Howdy from the high, lonesome rangelands of Harney County, OR y’all!

Well, actually, I’m writing to you from my office at the Rea Selling Berry Seed Bank on the campus of Portland State University in sunny Portland, OR. Thus is the duality of my new lifestyle as a CLM intern. Every other week I leave Portland and drive eight hours to one of the remote places in the contiguous United States, immersed in solitude, totally at one with myself and this brand new flora for six days in a row. The rest of the time, I live in the heart of this wonderful, bizarre city, surrounded by my weirdo friends, in a totally different ecoregion with lots and lots of moisture.

Listen guys, the range is no joke. I mean seriously, you could die out there doing the most routine field work. Last week, the local BLM botanist in Harney County told me of a few places I should put on my “must see” list, so I decided to take a little field trip to Foster Flat Research Natural Area to scope an ephemeral playa lakebed Artemisia cana/Poa secunda plant community. “Oh, only thirty two miles down that there dirt road, I should be there in less than an hour,” I said to myself. Three hours later I made it to Foster Flat.

The Burns BLM district is dry — really, really dry — receiving about 7-12 inches of precipitation per year. That said, thunderstorms and showers are common in late spring. As I made my first forays into Foster Flat on foot to examine the miracle of desert plant life, I noticed a very large thunderstorm in the distance — looming, menacing, threatening. I then recalled an anecdote relayed to me by my former supervisor and friend Tom Kaye at the Institute of Applied Ecology in Corvallis, OR. Apparently Tom knew a guy who got caught in the middle of one of these little rain events in the hollers of Harney County back in the old days, and the fellow ended up bogging down his vehicle and getting stranded back there for a week! Yes indeed, one whole week. Was it true? Was it lore? Was Tom just giving me a little gentle hazing? I looked around at the bleak, godforsaken (yet botanically rich!) landscape, lovingly stared into the depths of my iPhone for the slightest hint at cell reception and muttered a few choice phrases as I imagined the thirty two mile hike out of Foster Flat. Those poorly drained clays and silts are unforgiving, and I wasn’t waiting around long enough to find out if my Subaru could levitate out of the all-but-certain quagmire that approached. I spent the rest of my work day channeling New Zealand rally car legend Possum Bourne as I (slowly and safely) navigated through the epic landscape of the Harney Basin, “Stairway to Heaven” blasting on my vehicle’s sound system all the while.

Yep, just another exciting day on the job in Harney County. The outsider might gaze upon the desolate terrain and decide that there’s not much to see except a denuded wasteland. In reality, I work in a botanical wonderland — windswept, silent and mystical. This harsh, unforgiving landscape has many stories to tell, and yet more to be written.

Starting a new job often comes with a mixed bag of emotions including excitement, fear, determination, and anxiety. I personally experienced all of these emotions and more prior to starting my CLM internship in Cedarville, CA. I was nervous about the job, as well as moving to a new place where I knew no one. Of course it is natural to have these feelings but at times they seemed overwhelming. However, taking a leap of faith, and concurring my emotions has made me into a stronger person. Each time I leave my comfort zone and try something new, I am rewarded with new skills, more confidence and new life experiences.

When I arrived to Cedarville, I new it was going to be a new way of living and would take some getting used to. The town has a population of roughly 400, there is one grocery store, one gas station, and I do not have any cellphone service. A remote location such as this may not be for everyone however, one month has passed and I have come to love it here. It is quietly tucked away in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountain ranges with ample opportunities for outdoor recreation. Enough said about Cedarville. Let me tell you what I have been up to at the Bureau of Land Management.

The Surprise Valley field office in Cedarville manages over a million acres of land, straddling the border of northeastern california and northwestern nevada. The majority of the land is considered sage-steppe ecosystem and is important habitat for many wildlife species including the greater sage-grouse. Populations of this ground dwelling bird are currently in decline due to habitat destruction and fragmentation. As a result, restoring the sage-grouse habitat has become a main focus of the Surprise Valley BLM.

One cause of habitat destruction comes from encroachment of western juniper trees (Juniperus occidentalis). Due to a reduction of wildland fires, juniper trees have expanded their territory significantly, encroaching on the sage-steppe ecosystem. Western juniper absorbs a high volume of water, and competes with native vegetation for resources. Part of the sage-steppe ecosystem restoration strategy is to reduce juniper encroachment using a variety of treatments. This project will include both pre-treatment and post-treatment vegetation monitoring. What I have been doing for the past few weeks is establishing pre-treatment vegetation monitoring plots and collecting data.

Jumping right into this project on my first day of work was challenging. I had to learn the protocol on the spot and learn a long list of plants that were unfamiliar to me in a short period of time. However, it has been a valuable learning experience so far and I am certain that my knowledge and skills will continue to progress as more time goes by.

Vegetation monitoring has taken up the bulk of my time however, there have been a few opportunities to get involved with other projects. For starters, I have been scouting out sites to collect seeds for the Seeds of Success program. This has been a challenge due to the ongoing drought in the area. Forbs are especially difficult to find. I also spent a day planting basin wildrye (Leymus cinereus) starts that were grown by local high school students using seeds that were collected by a previous CLM intern. Lastly, I was able to go along with my mentor to install game cameras at two bighorn sheep guzzlers. Afterwards we used radio telemetry to track down the bighorn sheep that were released several years ago. With some patience, we spotted four bighorn sheep having a lazy day on the side of a ridge. On the drive back to the office, we came across a Golden Eagles nest holding this bundle of joy:

Until next time,

Amy Thorson

BLM Surprise Valley

Cedarville, CA

This is blog number three, just finished my seventh week in Vale.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about conservation, its importance, and what it should look like in the face of climate change. I haven’t completely thought through all of these ideas, and am really just presenting a bunch of questions. Nor do I know how many people actually read this, but comments are appreciated.

The other week I went up to Washington to monitor a sensitive species that has only been found at this location. We spent a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of gas to get to the site every day that week. We also had to take a pretty dangerous road to and from the site each day, and were monitoring on some dangerously steep and slick hillsides. One we deemed too unsafe to complete the assessment. This all made me wonder just how worthwhile our efforts really were.

Is it really that important to monitor and conserve this particular species? While pondering this question I began to contemplate why conservation is important in general. This idea, the importance of conservation, or lack thereof, lies at the heart of what I’m doing here, at the heart of this program, and at the heart of my educational and career choices.

Conservation work does not always generate immediate success, results, or satisfaction. It tackles long-term problems and goals. This fact makes the work tough at times, but I’ve always told myself that the bigger picture, the long-term benefits of my work makes it all worth it. The knowledge that what I’m doing matters and is important has always been my fuel. But why does it matter? Why is conserving plant species important? Well, because each species is part of a complex ecosystem on which other organisms depend, on which other species depend, on which other ecosystems depend, on which we depend. Or maybe the answer is simply because other species are living things, and have their own right to continue to exist. These answers have generally sufficed my questioning mind. However, the more I think about the issue the less clear cut it becomes.

The natural world is always changing, always evolving. This is true even if our species hadn’t altered so many landscapes, or exacerbated global climate destabilization. I struggle with the idea of conserving something; a landscape, an ecosystem, or a species, in its natural state, since change is a constant and because the term “natural” is subjective. Species, landscapes, and ecosystems are evolving on geologic time scales. So who’s to say our definitions of “natural” and “native” are in fact natural and native? Is our own species not part of this “natural” environment? Taking these ideas into consideration, how beneficial is it truly to conserve a species in a location we’ve deemed “native”? On top of that, how beneficial, or important, or fruitful, are those efforts in the face of climate change? If the chance of long term survival is slim for the particular species we monitored in Washington, were our efforts a poor use of resources? What actions should scientists and conservationists be taking in the face of climate change? How do we decide which of those actions are most important, or the best use of our resources?

I’m not offering any answers here. Rather, I’m interested in what other people think about this topic. This is something I think about frequently, and don’t have great answers to, as few people I expect do. But they’re important ideas to discuss nonetheless. Please share your thoughts!

Colleen

Vale BLM

Washington site

Coming from southern Ohio where there is water in the air and ferocious foliage, this wide open and dry country is quite the contrast!  Although the drive was long, I was able to see the landscape change from the foothills of appalachia to the flat midwestern plains, then morph into the high desert and finally the mountains!  It is a beautiful time of year to take a good long drive.

Upon my arrival, I was faced with an exotic landscape and friendly faces.  My first week in the Lander Field Office consisted of a lot of introductions and some planning for my next couple of months of work.  Using USGS topography maps of the 2.2 million acre field office and University of Wyoming’s Rocky Mountain Herbarium, I was able to map out known populations of target species, then the fun really began!  The rest of my time was spent exploring the field office and getting aquatinted with the local flora.  At first it was kind of overwhelming…I felt like a stranger in a foreign land, but as I got my hands dirty things started to click.  I was able to vaguely recognize the western relatives of the eastern flora and brushed up on my keying-out skills.  Can you believe I forgot what papilionaceous was?!

The Lander Field Office is huge, covers a multitude of ecosystems, and has some amazing wildlife.  Just this week a rattle snake rattled at me, I stared down a mustang, and saw a golden eagle soaring through a canyon.  I have high hopes to see a moose.  My first two weeks have been eye opening and I’ve already learned a ton!  I think these next few months will be full of new experiences and jam packed with information and fond memories!

Until next time,

Emily Usher, Lander, Wyoming BLM

Once again, John Muir had said it best and I must give credit where credit is due (the title is part of a John Muir quote).

Week 7 of my 26 stint on the West coast has ended, and since my last post I now feel like a seasoned Californian. Aside from work related endeavors which I will get to momentarily, I have done some exploring in and outside of the Sierra’s. Camping in the high desert of the Eastern Sierra’s, evening hot spring dips near Mammoth Lakes, traversing through an abandoned boom town, roaming the Serengeti-like landscape of Bidwell Park, touring the brisk and diverse megalopolis of San Francisco, and much more. I have now realized in order to get a full grasp of California, 6 months time is not nearly enough.

Now to the good stuff, WORK! Being surrounded by the forest, plants and trees while in the field has not only left my body and soul feeling at its peak but allowed me to immerse myself in my studies.  Grad school will be a walk in the park compared to some of the hikes my partner and I have had to do to reach a known occurrence of a fire sensitive plant species. For the past month we’ve really focused on two main species (due to their phenologies): Mimulus filicaulis and pulchellus (Hetch Hetchy monkeyflower and Pansy monkeyflower) and Cypripedium montanum (Mountain Lady’s slipper). Though both the Mimulus populations seem to be rebounding well, it is another story with the Cypripedium. More often then not the occurrences which we are visiting have one individual or no individuals present, it’s quite the somber scene. Be that as it may, my colleague and I stumbled onto a population of more than 200 C. momtanum‘s in a 20×20 foot plot! Needless to say we were very excited. As a side note when I told that story to my roommates later that day (who are archaeologists), they found it entertaining how a person could get so excited over a plant.

Never forget how fortunate we are and, may fortune and knowledge smile upon you all,

Mi-Wuk Ranger Station

Forest Service

Jake

  Eastern side of the Sierra’s Abandoned boom town of Bodie, CA Golden Gate Bridge  80” DBH Douglas Fir

Taking lunch by the South Branch of the Tuolumne River

Massive stump hole

Cypripedium montanum

Hello. This week was particularly interesting and brought really a lot of new experience and knowledge even in comparison to the last couple months of being here. For the first time this year, and actually personally for me, we performed a fire rehabilitation monitoring survey in Alpine Co, CA – a procedure that takes about 7-9 hours of work for the team of 7 people. It is impressive – how much of accurate and precise data you acquire, and, in addition, it happens every year. For me it is a truly valuable and unforgettable experience, since the whole idea of fire rehabilitation monitoring is based on the precision of measurements, and I must say – we did our best in performing our tasks. With the feeling of responsibility (which was predominant in our attitude) everything was done with confidence and in high quality, regardless of hot weather and tons of prickly tumbleweed. In addition, the place where we were working and camping was beautiful and charming – completely different from the typical Great Basin sagebrush steppe. The Indian Creek Campground with dominant Pinus geffreyi and Pinus monophylla, plus water reservoir, is a great place to observe wildlife which is flourishing there. Probably, overall I could call this week as a super productive, with so far the biggest portion of new experiences and excitement (e.g. hunting Osprey), and, of course, completed work. Hope that our oncoming activities will be even more and more interesting, and based on what we’ve been doing I guess it’ll be so.

Farewell,

Andrii

Carson City, BLM

As more people join the botany survey crew here in Stanislaus forest our crews are filling out, leaders are getting organized, and we are getting ready to attack our surveys with full force! As the early season species we are surveying for disappear, we are starting to see a whole new wave of wildflowers. The last two weeks we have been seeing Clarkia species beginning to bloom, Eriophyllum nubigenum, and finding more Peltigera gowardii in streams.

The last two weeks have been dominated by mandatory trainings for the Forest Service as well as special trainings on soil profiling, habitat classification and orienteering. In the next week or two we will get more trainings on GIS and data analysis so we can begin to sort through the data we have been collecting.

Orobanche uniflora: hard to spot, but not uncommon

Eriophyllum nubigenum: Yosemite wooly sunflower

as the timber sales go through we will be seeing more logged slopes like this one here in the rim recovery area

Peltigera gowardii

-Emily Wells

Hello again fellow interns! Well it seems summer is in full swing. The temperature reached over 80 degrees this week in wonderful Kemmerer, Wyoming.  The temperature seems to be getting hot too quickly, but it’s nice not waking up to below freezing weather.  Work has been great; I have spent much of my time last week in an optional training.  The class was a week-long class located in Twin Falls, Idaho.  Class consisted of training on how to use the Seventeen Indicators of Range Health.  The training will be very valuable in my future career.  Much of the class was spent on soils, and how to identify specific ecological sites. Much of the information that was covered during training was review for me.  It was nice to have a refresher course. It amazes me how much a person can forget when they don’t use something that was learned in the past.

Being from Wyoming, I have not spent much time in Idaho.  The state goes from mountains in the east to a flatter grass/shrub community in the eastern part of the state.  The one thing that really surprised me was the huge amount of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum).  I knew the invasive grass was a problem, but I didn’t realize it was a problem to this extent.  In fact, where I currently work, and have worked in the past, cheatgrass is a problem, but it is located in sporadic areas and does not cause a huge problem.  It was nice to learn how much the grass really creates a problem for native grass species. After leaving Idaho, and returning to Wyoming, I have a new profound appreciation of my work location.  I hope everyone has a great field season, and remember to stay safe!

Jeremy Sykes

Bureau of Land Management

Kemmerer, Wyoming