One of the best and worst parts to starting a new project is just that, it’s new.  You really never know what to expect, which the creative and adventurous part of me loves but the overly organized part of me cringes at.  I’ve now been with the Fish and Wildlife Services office in Klamath Falls, Oregon for three weeks.  I’m working on a propagation project for the threatened shortnose sucker, Chasmistes brevirostris.  Which would be great, except we can’t seem to find any!  We’ve been spending quite a bit of time out in the field just trying to track down individuals who are ready to spawn.  I’ve also been working on building floating docks and putting together other equipment which are going to be used to keep the fish alive once we catch them and put them in pens.  These steps haven’t come without their own issues of course.  The docks don’t seem to be able to handle the depth of water which we want to use them in, and some of the power tools I have at my disposal haven’t been used in a few years, and don’t seem to have any intention of coming out of their retirement!  So improvisation and creative problem solving has been coming in handy, along with a few trips to the hardware stores.

Future site of propagation pens.

Despite this, or more likely because of it, I’m having a great time and learning a lot.  Not only am I putting my field work and research skills to use, but it’s also great to see that people who have been working in this field for decades don’t have all the answers and have to spend quite a bit of time trouble-shooting.  Plus, I am learning how to collect fish using seine nets and cast nets, tag fish and use a tag reader to keep track of them, water quality monitoring equipment, and various other tools of the trade.  I’m also learning a lot about the history of the area as well as the native (and invasive) species of fish, birds, plants, and wildlife.

Learning to throw a cast net.

Finally, I’ve started working on a project involving morphogeometrics.  In short, we’re trying to look at the shape and structure of different species of lake suckers and, using a computer image analysis program, determine if there are defining shape and structure features which can be used to identify different species.

Overall, it has been a great first few weeks.  I am really enjoying all this job has to offer; challenges and victories included, and I’m really looking forward to what else is in store this season!

Klamath Falls, Fish and Wildlife

Last week Nathan, Carol, and I met with Ken Holsinger and Brandi Wills from the Uncompahgre Field Office to complete our first monitoring trip of the season. We were investigating a rugged area formed by tributaries of the Gunnison River which has carved the sandstone and shale landscape of the high desert basin into dissected canyons as the river arcs north towards its confluence with the Colorado in the Grand Valley. The Grand Mesa, the world’s largest flat-topped mountain, the snowcapped West Elk, and massive San Juan mountain ranges crown the scene gleaming snowcapped in the hazy distance.
We were looking for cactus. Not just any cactus, we were looking for Sclerocactus glaucus, a small ball-shaped cactus which often doesn’t exceed the size of a tennis ball and has a proclivity to hide out in these shaley areas of hardscrabble amongst pygmy woodlands of pinyon Juniper. A species listed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened, S. glaucus is a deceiving species, shrouded in a cloud of confusion surrounding its precise taxonomy. I had found out just how contentious views of the species are over the previous six weeks or so while sifting through all of the available literature while compiling a status report for the species.

The genus Sclerocactus consists of approximately 15 distinct species based on systematics. The trouble is that, like other genera of cacti, Sclerocactus’s morphology is highly plastic, making it difficult to classify based on structure alone. Populations of Sclerocactus are isolated in unique environments across the arid west, and most display unique morphological characters. The trouble has been that recent phylogenetic investigation has been beginning to illustrate that the cactus are actual more closely related than previously believed. Some populations which are believed to be genetically pure even possess mixed morphologies, suggesting that the genus may be composed of a large complex of individual ecotypes dictated by geography more-so than effects of genetic drift.

For being a local endemic S. glaucus is notoriously difficult to locate. Known only from four counties on Colorado’s western slope, its patterns of distribution are somewhat confounding in that it is found in a variety of different habitat, soil types, and densities. Plants are small, cryptic, and difficult to locate in the field outside a couple weeks a year when they are flowering; thus making our task to locate new populations to understand the full extent of the range and generate a realistic population estimate based on sound statistical methods a somewhat daunting task.

After a month of in-depth research into the species, seeing it in its native habitat shed light on the difficulties this species presents when trying to get a sense of its abundance and distribution. Miles and miles of potential habitat exist in the form of alluvial river benches and adobe badlands stretching to the horizon.  Yet Sclerocactus populations are few and far between, existing in patchy niches where plants are at times locally abundant. Despite this fact, we were able to locate several populations suitable for sampling, and set up several new plots.

The coming weeks are slated to hold more cactus work. We will be setting up new plots on BLM and private land to monitor the trend of specific populations. We are additionally scheduled to search for populations on the large High Lonesome Ranch near Debeque, Colorado. As well as raft a twenty some miles stretch of the Gunnison to clear areas of suspected cactus occupancy in the Dominquez Canyon Wilderness Area.

Phil Krening
Colorado State Office – BLM
Lakewood, CO

The Adobe Badlands of Delta County, CO (Mancos shale formation) ©Phillip Krening http://headwaters.sqsp.com

Sclerocactus glaucus in flower ©Phillip Krening http://headwaters.sqsp.com

Walking in to the quarters I will be living in for the next 6 months hangs a John Muir quote which states “Going to the mountains is going home.” For a weary traveler 2,827 miles from what has been “home” for a better part of my life (unfortunately), I couldn’t ask for a more appropriate welcome. Though I am no where close to the man John Muir was (and still is in many ways), the title to this blog seems more than fitting.

California living, where do I even begin? Week 3 of my 26 week stint on the west coast has just ended, and each day that passes I seem to fall in love with this place even more! Having traveled here from northeast New Jersey, the arm pit of the United States, (I apologize to whom ever might get offended by this, but it’s kind of true), life and work has never been better. I’m located in the little community of Mi-Wuk Village at around 4,200′ elevation. The nearest “town” is about 10 miles away, and in between that is forest for as far as the eye can see. No light pollution, airplanes flying over, and barely any car/truck/motorcycle noise (aside for a distant logging truck roar); is this paradise?

Now those of you who have ever been on the east coast will understand this, but the trees here are enormous! Ponderosa (Pinus ponderosa) and Sugar (Pinus lambertiana) pines, along with Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) appear to be scratching the underside of clouds. The diameter of these trees is immense as well and though they are no Sequoia sempervirens or Sequoiadendron giganteum; to someone who has never seen these arboreal sentinels before and is used to the flora of the northeast, I tend to be left in awe and speechless at every corner. I am truly thankful for this experience.

Having graduated from college with a forest biology and ecological forest management degree my “job/position” here is a little out of my element but I am a human being, I ADAPT to my surroundings as well as any flora or fauna. Everyday (aside for the office days) I journey with my crew leader, Pat, into the California wilderness to monitor for fire sensitive plant species within the Rim Fire boundary. For those who might not know what fire sensitive species is, it is a species with a “relatively high” probability of being injured or killed by fire (McPherson and others 1990) as defined by the U.S Forest Service.

In my three weeks here not only have I learned of new species rare and native to California such as: Allium tribracteatum (Three-bracted onion), Balsamorhiza macrolepis (Big-scale balsamroot), Erythronium tuolumnense (Tuolumne fawnlily), Mimulus filicaulis and pulchellus (Hetch Hetchy monkeyflower and Pansy monkeyflower) and many more but I now realize I have taken “fire” for granted. Not until you walk through “a forest necropolis”, gazing upon the shell of what used to be a living and breathing ecosystem, thriving and teaming with life will one comprehend the power of fire.

If one was to tell me that I was to be paid for hiking the California countryside while learning about native flora and fire ecology, I would never believe them. We botanists, naturalists, ecologists, foresters, etc. are truly blessed.  If by some happenstance this internship was to end tomorrow I would walk away with years of experience/knowledge I would have never gained anywhere else. Never forget how fortunate we are.

Until our paths cross again, may fortune and knowledge smile upon you all,

Mi-Wuk Ranger Station

Forest Service

Jake

 California poppies (Eschscholzia californica)

Sonora Pass (~9,500′ elevation)

Effects of fire

Fallen over trees due to the fire

Fields of Lupin where a fire had gone through

Pansy Monkeyflower (Mimulus ppulchellus)

Effects of fire on a slope

In the past couple weeks field season has been getting going and we have completed monitoring on several species.  Traveled to the Delta, CO area to complete Sclerocactus sp. monitoring and check historic locations of Sclerocactus to try and find new populations of the species.  Got the chance to hike back into some of the BLM wilderness areas looking for Sclerocactus and see some of the area that BLM has set aside and how they manage those areas as well.  With this particular species the controversy around the federal listing status is always a topic of conversation and always a way I get to learn about new ideas researchers are proposing and how the BLM is going about to understand the whole Sclerocactus dynamic in an effort to insure that the species are being managed correctly on BLM lands.

Data entry followed the week of monitoring and analysis of that data as well.  The following week another monitoring trip was imminent, so preparations for the trip were made.  Past years data had to be examined to insure that the proper sample size was being used and new data sheet were created as a slight adjustment to the data collection method was made, minor tweaks were made it past sample size calculations but no additional transect were needed as a result for the tweaks.  With everything prepped for the Astragalus monitoring Carol invited Phil and I to sit in on a meeting/ collaboration with CNHP up at Fort Collins  where certain aspects of management were discussed in relation to climate change.  The meeting was a preliminary event to test the water of how much BLM could get done with the help of CNHP on the monitoring of the species on the BLM sensitive species list state wide and how much has been done on each of the species on the list.  Later in the year there will be a larger meeting with BLM biologists/specilalist and CNHP personnel to hash out the finer details of the future monitoring schemes that will be implemented to achieve the goals set.

The following days we traveled to the area around Silt, CO to complete the monitoring of the Astragalus species with personnel for the Colorado River Valley Field Office and from the Grand Junction Field Office.  The monitoring went well with some of the sites being strangely sparse of plants relative to previous years while other locations showed an explosion of recruitment with seedlings being the dominant age class within the transects. The analysis has not been done on the data yet, so the degree of recruitment is not yet known, but what was seen at certain sites was a very welcomed site for this species of Astragalus.

Regards,

Nathan Redecker

Lakewood, CO

BLM Colorado State Office

I have come to the realization that land management is dependent on people management. To accomplish important conservation and resource management objectives, a thorough understanding of the science involved is essential. But land management on any significant scale is impossible without having the skill to engage people who don’t have the years of education that people in the BLM (and the Forest Service, Park Service, private conservation organizations, non-profit activist groups, etc.) often take for granted. Especially in the public sector, ecological expertise means nothing without the political skill to convince the public that we’re all working towards the same goal (as much as possible).

When I worked for the BLM in the heart of the Mojave, I was not confronted with this seemingly basic realization. The Needles office manages millions of continuous acres in one of the most sparsely populated areas in the nation. Neighbors are few and far between. But here in Arcata, with fragmented and dispersed BLM properties, it’s clear that the BLM does its best work when the neighbors are happy. A happy neighbor may be helpful. Heck, even Jesus recommended loving thy neighbor. And sometimes all it takes to please the public is a listening ear, a small price to pay to achieve work in an agency that manages 13% of the surface of the United States but can struggle on projects of 5, 50, or 500 acres. To vaguely quote my mentor, “A project can be a marathon. Too often people are unwilling to start running due to an argument about what will happen at mile 25.”

To mitigate the struggle, it’s also essential to be efficient with time and money that’s too often pressed. As the forestry projects are about to start, we’ve been conscious about focusing the contracted labor on areas where we’ll get the most “bang for the buck”. We don’t want to be “spinning our wheels” when we are the stewards of government funds. Adequate funding is hard to come by, so it’s important to make the most of it when it’s available. The ideal treatment nudges the land onto a course where future human intervention is unnecessary.

For a guy prone to periods of pessimism on the fate of humans and the environment, a certain project in particular has been unexpectedly inspiring. Our office is working towards a prairie restoration on an historic prairie that has become an overgrown Douglas Fir patch. There is some commercial potential of trees in the patch, but it’s mostly stuff that is traditionally unmarketable. However, a biomass-generated electric plant has recently opened in the area and they are interested in the shade-grown, scrawny trees that the timber industry has long considered junk. The BLM is selling these trees as biomass to help cover some of the costs of the prairie restoration. And as technology improves in the biomass conversion industry (eg. torrefaction and gasification), this will increasingly become an economically viable option. When the means to an end (habitat restoration) involve restoring energy independence to a small rural community, I’m on board.

Prairie and forest.

Hello everyone!

For the past four weeks I have been working as a range intern at the BLM office in Lakeview, Oregon. Lakeview is a small town in southeastern Oregon, about 14 miles from the California border and not much farther from the Nevada border. This BLM district is huge, which means I am seeing new sights everyday! So what does a range intern do? Well, so far I have been going out to different allotments and checking on the vegetation in the pastures. I do what is called a utilization study to determine how grazed the pasture is, and basically its overall health. Later on, when more CLM interns join me, I’ll also being doing trend studies.

For this job I’ve had to learn to identify grasses and some sagebrush. That was a change of pace for me since I am from the east coast and I’ve always done better identifying trees. But it’s actually been pretty easy, since I only have to know about six types of grasses and several types of sagebrush. I’m enjoying learning about the flora of the high desert. And it helps that several people that I work with are very knowledgeable about the vegetation around here. Now if only I could start remembering the names of the local forbes.

Some highlights from the past month were: ATV training, going out in the field with different range cons, and learning so much about the local plants. Some lessons I’ve learned are: don’t forget your GPS, and don’t assume your truck can drive through anything (I got my truck stuck in the mud the other day. But I’m proud to say that I got it out all by myself.).

I’m looking forward to the exciting adventures I’ll have to write about next month!

Allyson Schaeffer

Lakeview, Oregon, BLM

               This month I have considered the following:  present land management decisions based on past measures that are best for the future.  Differing opinions and politics surface because of the predictive requirements of land management decisions. The Arcata field office handles these expertly, respectfully addressing and discussing different points of view both amongst the public and within the office.  However, these decisions are complex and intricate, and the best ones are often obscured, demonstrating that predicting the future, indeed, is a difficult feat.

                The first scenario where I was exposed to the tension of past and future management decisions was during a field day with geologist Sam and fisheries biologist AJ at Baker Creek, a small tributary that feeds into the Mattole River.  Baker Creek serves as important spawning habitat for coho salmon, which are facing extirpation from the Mattole Watershed.  In the late 1970s, BLMers removed fallen redwood logs from the tributary to increase water flow.  Our reaction, today, to that decision: What were they thinking?! The logs are crucial for creating salmon habitat because the wood dams up water, creating pools that are banquets of aquatic invertebrates for coho to feast on and fills the groundwater in the surrounding floodplain, which is a crucial water source for the tributary during the dry season.  Last year, the Arcata BLM felled and dragged small trees into the creek to correct the management decision of the 70s.

                The second scenario is an on-going discussion in the office about how to respond to Sudden Oak Death, a rapidly-spreading phytophthora that destroys the tanoak populations and threatens the forest ecosystems in Northern California and much of the west coast.  It is difficult to gauge the threat of SOD, recalling the predictive nature of land management decisions.  Some argue that the BLM should aggressively eradicate the disease through pesticide application and removal of whole infected tree stands. Others argue that we should proceed cautiously, focusing efforts on forest health by selective thinning and monitoring.  Since “heavy-handed approaches” have not been effective in the past and the office wants to avoid future errors, we currently implement a cautious approach.  The conversation continues.

                Whether its building coho salmon habitat or planning a SOD response, the BLM is both assertively correcting past mistakes and cautiously preparing for future scenarios.  Of course, predicting the future and criticizing the past are futile. Instead, we focus on making careful decisions based on current information learned from past mistakes so that, in the future, the phrase “what were they thinking!?” is uttered even less frequently then it is now.

Baker Creek after the logs were removed and before restoration.  Notice the channelization of the stream. (Curtesy of the Sanoma Land Trust)

Baker Creek after restoration, logs in place.

Did you catch my Bill Nye reference?

Greetings everybody!

Looks like everybody is having a great time! I love all the picutres up on the blog right now. Sadly, I am the worst at taking non-work related pictures..I promise my newly-back-at-work resolution will be to take more pictures!

So I’ve been back at work for three weeks now (this is my third CLM internship, and my second one here in Montrose, CO) and I’ll tell you what, my “tor”-mentor is getting his money’s worth! Straight back into things! But I absolutely adore this job so it’s been great to get back to work. Let’s see, so far I’ve:

• spent a week doing Sclerocactus glaucus (only the cutest cactus on the western slope!) monitoring with the awesome CLM Denver crew (shout out to Nathan, Phil, and Carol!!)
• jumped right back into rare plant surveying – hunting down Payson Lupine and Naturita Milkvetch in the west end and discovering our first population of Naturita Milkvetch here on our side of the plateau (only Phil, Nathan, please tell Carol that I only found a total of 18 Naturita Milkvetch’s at that site in Escalante…which means that we collected like, 10% of the populaion with our two samples…)
• aaaaand I’ve also been going out in the field and checking on some old data we have for various species of Oenothera for Miss Krissa at the CBG who I will hopefully get to meet sometime in the near future when she comes out here to do some work with Oenothera (check out her lab! http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/skogen/index.html, her research is pretty darn neat!)

Isn’t it adorable!?

So that’s the skinny on what’s been going on so far! Looking forward to some cool things coming up!! Lek count tonight/early tomorrow morning, High Lonesome Ranch cactus work (where I will hopefully meet the cowboy of my dreams and we’ll ride off into the sunset together!!), river trip to survey cactus down the Escalante strip of the Gunni (that’ll be awesome, the river rangers are kinda the cool kids at the office – the football players, if you will, and while I’m just a band nerd they’re really nice to me!), aaaaand then my sister will be in town and we’re gonna rage a quick trip to Moab! (And that only takes us to the middle of May!) I promise I’ll try to take some awesome pictures to make my blog more readable.

Also – I would just like to point out that my “tor”-mentor has been staring over my shoulder this whole time, correcting my spelling errors.

Your Cohort –

Brandee Wills
Uncompahgre Field Office BLM
Montrose, CO

I have been seeing so many beautiful flowering plants so far this spring I thought I would share them with you! These are some of my favorite plants so far on the SBNF.

This is the Forest Service sensitive Mojave paintbrush (Castilleja plagiotoma). It is endemic to the SBNF and is the host plant for the larvae of the watch list Checkerspot butterfly.

The scale bud (Anisocoma acaulis) is one of my favorite desert annuals on the SBNF.

The mojave mound cactus (Echinocereus mojavensis).

I have seen this adorable San Diego coast horned lizard twice now on the forest! It plays dead to catch bugs to eat and is a watch list species on the SBNF.

This beautiful ash-gray paintbrush (Castilleja cinerea) is federally threatened and only found in the San Bernadino mountains.

Ivesia agryocoma

The flowers of the Forest Service sensitive silver-haired ivesia (Ivesia agryocoma).

Forest Service sensitive Parish’s rock cress (Boechera parishii) is endemic to the San Bernadino mountains.

Forest Service sensitive Peirson’s spring beauty (Claytonia lanceolata var. peirsonii).

Another Forest Service sensitive Phlox dolichantha.

This is the Forest Service sensitive Parish’s alumroot (Heuchera parishii).

The Forest Service sensitive Coville’s dwarf abronia (Abronia nana ssp. covellei).

This is my first rattlesnake that I have seen out in the field.

The beautiful flowers of Yucca schidigera.

This is beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris).

In terms of work, I have been surveying some potential OHV routes out on a high desert area of the forest, which is where I have taken many of the these photos. There also has been a bit of survey work on a limestone mining claim. Limestone has many endemic plant species, not to mention federally threatened and endangered ones as well.

There are so many TESW (Threatened, endangered, sensitive and watch) plant species here, I have been spending a decent amount of my time entering those data into the federal database.

I attended a Poaceae workshop with many of my colleagues, which was very informative and very fun. I also took a trip back to Joshua Tree NP on my personal time and was rewarded with lots of wildflowers and pleasant temperatures.