On June 3, I returned from a week-long trip to San Miguel Island, where I assisted a botanist with a vegetation mapping project on the island.  San Miguel, a windy, treeless island, is the westernmost of the Channel Islands.  Dominant shrubs species on the island include coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis), prostrate coastal goldenbush (Isocoma menziesii var. vernonoides), and silver lupine (Lupinus albifrons var. douglasii, pictured, sand-covered).  Giant coreopsis (Leptosyne gigantea), San Miguel Island deerweed (Acmispon dendroideus var. veatchii) and golden yarrow (Eriophyllum confertiflorum) are abundant in areas on the eastern side of the island, but are largely absent from its western side. While common on the larger islands and on the mainland, toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), black sage (Salvia mellifera) and lemonade berry (Rhus integrifolia) are infrequent on San Miguel.  The rare Northern Island tree mallow (Lavatera assurgentiflora subsp. assurgentiflora, pictured) also occurs on the island.  Common herbs include San Miguel Island locoweed (Astragalus miguelensis), Greene’s dudleya (Dudleya greenei), Malacothrix species (pictured is the white-flowered M. saxatilis implicata) and the non-native sea-fig (Carprobrotus chilensis).

The seals were another fascinating part of the trip.  In some areas on the western side of the island, we were guided by one of the pinniped (seal) researchers.  We saw four species of seals over the course of the week:  northern fur seals, harbor seals, California sea lions, and elephant seals.  Elephant seals breed on the island from December through March.  We only saw a few northern fur seals; the males were on the island establishing their territory.  The trip was a great opportunity to learn the most common elements of the SMI flora (as well as many less-common species), and to talk to biologists and botanists about their work on the islands.

Mountaintop RD, San Bernardino National Forest, US Forest Service

Northern Island tree mallow

A view of Prince Island and eastern Cuyler Harbor.

Sand-covered silver lupine

Cliff-aster

For most of my time here in Dos Palmas, I’ve been working in the desert scrubland surrounding the oasis: lots of creosote, saltbush, mesquites, and a few small trees like the smoke trees I gushed over last month. But in the last week, we’ve been working on a new project, placing new transects for future vegetation surveys in the dense marsh near the area’s main outflow. I have to say, seeing grasses again is a big change, and wading into trackless stands of reeds, saw grass, and cattails, chasing after a point on a GPS unit – well, thats something I didn’t think I’d be doing in the desert. But as someone whose nature experiences begin with playing in cattails (if you hit your little brother with the ripe ones they’ll burst), getting back into a marsh is always good.

Of course, there have been other projects, some of them less fun. My boss (and his boss) are involved in a tense negotiation with the organization that owns the nearby canal: they are required by NEPA to feed water into the oasis for to preserve habitat for its endangered species, but parts of the oasis are drying up dramatically. My part in this process is mostly data management, making sure that our conclusions are based on the best possible research. Its great work, and it is exciting to know that your data work helps support local conservation policy, but its less fun than hiking through the marsh.

And in “sorry I don’t have pictures” news, this month I was lucky enough to see a ringtail cat (imagine a cross between a lemur and a raccoon), and more excitingly a yuma clapper rail: one of the very rare endangered species that make Dos Palmas home. The rest of my field team doesn’t believe me about that last one, or rather they don’t want to believe that the one day I was out on my own a clapper rail showed up.

See you all in Chicago next week,
Joe

Hello from Missoula,

I arrived in Missoula Montana just over two weeks ago, following a three day drive from Rochester New York. The driving portion of the trip took just over 34 hours in total and I passed through many states and saw many landscapes that were unfamiliar to me. Upon arrival I rushed to get set up before starting work just three days later at the Missoula BLM field office.

I met many of the permanent and seasonal employees of the office on my first day, and I was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and youthfulness of everyone that I met. After a full day of training and preparatory paperwork, I was excited to begin field work. By 7:30 a.m. on my second day of work we were on the road to a field site near Garnet, MT to conduct a series of habitat typing surveys. Through analysis of information regarding tree species types, sizes, and prevalences, understory species types and prevalences, and several other factors, the habitat typing surveys frequently conducted by the Missoula BLM make it possible to predict the future conditions of a site as well as create plans for the proper management of such sites. For the next week and a half I participated in habitat typing surveys, rare plant searches, and preparation of a field site for prescribed burning.

I have found my first two weeks with the Missoula BLM field office to be more interesting and fun than I ever thought possible. I have met many great people, had the opportunity to explore the wilderness of the rocky mountains, and had time to explore the city of Missoula. I look forward to spending the next five months here in Missoula working with the BLM

– Vince Fasanello, BLM Missoula Montana

The View From Mount Sentinel (1)

The View From Mount Sentinel (2)

Lunch Spot in Garnet

Forest Near Garnet

The past few weeks have flown by here at the Lewistown BLM office. I am starting to get to know the Big Sky country out here in the center of Montana with its flat rangeland flanked by the welcoming contrast of island mountain ranges. The forever-stretching grasslands are a new concept to me coming from the east where everything is close together or at least densely forested. Distance is measured in relation to large landmarks (mountains) and time is mostly forgotten as I cruise along the gently rolling plains. Often I will be driving for miles before I pass another vehicle and we exchange a wave in remembrance of civilization.

The past few weeks have flown by here at the Lewistown BLM office. I am starting to get to know the Big Sky country out here in the center of Montana with its flat rangeland flanked by the welcoming contrast of island mountain ranges. The forever-stretching grasslands are a new concept to me coming from the east where everything is close together or at least densely forested. Distance is measured in relation to large landmarks (mountains) and time is mostly forgotten as I cruise along the gently rolling plains. Often I will be driving for miles before I pass another vehicle and we exchange a wave in remembrance of civilization.

So far I have done a little bit of everything. Not having an actual botanist in the office has put a little pressure on me to use what resources I can to get to know the plants here. I still am an amateur in the field of botany, but I hope to become a little less so after the 6 months of this internship. With the help from the range specialists who understand the grasses and forbs in relation to grazing, including invasives and noxious weeds that are the on the list to be controlled/eliminated, I am gaining an understanding of the vegetation here. I am using my excursions into the field to not only assist and learn from the wildlife biologists, but to become acquainted with as many plants as I can fit in my mind.

Working with the wildlife biologists has been wonderful. I am not only learning the names of the animals out here, but I have had a chance to learn some animal behavior and monitoring techniques. One of the wildlife biologists and I monitored known raptor nests to look for signs of activity. A dead raptor had been observed at one of the nests the previous year and looking through our binoculars, we thought we may have seen her, or what remained of her. We questioned whether the body would have been preserved for so long and as we got closer it appeared as though her eye was dipping lower into the nest. We realized she was alive, lying as flat as possible on her eggs so as not to be noticed. She was a ferruginous hawk, the largest of the hawks and I was overjoyed at witnessing my first raptor nest especially one of which we were not expecting to be active.

I am learning the importance of sagebrush here on the range. I have heard a lot of talk about it and now I get to see what the big deal is all about. The most common here, Wyoming Big Sagebrush, Artemisia tridentate ssp. wyomingensis, is scattered throughout the grassland; its sweet and spicy fragrance get stirred up lingers on my clothes whenever I walk through it. Several species of wildlife are sagebrush obligates, which means their survival depends on an abundance of sagebrush. These include greater sage-grouse, Gunnison sage-grouse, sage sparrow, Brewer’s sparrow, sage thrasher, pygmy rabbit, sagebrush vole, sagebrush lizard, and pronghorn. Knowing so many species depend on this one plant is a scary thought, but it also makes me feel good about the seed collecting that I’ll be doing.

Some silver sagebrush, Artemisia cana

I’ve also learned from a couple ranchers that sagebrush is not one of their favorites. Some talk about burning their fields (sagebrush) to make room for more palatable grasses for their cattle, which is understandable from their point of view, but not good in the long run. Silver sagebrush, Artemisia cana, luckily is a species that is capable of resprouting after a fire, which is great because fire, whether man made or not, is common around here. Speaking of which, another one of my projects is surveying Goshawks in an area that is prescribed to be burned next year.

Wildfire in the distance

I am realizing now that I have been learning a lot and one blog post is not enough to share it all; I will save some for later and besides I still have so much more to learn. So far I love that I am getting to know plants, not only to identify them, but their importance in relation to wildlife, ranchers, and fire, all of which are key components in making central Montana what it is.

Some pictures for your enjoyment:

Horned lizard!

Sparrow nest

Wild rose

The rugged landscape of the Musselshell river breaks

My departure date drew closer and closer, and I could hardly wait.  My heart has been pulling me west for some time, waiting for an opportunity for the rest to follow.  A long trek from Virginia went by quickly in just a few stops with old friends in some beautiful places.  My journey was coming to a close as I was passing through Colorado, and eventually I realized that the objects I was seeing weren’t clouds anymore, but white top mountains.  The first glimpse of the Rockies is something I won’t forget, and I knew I was in the right place.

Monday rolled around and it was time to get to work.  This first week has been a whirlwind of introductions, meetings, manuals, and papers.  I have been on acronym overload for the past four days.  Although it’s been such a short period of time, I have already gained a clarified view about the BLM’s purpose and function.  What was a cloud of complexities…is still a cloud of complexities, but I have begun to wrap my head around it, teasing apart the vastness of BLM’s tasks and obligations.

-David Drewett, Wyoming BLM State Office

Hello! My name is Anna Freundlich and I am working in the BLM office in Lakeview, Oregon. Here in Lakeview I am going to make seed collections as part of the Seeds of Success (SOS) program and these past few weeks have already been pretty exciting. I graduated May 19th, went home for two days to pack, and then drove from my hometown of Lexington, Ohio for six days to arrive here in Oregon. While we were a bit rushed, my sister and I had a good time traveling across the U.S. From hiking in Wisconsin to visiting Mt. Rushmore to seeing bison on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake we had plenty of adventures. And besides getting lost in California for two hours on my last day of travel, the commute went pretty smoothly.

My first week and a half of work was rewarding and challenging. As one can imagine, the plants here in Oregon are quite different from the plants out east. Nearly every plant is foreign to me, but luckily the local botanist Ian Grinter and my fellow intern Lucy Landis are very patient and are helping me learn the plants out here. Because our Lakeview office is in a higher elevation and this area has been in a drought for the past three years, the seed situation is “interesting”. Our plants normally flower and set seed later in the season, but combined with the drought some populations are setting seeds later than anticipated or are not setting seed at all. My first day in the field Lucy and I went to check out a population of Trifolium macrocephalum clovers, only to discover that there were no seeds for us to collect. We also hit bad luck when we went to collect seed from a population of Lupine; we were dismayed to discover that the cows had beaten us to the lupine flowers. If only we had known that the flowers were so tasty!

But things are not hopeless. Today we went out to Sage Hen Butte in the southern part of the district with some botanists from Alturas. On a hilltop overlooking the mountains, we finally found a site that had potential for seed collections. Here we found many different populations of native plants including Indian paintbrush, multiple species of Eriogonum (Wild Buckwheat) and my favorite plant of the day Lewisia rediviva. This small plant had red stems, beautiful white flowers, and seemed to crawl out from under the rocks. After our CLM training trip in Chicago next week, we plan on making many collections at this beautiful site.

I am looking forward to a great summer and I am so glad I have this opportunity!
Lakeview, Oregon BLM

Favorite flower of the day!

Mt. Robson from the Shore of Kinney Lake

Eleven days; nine major highways; eight states and provinces; seven national parks; six national forests; and five state and provincial parks later, I arrived in Anchorage, Alaska from Shreveport, Louisiana.

We made it!

My trek traversed the southern plains, semi-arid prairies, the cold deserts, the western cordillera, the boreal cordillera, and the marine west coast forests. Along the way I met new Betula, Anemone, Lupinus, Erigeron, Trillium, and Equisetum species, as well as a plethora of nonvasculars.

My co-intern and I have been working in Anchorage for just over a week now, partnered with both BLM and the Alaska Natural Heritage Program, and most of our time thus far has been spent either in training or in the herbarium, familiarizing myself with common species and speciose genera. For me, it was initially a bit overwhelming to be confronted with a flora so radically different from that with which I’m familiar, but our mentors have provided excellent resources and enthusiastic support. We’re also scheduled to do field surveys sometime this week, and I imagine meeting the plants in “person” (i.e., three dimensions) will certainly help in learning their names.

Today was spent weighing, packinging, and labelling seed from last year’s Seeds of Success collections, and it was exciting to see the fruit (no pun intended) of last year’s interns’ labors. The Plant Materials Center, which houses Alaska’s S.O.S. program, is near Butte, AK in the Matanuska Valley. This was easily the most scenic lunch I’ve ever taken.

Our first field outing– shortly after the Chicago training session– will be with NRCS, and we’re headed to the Chandalar Shelf in the Brooks Range! My excitement exceeds that which the English language is sufficient to describe. I’m continually grateful for this opportunity to contribute meaningfully and to travel to such phenomenally beautiful locations.

More to come after our stint in the field!

Bonnie B.
Anchorage BLM Office & AK-NHP

After a month of waiting, the Rogue Valley’s native plants have finally begun their first round of seeding!

So far we have been able to make numerous collections of interesting plants like the silvery lupine, Lupinus albifrons, the onion grass, Melica geyeri, or the slender meadowfoam, Limnanthes gracilis. The process of surveying these plants and then following them every week until they go to seed has been a unique and gratifying experience for myself, personally. The longer I work on seed collecting, the more sophisticated my eyes are becoming when gazing into southern Oregon’s natural environments. It is a constant reminder that there can be a seemingly infinity of objects to perceive in nature at any particular spot, if we could just learn to see what is there.

My partner, Mason, and I are excited to get back into the field and not only collect seed of our scouted populations but also hunt for freshly flowering populations to keep on our radar for the upcoming summer months.

– Jason

Three days after graduation I drove from eastern North Carolina to Grand Junction, Colorado, and started my internship with the BLM field office here the day after I arrived. It has been a whirlwind and a complete change of environment. Everything is different here! Every day I look around me at the Book Cliffs, Grand Mesa and the Colorado National Monument and have to pinch myself and ask “Is this real life??”  Definitely not the flat plains I’m used to (and I thank God every day for the lack of humidity). My knowledge of the flora and fauna are completely lacking though, as my fellow local interns have been quick to point out. But I’m quickly learning and want to learn more about this beautiful landscape. The past two weekends I’ve been playing tourist and visiting all the big destinations…unfortunately I can’t get myself up early enough to search for moose on the Grand Mesa. But who knew Grand Junction was in the middle of wine country? Or dinosaur? Or wildflower? I also got a chance to visit Teton National Park and Yellowstone over Memorial Day weekend

In the past two weeks I’ve mostly been doing all the standard training (Is four hours of defensive driving necessary? really?) and a variety of projects out in the field, from mending fences on exclosures, to big game transects. I’m slowly learning about the relationship between the public, the federal government and public lands. I’ve attached some pictures that glimpse at what I’ve seen the past two weeks.

The largest flat-topped mountain in the world!

Sclerocactus glaucus, a threatened species

Colorado National Monument

Prickly Pear

Barrel Cactus

Mule Deer

Wild Rose

Elk

All the best,

Lindsey B.

Bureau of Land Management

Grand Junction Field Office