only did I learn more about Seeds of Success, but I also got a crash course in Botany of the West, and a refresher on monitoring and management methods. All of the speakers who presented to us were fantastic and they definitely inspired me to continue on my path to be an ecologist!

The Chicago Botanic Gardens at sunset.

A close-up from the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
II John Muir II

BLM Vernal Field Office

This past week I was able to attend a training workshop as part of my CLM internship. Since my position started early in February, I elected to attend an alternative training workshop that focused more on plant identification in the field. The workshop took place on Isle Royale National Park, an island in the middle of Lake Superior. It combined learning about the various ecosystems on the island, practice using dichotomous keys, learning key characteristics of plant families to help distinguish them from similar species in the field, and learning about some rare and disjunct species on the island.

Barrier islands in Isle Royale National Park

Each day we hiked around different parts of the island to explore the various plant communities. The first full day we explored a small barrier island close to the main island and visited a fen and the rocky shores of Lake Superior. As we walked through the fen, we went through a key to identify some of the ericaceous species most commonly found there. Additionally, we learned about the types of habitat they prefer and how bogs are distinguished from fens (fens are fed from groundwater in addition to rainwater, while bogs are fed only from rainwater). We also found two carnivorous plant species in the fen – Drosera rotundifolia (Round-leaf Sundew) and Sarracenia purpurea (Pitcher Plant) – which use the nutrients they obtain from insects to make up for the nutrient poor conditions of their environment.

Chamaedaphne calyculata – Leatherleaf; one of the ericaceous species we keyed out

Drosera rotundifolia – Round-leaf sundew

Sarracenia purpurea – Pitcher Plant

Another highlight of the workshop was learning about “disjunct” plant species found on the island – species whose major distributions are distinctly separated from areas close to the island. There are both western and arctic/alpine disjunct species found on the island, which make it a particularly exciting area to botanize.

Primula mistassinica – Birdseye Primrose; an arctic/alpine disjunct species

Saxifraga tricuspidata – three toothed saxifrage, another arcitc/alpine disjunct only found on Isle Royale in the continental US

Empetrum nigrum – black crowberry, another arctic/alpine disjunct

Other things I will take away from this workshop are increasing familiarity with and comfort using more botanical terms to describe plants, as we talked a lot about specific parts of plants that are useful in distinguishing similar species. It was helpful to cement these terms over a week of seeing these plants in the field and observing the variety of forms plants can take. Our instructor showed us several botanical resources – field guides and manuals, online websites, and various books – that I can use in the future. I also learned a great deal from my fellow workshop participants by talking to them about their careers, sharing plant ID tips, and creating a network of people with a variety of skills and experience. All in all, the workshop strengthened my field botany skills and my desire to keep working in this field to protect places like the beautiful Isle Royale National Park.

Calypso bulbosa – Fairy slipper Orchid

Cypripedium arietinum – Ram’s Head Lady-slipper

Summer is ending but with our the northwest rain forbs for Seeds of Success collections are still in bloom. In reality this is good for us since all botany staff were at conferences or training last week and unable to collect!

The conference I attended is one that most first year CLM interns attend. It’s hosted by the Chicago Botanical Garden and is a wonderful crash course in monitoring populations, learning about Seeds of Success, and receiving an overview in the BLM and the CLM program. One treat is that Dean Tonneda, a botanist at the Carson City BLM, shares his collection of Mono Lake tribal ethnobotany. After this lecture I was left with the idea that though many of our cultures have lost the knowledge of wild plants, that knowledge can be gained once again by going out into the forest and playing around with plant properties. For example, finding fiber properties is as easy as walking in the forest and tugging on plants. Ethnobotany is not extinct, it is just dormant.

Chicago Botanic Garden

One exciting project I am working on is with a rare plant called Thelypodium eucosmum. First I organized past monitoring data on the species and was alarmed by the rate at which the species is going extinct. No need for chi square graphs or R programming; simple math easily shows the progression of this species. For example, there were 2,000 individuals in 1980 and now there are 200. Then I chose the most sensitive populations to monitor and made an ArcGIS map. This week or the next we will be climbing the steep ravines near the John Day Fossil beds where these populations exist. Hopefully our work will provide the data to create range land contracts that help protect this species while giving ranchers the wide open space they need for their cows.

Thelypodium eucosmum

Debbie Pattison
Prineville Field Office, BLM