Week five is now over. I can’t believe it’s already been that long. Thursday and Friday of week four Susan and I went down to the McDermitt area to monitor two sensitive plant species there: Artemisia papposa (Fuzzy sagebrush) and Collomia renacta (Barren Valley Collomia). We were able to locate one of two populations of Artemisia papposa, and had some trouble with the Collomia renacta. The Collomia is newer and we were unsure if the species we were seeing was in fact the renacta. Overall, it was good to get some eyes out in the area and see what’s going on. We got an estimated count at each site, and took note of their habitat and general condition.

Artemisia papposa

Morning sky in McDermitt

Earlier that week I got to take an ArcPad class through the BLM, which taught us how to use the Trimble GPS. I feel extremely confident in my ability to use the Trimble for a variety of tasks now, and am looking forward to using my new skills in the field. I’m glad I was able to take part in the class.

This week we went back to a collection site of Viola trinervata, and collected another 800 seed heads or so. That will put us over the 10,000 seed minimum for the Seeds of Success program, but Susan will return to the site one more time next week so that we collect all throughout the seeding period. The more seed, the better! It was my first collection this year, and it was very successful.

Viola trinervata field site

We also just finished with the Seeds of Success training course. It was in Boise, ID this year, so we made the hour and a half journey each morning for three days. This made for long days, but was worth it. We learned more about the program, the protocol, proper seed care, seed biology, and plant taxonomy. It was organized well, and I feel better able to collect native seed according to the protocol now. Wednesday we were in the field and did an actual collection together, which put everything we learned on Tuesday into context. There was such a wealth of information there, among all the mentors and instructors, I’m thankful they opened the course up to interns this year. Thursday, as an extra part of the training, we went to the Oregon State University Malheur Experiment Station right here in Vale, OR, to see what can be done with the seed we help collect. It was great to see the kind of research that is being done in an effort to increase the use of native seed on the landscape, and for restoration purposes.

Experimental field of native species

I feel more at home here now. I’ve become familiar with the town, and the neighboring towns, and have more of a routine at work now too. Despite this fact, I definitely miss my friends and family back in Illinois, and am looking forward to heading back in June for the Chicago Botanic Garden training week.

Now that it’s really starting to warm up here I’m off exploring more of Eastern Oregon. This weekend I’m off to Leslie Gulch! I’m looking forward to seeing, and attempting to paint, the beautiful geology down there. It’ll be the first time I’ve camped out alone, so it should be interesting.

Here are some more photos I’ve taken for fun:

Cute caterpillar we saw while seed collecting

Flowers while looking for sage grouse

Penstemon sp.

Hope you’ve enjoyed!

Colleen

Vale District BLM

In the few weeks since my last post, my fellow interns and I at the USGS office here in Henderson have been busy working all across the Mojave Desert in Arizona, California, Utah, and Nevada. Our most recent project is the annual monitoring of perennial plants at the site of the 2011 Hidden Fire in Arizona. This field site is on BLM land in a region called the “Arizona Strip” – a strip of land in Arizona between the border and the Colorado River. This particular site has burned multiple times, converting the Joshua Tree woodland into an area densely covered by invasive annual grasses (Bromus madritensis in particular) that leaves the native annual and perennial species struggling to recover. We were there to monitor the effects of different restoration treatments, such as seeding with and without rodent protection, herbiciding, and seeding density, on the cover and frequency of perennial plant species.

Working in a new part of the Mojave gave us a chance to learn some new plant species and more about this relatively fragile ecosystem. The majestic backdrop of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument made for some beautiful sunsets and moonrises, and we were able to spot some exciting wildlife. We saw a few horned lizards, a lark nest with three eggs, black widow spiders, and a gopher snake. We head back out next week to finish up the plant monitoring before the busy month of May comes to a close.

The moon rises over a bluff near our field site in the foreground, where few perennial species remain after the fire in 2011.

A black widow catches an unfortunate grasshopper in its web.

The black widow returns to its hole after subduing its prey.

Until next time!

Las Vegas Field Office, USGS

Hello everybody a little late but it’s sure here. My first blog entry for my second CLM internship. This time I got a botany position with the botanist at Vernal, Utah BLM Field Office. My first weeks here went by really fast and it was all fun.  First day, of course some paperwork, a few trainings and certifications and get all the gear ready for the rest of the week.  We would be rafting/floating in the White River, a river originating in Colorado from snow meltdown. The project in the river consists of removing non-native shrub and tree species, in this case Tamarix ramosisima and Elaugnus angustifulia, salt-cedar and Russian olive respectively. The removal of this species will improve native wildlife habitat. Our team consisted of two wildlife biologists, our mentor and botanist Jessi, fellow CLM intern Dani, and myself. The wildlife crew would take us to the spots where treatments would be applied and then plants crew (us) went in and assessed the area to try to come up with a monitoring plan for before and after treatment plots.

The following week I starting out by going out in the field with the weeds tech Jim. The plan of the day was to spray with herbicide the invasive species white top, which mostly occurs in riparian areas. The first half of the day went well but after we returned to the truck and loaded the UTV spraying vehicle, we noticed we were missing a pin from the trailer gate. We had to go back to town get it fixed before any serious damage happened. After we fixed that we went out and did a little more spraying. During this week I also completed another certification.  Then I explored the Seeds of Success database from previous years’ collection seasons and tried to figure out where to start scouting/collecting this season’s seeds. We ended the week by touring around the Vernal BLM resource area with two biologist from the US Fish and Wildlife Service Utah state office who were interested in seeing the work and progress being done in the conservation-monitoring of various sensitive species; a few of them were two species of penstemon as well as two different species of barrel cacti; Sclerocactus wetlandicus and Sclerocactus brevispinus.

So far this internship looks promising for a fun and learning work experience in the conservation and natural resource management field.

Until next time!

Hector Elias
2014 CLM Intern
BLM Vernal Field Office
Vernal, Utah

It has been a month since moving out to Idaho and starting work and things are starting to take off.  The sagebrush and grazing pastures are starting to look familiar, and I no longer feel completely disoriented when we take a new route to a site.  Our work consists primarily of HAF (Habitat Assessment Framework) monitoring to collect data on the vegetation and habitat available to Greater Sage Grouse in Twin Falls’s field office.  I’m still struggling with many of the plants and some days feel that grasses are beyond my grasp, but it is incredibly rewarding to be able to walk through a pasture and name so many of the forbs we pass on the way to our transect sights.

The days are long and we are still working on establishing a routine in order to get more sites done in one day.  Despite the long days, the work is interesting.  We will never revisit any of our sites and I am intrigued by the idea of spending so much time and effort on 100 meters of an area only to uproot our transect lines and move on without much more thought.  The world shrinks down to one meter points for a few hours and then expands back out into the large skies of the sage brush.

We just got the third member of our five member crew.  The three of us are all CLM interns and it’s been incredibly enjoyable to help train him in and watch someone else experience the brush with such enthusiasm and pleasure.  Next week we’ll start doing 4 days camping out in the field in order to reach the further sights.  I’m thrilled at the idea.  Our trailer will be in a campground by a river.  To be near water again is going to be wonderful.

The desert here is beautiful, with the real beauty showing in the details and the intensity of the landscape.  From a car the scene looks homogenous, varying only in so much as whether areas are grassy or filled with sage and rabbit brush.  Once on the ground the area is quickly differentiated by many details and the land’s character shows through.  It is a harsh landscape in that there is no shelter whatsoever, from sun or the often intense wind.  But it is a wonderfully serene place and I am always thrilled to be able to see for miles and to watch the clouds move in.  These kinds of skies are some of my favorites.

I’ve had the opportunity to see some phenomenal birds while out here, including our main focus the sage grouse.  Horned larks, Brewer’s sparrows, sage larks and Swainson’s hawks are daily companions.  We lucked out to see what I think was a short-eared owl sitting on a fence post the other day and drive by a Ferruginous Hawk’s nest.  Horned toads are everywhere and even a bull snake was spotted today.  Earlier this week we were watched by four pronghorns, all strung out along the horizon line, and two days ago a group of young cows attempted to eat our transect tape.  The animals are ever present and often very subtle, a challenge and daily delight.

I’m looking forward to the next several months and the thought of becoming adept at the work.  I am also delighted by the idea of what we might see during this time and how we will begin to understand the area better.

From rolling prairie to mountainous forests, I have made it to Missoula, MT. The landscape is incredible here, with Pondersoa pine forests, snow capped mountains, and moss and lichens EVERYWHERE. Even the wildlife is unique, like Sasquatch, just kidding! The biggest struggle so far is getting comfortable hiking up these mountains, and getting used to the elevation which is over 1,500 feet higher than Iowa, yowiee!

Right now all of the seasonals are starting to join the BLM crew and we are starting walk-through inventory. Which is just a fancy term for “hiking up a mountain then talking about all of the plants and wildlife you see”, which is pretty awesome. We have been collecting inventory for the layers of the stand, habitat type, canopy cover, average diameter breast height. During these stand inventories we are also looking the understory vegetation, invasive species and sensitive species. All of this information is used to evaluate stand overall health and for sites for further projects. We survey the stands every 10 years.

We are also preforming five needle pine surveys, which include limber pine (Pinus flexilis) and White pine (Pinus strobus). They are hard to find for several reasons: the first is the mountain pine beetle. These beetles are using five needle pine trees in high elevation to attract a mate and lay their eggs.  Then the beetle larvae eat the phloem, leaving the tree to die! The second is blister rust, which is actually a rust fungus, not a chemical reaction. The blister rust is basically a parasite using the bark of the pine as a home. Luckily, we have found quite a few viable trees!

Until next time!

Cara

Hi all,

It has been about a month since living/working in Shoshone, ID. I have finally blended into the neighborhood and held a successful BBQ a couple weekends ago.

We have been working on a few projects which keep us busy and in the field most days of the week. When we’re in the mood for a scavenger hunt, based off directions, maps, and pictures (sometimes dating back to the 40s) we look for old monitoring plots. This can be quite difficult…one person’s north is another person’s south. This process can take 20 minutes to 2 hours.  It’s like finding gold when you see the metal bars in the ground. We then GPS the monitoring plot to make navigation easy. When we’re feeling like botanists for the day, we conduct Nested Frequency Studies. Through this method, one can determine the occurrence and frequency of a species and ground cover in the plot. These are permanent monitoring plots which allows trend data to be collected from previous years.

Nested Frequency Studies plot

This past weekend was the Seeds of Success training in Boise, ID. It was wonderful to be surrounded by botanists who knew every detail of the plant and could answer any question you had on identifying. We were taught the S.O.S protocol, helped in a collection of Nothocalais troximoides seed, and went to the Oregon State University Malheur Experiment Station in Vale, OR. The Malheur Experiment Station is where some of the collected native seed goes to be grown. The students were growing native Eriognums, Astragalus, Balsamorhiza, Lomatium, etc. Each row of plants were under certain controls and seed was collected from certain plants. This place is going to bring native seed restoration practices to a new level, it’s amazing.

Penstemon in experimental rows

That’s all for now!

Greetings!

Out here in Carson City, since my last post we have done a ton of new things.  I am glad to be able to identify so many plants of this area now, and testing out my latin skills with names of species!  A few highlights from the last few weeks have included continuing to monitor for rare plants, specifically Ivesia webberi.  One day several of us headed north to Plumas Station to look at a known population that had been mapped out in years prior.  We parked the truck, took a hike and the search began!  Fortunately, it didn’t take too long to find the appropriate location, and along the way stopped a few times to take in the beauty of the surrounding mountains and blooming flowers.  Particularly from that day, what stands out in my head are the Balsamorhiza sagittata dotting the hillsides with an ever bright yellow color.  Next along the walk, we noticed a ton of Castilleja chromosa in bloom.  Several patches grouped together in clumps of yellow, orange and red- a nice reminder that this region is full of color and teeming with life.

Another recent and memorable day for me was taking a trip to the University of Nevada Herbarium in Reno.  We took our specimans that have been collected this season for further verification.  Upon arriving to the herbarium, a childlike sense of elation and excitement came over me as I just glanced at the huge libraries of decades old specimans perfectly intact.  We spent the day comparing our samples with those that had been previously collected, reading species descriptions and characteristics, staring through a dissecting lense and learning a ton of new botany terminology.  Slow at first, the identification eventually quickened and became almost like a game.  I was most impressed by the collections made over one hundred years ago, still in great condition.  I enjoyed reading the descriptions and little notes that had been jotted down about the species and location, almost like a snapshot in time.

As we wrap up another week here in Carson, I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend in the mountains and preparing for a week long MIM (Multiple Indicator Monitoring) training that begins on Monday.

Be well,

Andrew

This was my first week on the job, and I already got to catch an endangered species, the Fender’s Blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioidies fender). This little blue butterfly is endemic to the Willamette Valley of western Oregon along with its host species, Kincaid’s Lupine (Lupinus oreganus), which is also endangered. If you travel along the highways that plow through the Willamette valley, you can see why these two species are not doing so well. The valley is saturated with monocultures, mostly sod and grapeseed farms, and the rivers lined by levies, channelizing flows and preventing natural flooding (same old story).
Interestingly, the site where I am working is within close proximity to the city of Eugene, OR and actually abuts the industrial area. But this is where the tiny little parcels of prairie exist that supports some of the few thriving Fender’s populations. Usually, we associate such special places and sensitive species with wilderness, forest land, or other more remote landscapes. It would be easy to overlook the value of these prairies, some of them hiding behind paper mills and factories, and focus on some of the more prevalent issues such as old growth and spotted-owls. And that is why my location is so unique. Every little site that I survey plays a very important role, each one being occupied by rare or endangered species, each one being protected from the encroachment of the city, each one reconnecting fragmented patches, and each one being managed to restore the ecosystem that once existed here.

I am excited to see how the BLM and its partners, who I am working with, cooperate on the restoration of the west Eugene wetlands. I am also excited to see what surprises lay ahead, especially after finding Fender’s Blue Butterflies at a site where they have never been recorded!

Hello, readers! As this is my first blog post, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Dani and I am an intern at the BLM in Vernal, Utah. I’m originally from Minnesota, but I moved here from La Crosse, Wisconsin where I graduated with a B.S. in Biology in May 2013. I first learned of this program through my botany professor at UW-L and I was beyond excited to be offered my current position!

Today marks the end of my first month here in Vernal and it has definitely been a whirlwind. I’ve spent the past weeks assisting other branches in the office with their vegetation work. I’ve hunted for our endemic (and threatened) cacti, Sclerocactus wetlandicus and Sclerocactus brevispinus, in the Pariette Wetlands; I performed line point intercepts for the first time among Artemisia tridentata var. vaseyana and Claytonia lanceolata on top of Blue Mountain; and I’ve hiked up Coyote Gulch for a glimpse of Frasera ackermanae, another endemic and sensitive plant of the Uinta Basin.

Frasera ackermanae, a BLM sensitive and a Uinta Basin endemic.

As you might’ve guessed, our threatened and endangered (T&E) species are a main component of our botanical work. Within the past couple years, Vernal has experienced another boom in the oil and gas industry and in ensuring that our T&E species are not adversely affected by the industry is a top priority.

On the contrary, we’re also responsible for managing our invasive species as well. I’ve had the opportunity to accompany Jim, our main weed man, out to the field twice now to spray for Russian knapweed (Centaurea repens) and whitetop (Cardaria draba). Spraying weeds is actually kind of fun! We have a UTV with two long hoses on the back and it’s strangely satisfying to hunt down and spray the invasives – especially because the blue dye we use makes it easy to see what’s been sprayed.

On the way to spray weeds – did I mention that it snowed in the mountains?

The best part so far, though, has been rafting on the White River. My boss, my fellow intern, myself, and two guys from Wildlife spent three days and two nights rafting the river, inspecting the banks for Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) and tamarix (Tamarix ramosissima) and brainstorming a monitoring plan. This summer, young folks through the Utah Conservation Corps will be cutting down the Russian olive and we want to document the ecological effects, if any, the removal will have. We’ll be going out on the river again next week to implement our monitoring plan.

Our view from McCoy Flats as we scouted for plant populations.

In case you were wondering, the reason for the title of this post is two-fold: not only did I definitely get wet (and muddy) feet during our trip down the river, but the past weeks have been a crash course in flora of the Uinta Basin. I love learning new plants and I’m excited that every day I’m able to identify more and more species. It’s a good thing, too, since my fellow intern and I spent this week scouting for Seeds of Success populations. We even took a couple vouchers! To my fellow interns, happy (seed) hunting!

Streptanthella longistrosis, one of our first voucher specimens. (Look at all those seeds!)

A patch of Eriogonum inflatum from which we also collected vouchers!

“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

The sun has shone brightly for many a day here now, but it seems now in mid-May many of the creatures and plants are awakening under its spell. Everywhere you look the Balsalmroots (Balsamorhiza sagittata; Balsamorhiza hookeri) brighten a hillside, or the close inspection of a sagebrush shrub yields the dark purple bloom of a Rockress (Boechera sparsiflora). Beauty is revealing itself all around us and all we need to do is look for it and we will surely find it.

SOS is a large part of our duties here so when we are in the field for drought monitoring, rare plant surveying or other duties we keep an eye out for populations of plants large enough to collect seed from in the future. As I was doing an evening hike near to my house I noticed several plants that could be collected for seed on my journey. One of the species is a particularly interesting plant with the name of Chia. The Latin name is Salvia columbariae and the inflorescence is shaped in a ball form with what look to be spikes sticking out. However, I believe these are actually the bracts. In the mint family, it has a very beautiful purplish white zygomorphic flower. I found it growing on steep N-facing slopes with very rocky soils. Funny enough I actually found this flower because I fell while walking across the slope and low and behold this beauty was in front of me! Another very nice species of flowering shrub was Mirabilis bigelovii, or Wishbone Bush. What an incredible site to see when the sun is setting and you are beholding a small shrub with showy white flowers dancing in a soft breeze! This is a species I hope to see more of in the future.

Finally some of our lizard friends have started to become more active over the last few weeks and they can be quite interesting to look at and observe. The most common ones I have seen recently are the Long-nosed Leopard Lizard (Gambelia wislizenii) and the Great Basin Collared Lizard (Crotaphytus bicinctores). They are really interesting animals and I hope all of us are able to behold creatures unique to the areas we are working in!

The odd, yet wonderfully spectacular Snow Plant.

The very showy Wishbone bush.

How wonderful to think of the first time Meriwether Lewis saw this plant!

The Great Basin Collared Lizard!

Contorted Limber Pines (Pinus flexilis) at 9000′ on a very exposed ridge. Right in front was a alpine garden! Belding’s Ground Squirrels were prevalent here as well.

“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” – John Muir

Carson City District BLM

Ethan