Well, well, well. The end of my internship has finally come. It is a difficult task to try to summarize my time here into a blog post. The 10 months I spent in Carson City were good ones and I am certainly glad I had this experience.

I now know what it is like to work for the federal government (both the good and the bad). I have gotten so many opportunities to gain experience and build my resume including some really useful trainings. The field work was my favorite part of this internship. We worked in some extremely remote locations, got to drive big trucks on bad roads, and camp in some beautiful locations throughout the desert. My time in the field really gave me an intimate look at the land and a chance to appreciate all the life that exists here. That’s not to say it wasn’t without its challenges. Over the year I’ve learned the importance working as part of a team, taking care of yourself while working in harsh conditions and the alternative uses of tire cleaner.

Some of my favorite moments happened outside of work. This was my first time out West and Carson City proved to be a great launching point for some excellent adventures; perhaps my favorite being the nearby Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe basin.

This year had its fair share of up and downs. There was an incident halfway through the year that tested everyone’s ability to function as a team, even after a long day of working in oppressive heat. We didn’t get out into the field nearly as much as I had hoped for a variety of reasons. Some specific workload demands for the office were shifted and our team helped other programs with their needs.

Overall, I had a great time and learned a lot. My botanical knowledge increased tenfold including many things I don’t think I could have learned in a classroom. I got experience working for a branch of the federal government. And finally, I made great friends who all shared this unique experience with me. So, farewell Nevada, it has been swell. Now I am off to my next adventure.

I first heard of the CLM Program through an email from a biology listserv from my school. The description for the opportunity was pretty short, but it sounded interesting, so I looked into it. I really liked what I saw from the website’s description. I applied not really knowing what to expect, which actually may have been the reason I had such a great experience. I was open to any opportunity that allowed me to work outdoors with California’s native plants. The coolest part of this program is that everyone’s experience is different and unique, so you can never be 100% sure about what to expect. Fortunately, the CLM coordinators do an excellent job at paring us up with an opportunity that matches our interests.

I remember how nervous I felt the first day of my internship. I had just arrived to Redding that night and didn’t even have access to the apartment I would be staying at yet, let alone the electricity in the apartment. I waited anxiously in my car until the office opened up. I had no idea what my mentor looked like and everyone looked like they could be him. Then, I saw someone walking towards me and he asked if I was Sonya, and that is how I met my mentor Chase. He introduced me to the office and some of the people there. I even got a small tour of some of the BLM lands that I would be working at during my internship. After work, I headed over to my home for the next five months. It looked way too big for my small amount of belongings. Since I didn’t have my electricity set up yet, I had a cold shower that night. That’s when I realized I probably should have prepared better for this… The rest of my first week was very nice; I went to the employee meeting where I was formally introduced to the rest of the staff and got a tour of the different BLM areas I would be working in.

My mentor was great at letting us do our own thing. He trusted us and gave us the freedom to do what we most desired and what we found to be important. He didn’t dictate a list of things for us to do; instead he gave us suggestions on what could be done and allowed us to decide what we wanted to focus on. He was always there when we had questions, needed advice, or just wanted to brainstorm ideas of what to do next. His methods/approach with handling us interns allowed me to grow a lot as a person. I learned to plan ahead, be creative with ideas, and have the confidence to communicate plans and updates.

I have so many precious memories of Redding. I was able to do a variety of activates and enjoyed each and every one of them. I’ve collected all kinds of native seeds from three different counties –Shasta, Trinity, and Tehama- and cleaned some seeds, planted native plants in restoration areas, helped conduct mussel surveys in the Sacramento river as well as other wildlife, collected data for an elderberry survey that was part of a mitigation project, helped with nighttime owl surveys, helped set up wildlife tracker cameras, removed invasive weeds using herbicide and sheer force, helped with vegetative inventories –marking invasive weeds along the Sacramento River, maintained a greenhouse full of native plants, led groups of youth in planting native seeds at the greenhouse, helped prepare a site for restoration (mowing, placing or removing tree tubes, making cages for the grown oak seedlings to keep deer away long enough for them to grow, and tilling), went on an office river float in Trinity river, and much more!

I definitely enjoyed my internship. Through this experience, I feel that I have grown both personally and professionally. I came into the program knowing I enjoyed working with native plants and restoration, but not really knowing how I wanted to apply those interests to finding a job/career. Thanks to this program, I have a better idea of how and where I can utilize my skills. I have also further developed important skills that all tie into being an efficient, reliable, and knowledgeable employee. I was able to feel integrated in a professional setting and experience the dynamic of the work environment. I met lots of great people, developed my professionalism, and gained personal independence. I will never forget the city of Redding and the people I have met. While I am very sad to leave the BLM -the office where I have finally grown comfortable in- I am happy and excited to see what opportunities lay ahead. I know there is a lot of learning ahead of me and I can’t wait to further expand my knowledge and skills.

A few bullets of advice for future BLMers:
**Try not to isolate yourself. Be a part of as many meetings as you can so that you feel a part of the office environment and later know who to coordinate with in order to get your job done

**Set goals for yourself or small projects that you can see yourself accomplishing and stick to them

**Keep a journal of your activities, to-do lists, hours worked, etc. so you can look back at them in the future

**Spend a good amount of time staring at a map and getting familiar with main streets etc.

***Take tons of pictures!!

Farewell Redding, you will be missed!!

*Sonya Vargas

Time sure goes by fast. It feels like just last week I was talking about cheatgrass. Much has changed in the last few weeks; including the weather. It went from cold, to colder, to below zero all too quickly. Rather than wishing I was out in the field, I am now pleased to be inside where it is warmer. I can’t imagine what it is like for some of the other interns in Utah, Nevada, Colorado etc. Since compiling information about cheatgrass, I have worked on three separate projects. The first was for internal purposes and dealt with gathering information about cultivars that the Bureau of Land Management uses on a regular basis. It was interesting to see how many different varieties of seed are used on a yearly basis. Not only that, but to realize that there are many different kinds of one variety as well. Once I had gathered all the information on the seed for the booklet, I printed it all out and placed it into a binder by variety. Now, when anything is needed, there are fewer steps to take in order to find what you’re looking for. Grab the book, go to the specific variety that is in question, find the answer, and you’re done. It will be a very useful booklet to answer questions, as well as to educate.

The second project I was assigned dealt with evaluating the functions and processes of the Boise Regional Seed Warehouse to determine what could be changed in order to become more efficient. Questions that I asked related to how the office could more efficiently complete and process paperwork, implement computers more often, and reduce paper trails. Through the use of iPads and computers, the warehouse has decreased the use of paper when filling orders, and utilizes software to complete inventories. I created a few flow charts to help ease any confusion that may occur from this change and, so far, it has proved successful. It is unclear just how much this will reduce the amount of paper the warehouse uses, but we are certain that anything we do to reduce the paper trail will have a positive impact.

The third project I have been working on deals with identifying the eight most commonly used varieties, indicating where they originated, and where they have been purchased and planted in the last 5 years. This project will be completed using PowerPoint and, as of right now, will have a decent chunk of information regarding popular varieties that go through the warehouse, the amounts purchased, and where those varieties are being planted. It will help to shed a little more light on how many native species are being put on the ground in comparison to introduced species.

It is crazy how fast time has gone by since starting my internship. I really hope things slow down a little, or I will be done before I know it. This has been a great experience and I am confident that things will only get better. I might as well say Merry Christmas to all reading this, too. I probably won’t be posting again until after the New Years. I hope you all have a good month, a restful holiday, and a Happy New Year. Until next time…

Eric Livermore

Boise Regional Seed Warehouse

Bureau of Land Management

This last month I was involved in Fort Ord’s National Public Lands Day, the biggest community service day for Fort Ord National Monument. The event drew about 150 people from the Monterey County area and was a great success. The event had a few different service projects the public chose from. I was stationed at a project site where we were planting plants, cutting down brush and brushing trails.

At my previous job, I worked for a non-profit community based habitat restoration project. Being able to lead a planting event with kids and their parents was really awesome. This event solidified that I am in the right place. I love it. I want to continue working in environmental science and in public education. One of the kids I was working with on public lands day came up to me after we were wrapping things up to go to lunch. She said she remembered me from my previous job, as her group leader. She said that was 3 years prior, when she was in 5th grade. That one little girl gave me hope, that all the work we are doing in this field, is actually reaching people.

Casey brought her mom and little sister out that day with her. She has grown to care about her community and is teaching her family to as well. She is a perfect example of what we want our community to emulate. She has pride in her green spaces and has become a steward of the land, owning her responsibility to keep her community beautiful.

I was proud to be in this line of work, but Casey gave me hope for the future and the reassurance that I’m in the right place.

The eight months I spent in Eastern Oregon working for the Bureau of Land Management gave me a good amount of time to understand how land management operates within a government organization. Coming from Illinois, and not working for the government before, this was a completely new experience, and worth every moment. Throughout my time at the Vale District BLM, I tried to to take advantage of the wide variety of resources available and learn as much as possible.  This included going to the field with range technicians, range conservationists, soil scientists (NRCS), wildlife biologists, horse and burro specialist, hydrologists, etc., when my mentor gave me the opportunity to do so. Aside from all of the required work, having the opportunity to go out with this wide range staff let me learn so much more than I would have expected.
One of the major skills I took away from the internship is taxonomic identification of a very wide variety of plant species. This will help me in the future, no matter what type of habitat I end up working in. This is a basic skill set that I was not taught in college, unbelievably so, and my mentor took time to help me out with this. Along with that, my navigational skills were immensely improved, both within the backcountry terrain and in general. The main expectations of me and the other intern were to accomplish a set goal of monitoring sensitive plant sites and seed collections. These two tasks taught me about seed viability, the importance of native seed collection, and the proper protocol to efficiently and effectively collect seed. The sensitive plant monitoring taught me how to assess a particular habitat and identify where sensitive plants are likely to occur within a specific location.
A learning experience that stands out to me most is the importance of being prepared for anything while out in the field. While working in extremely remote areas, you ALWAYS have to make sure you have absolutely everything you need before leaving for the field. Along with being prepared, the most important learning experience I will take away from this is to always ask questions even if they might seem ‘stupid’.
My expectation going into the internship was that I would be able to bring together my academic knowledge and other field work experiences in a way that would be very useful in future jobs. I wanted to learn the ins and outs of how everything needs to come together to complete a specific project. My main interest is ecological restoration, so working on restoration project would have been ideal. So, were my expectations met? Yes, but not in the way I originally thought they would be. After getting to the BLM and spending time learning what it was I would be doing for the next couple of months, it turned out I would not have the opportunity to work on a specific restoration project. That is not to say I didn’t get to learn about what I wanted though. Being a part of the Seeds of Success project, I was a part of restorative practices at the beginning level. Also, asking the specialists in the office different questions, I was able to learn more about land management, not just in the restoration realm.
The opportunity to work in a location for an extended period of time, rather than just a typical three month stint, helped me learn a lot more. After reflecting on the internship, I am grateful and appreciative to have had the chance to work in such a beautiful landscape and learn as much as I can while there. The full scope of bringing my academic and field experience together was possible, and I hope it will help me in my next step.

Greetings from Wyoming!

It is -12 degrees F as I write, and has not broken 10 degrees in three days. Kind of a nasty shock for this Southwest girl when I got back from Thanksgiving in Arizona! Needless to say, no more fieldwork for us. The last of the sage collections are in, the pressed plant specimens are off to the Smithsonian and the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, and I am wrapping up the SOS work for this year.

The biggest thing now is to make sure all the loose strings are wrapped up before I leave here. I’m trying to organize all the information we collected and put together some useful tips for the next person. I can tell that the intern before me tried to make things easier for the following year, and I would like to do the same if I can. Anything we can do to make the learning curve less steep. There are also some stray herbarium vouchers from years past that I will try to get documented and moved somewhere safe.

I spent some time talking with the folks at the Rocky Mountain Herbarium this week, and they have done detailed work over an impressive area of the Rocky Mountain West. Wyoming and the mountainous part of Colorado have been covered pretty thoroughly, and they are slowly working their way north. However, there are still blank spots on the map that could use some detailed botanizing. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Time is going way too fast!

Stay warm everybody!

Cheers,
Abby D.

Hello to my fellow CLM interns! November was an interesting month for me as it required a bit of field work, which is unusual for so late in the year. However, the West Eugene Wetlands field office has an ongoing threatened & endangered plant augmentation project in the works, so my botanical cohort and I, with the assistance of the Institute for Applied Ecology, began to lay the groundwork for the project.

We had three empty macroplots that we created earlier this year, all of which would be planted with Kincaid’s Lupine plugs at a later date. First, we had to cover the plots with heavy shade cloth in an attempt to control the invasive grasses that would compete with our T&E species. So we packed up six giant pieces of shade cloth, several hundred wooden stakes, and three sledgehammers, and trekked out to our first macroplot.

I discovered that laying down shade cloth is quite the art form, from folding under the edges of the cloth before pounding the stakes in (to prevent the edges from fraying or unraveling) to pounding the stakes into the ground diagonally (to make them more difficult to remove). Several hours and hundreds of wooden stakes later we were finished with our first macroplot. I find that there is nothing quite so satisfying as being able to look at a finished project and know that you were vital in its accomplishment. And for me, the more challenging the task, the more satisfying the outcome.

Unfortunately, I did miss part of November at the office, as I had my wisdom teeth removed and complications resulting from the surgery took me out for longer than I anticipated. Now, however, I am recovered and happy to be back in the office. Right now I am focusing on entering data into the Geographic Biotic Observations (GeoBOB) database; I am knee deep in plant data going back to the 90s.

Next week may bring more opportunities in the field. We’ve received 500 lupine plugs ready to plant, but Eugene is currently experiencing a cold spell (it was only 15 degrees Fahrenheit when I arrived at the field office this morning, which is unusually cold for the Willamette Valley).

Here’s hoping for some warmer weather!

November 16, 2013 marked another Grasslands Fair at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (BANWR) in southern Arizona.  BANWR was established in the 1980’s to protect the critically endangered masked bobwhite quail, a species that is no longer living in the wild within in the United States. Masked bobwhite quail are currently being bred in captivity within the refuge and then released into the wild. This captive breeding program has been underway for over a decade, yet not one reintroduced quail has survived.

Despite the frustrations of the captive breeding program, hundreds of visitors migrated to the refuge to celebrate the grasslands and the unique site that is BANWR. Somewhere between 20 and 30 organizations and vendors set up tables to sell ware or spread information to visitors. Other than Borderlands Restoration, organizations included Altar Valley Conservation Alliance, Tohono Chul Park, Friends of the Santa Cruz River, Avalon Organic Gardens and EcoVillage, Arizona Game and Fish, and many local vendors selling handcrafted ware. There were a few discussions about topics related to ecology including hummingbirds and jaguars.

While there was a fantastic showing of people and the promise of a festival highlighting grasslands, there was actually very little planned that was directly related to grasslands. When questioned, the reserve manager admitted as much. Altar Valley Conservation Alliance displayed information about erosion control (improving grasslands habitat by stopping the unzipping of landscapes). The Borderlands Restoration booth highlighted information about habitat restoration on the landscape scale – including grasslands. And two representatives from Borderlands Restoration got visitors involved by demonstrating how to make clay seed balls to eventually disintegrate with the rains, repopulating the landscape with local, native grasses for the endangered masked bobwhite quail.

While I was in attendance, helping to create clay seed balls with kids, introducing them to restoration activities, I decided that I wanted to pretend that I was leading a grasslands fair. What would I do to incorporate both a love of the grasslands and highlight the unique sense of place that is BANWR?

Driving around BANWR, there is an obvious need to repair the fractured, decaying habitat. Erosion has created gashes dozens of feet deep and growing. The habitat is so unbalanced that the species that the refuge was designed to protect is no longer able to live there, even when introduced. Therefore, I believe that an ethic of restoration and protection should be the focus of any future festivals. And since this fair is a celebration, achievement and accomplishment need to be the underlying factors for any future fairs. I think it would be useful in the future to create a list of topics that vendors/presenters/lecturers should focus on, including: ecological/cultural education, restoration activities, native foods/products sales, lectures on successes/failures of masked bobwhite quail reintroduction, lectures on habitat restoration, youth focus to instill sense of land stewardship to new generation, and newly created economic opportunities thanks to restoration activities. Additionally I think that outstanding individuals should be recognized and visitors should be encouraged to take ownership of the lands through encouragement to dream up the future of BANWR.

Good Mornin’ Y’all!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Well today is more or less the last day of my internship here in Montrose, CO. I really can’t thank everyone here and from the Chicago Botanic Garden enough. This has been my second CLM internship and I absolutely love this program and the opportunities that the Garden/BLM provide for aspiring botanists/biologists. A big shout out and thanks to my “tor” mentor, Ken, the wildlife biologist, Missy, and Carol from the state office for actually hiring me!!! Also a big thanks to Wes and Krissa. Because of you guys I’ve gotten to see those big beautiful mountains pictured below, and do what I love!, everyday and get paid for it to boot! (I did not take that picture! Picture from Google Image Search!!)

San Jaun Mountains

I really feel like I’ve grown up with all the guidance I’ve recieved from Ken (while I’ve always been very responsible with my work life, Ken’s mentoring has even helped me with things outside of work!) When I started my internship I was driving this (again, image taken from Google Image Search!! I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I never have time to take my own pictures!):

Classy Chrysler New Yorker

A classy Chrysler New Yorker which, according to local mechanics, was about to fall apart at any moment.

But after Ken’s mentoring I was able to pull some things together and upgrade to this:

Upgrade!!!

A Subaru Outback that I affectionately call “Peggy Sue” and that will probably not blow up on me (image also taken from Google….).

I know we’re supposed to reflect on our actual internship, but I think it’s important that everyone realize that this internship has affected my personal growth in a positive manner as well. As for what I’ve learned professionally…it’s been a lot. So much that it’ll probably bore everyone if I type it all out, but I will include a picture of a cool map that I made while working here.

A cool map that I made.

While I’m sad my internship is ending, I’ll be mopping up my tears with bagels from my sweet new job as a baker/barista and consoling myself with powder days at Telluride. Additionally, I’ll be spending some time applying to grad school…keep your fingers crossed everyone! Thankfully I’m not too bummed out that my time here is winding down because they really like me here (though I’m not sure why!) and are trying their hardest to make sure I get to come back next spring.

Until April fellow CLMers!!

Brandee Wills
Uncompahgre Field Office – BLM
Montrose, CO