The past few weeks have been a bit of a blur for me. The plants that I scouted and collected specimens from back in June are now fully seeded out and Leah and I have been racing to grab as many as we can before they scatter to the wind, literally, in many cases. Some, like Hopsage (Grayia spinosa) and Prickly poppy (Argemone munita) are almost too easy, with drooping limbs/stalks bearing massive quantities of seed, ripe for thepicking. Others, notably the lupines and vetches, are incredibly frustrating to harvest. Every time you think you have 10k seeds lined up a batch goes moldy or the pods dehiss and scatter the seeds before you can make it back to the site. Win some lose some I guess.

While I think the SOS program is a great idea and generally well carried out, I can’t help but wonder that the difficulties of gathering seed are influencing our collections in interesting ways. Since our time is limited, I have been focusing on the varieties that are easy to collect from, which certainly screens out some otherwise excellent species. Is it worth passing up 2 easy collections of Ribes to get 1 of the less-seedy Amelanchier? I can’t say. Even within the same species, pickers can end up selecting for odd (and not necessarily adaptive) traits. For example, with Lupinus andersonii I’ve found that certain plants have many pods that stay both ripe and intact, while most plant’s pods dehiss and scatter as soon as they ripen. As a collector, I can tell you which plants get their genes represented more in the bags I send to Bend!

On a purely personal note, this past weekend it was lovely to get together with some fellow interns. The Alturas crew came down to the East Sierra for a backpacking trip which Leah and I followed along for a day, which we followed up with another hike with another CLMer from Ridgecrest on Sunday. Good times all around and it made me really thankful for the community aspect of this program!

Cheers, and enjoy your summers!

Good times in the truck, two days after a freak thunderstorm.

Hello from Twin Falls Idaho! these past two months of this internship have been a great learning experience for me. I have learned so many skills that I will be useful for me in the future when I am looking for a career. The crew has
helped me in more ways than I can imagine without them I would have no idea what I was doing or if I was doing it correctly. Just last week we explored all over the field office and as a result we traveled down to the Bruneu River Wilderness and looked for the Bruneu River Phlox which only grows in this area along steep cliff walls. However, in order to get to the river we had to take a grueling 3 hour drive through the entire field office which eventually led to the Bruneu River Cherrystem which is as steep and rocky of a road as you can get. After taking some pictures from the top of the canyon we descended the slope and made it to the river. We all put on our life jackets and waded downstream to look for the elusive phlox. The life jackets were necessary in order to cross the deeper holes. However, after looking all day we could not find any sign of the phlox and we had to head back home. It was a great trip and I’m glad I got to see more of the area I am working and still find ways to enjoy this type of work. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to work through the CLM program and I know that all of this hard work and experience will pay off.

Loyal readers: I bring you a quick update from the Fairbanks District Office of the Bureau of Land Management’s invasive plant management efforts.

Last week, I went on a float trip on the Fortymile River with my mentor Ruth, for the purpose of carrying out invasive plant surveys. Our survey sites were BLM designated long-term campsites. The sites are used by gold miners (yep, it’s still a thing here) who have claims on the river. If ever you are struck by an urge to really experience the Last Frontier in all its grit and glory, go find yourself some Alaskan gold miners. Nice folks, really; just don’t mind the 45 caliber pistol on their hip.

No news is good news, at least in the case of this trip, and we found no non-native plants at any of the campsites! We therefore collected “absence data” on Trimble GPS devices to submit to the National Invasive Species Information Management  System (NISIMS). In the event that these areas subsequently do become infested with non-native plants, the absence data will provide valuable baseline references; dates after which such infestations must have originated.

The Fourtymile is a beautiful river, and my mentor Ruth tells me that she set a personal record for wildlife sightings on this trip. Our totals for the four-day float are as follows: two moose (mother and calf), twelve American Peregrine Falcons (my favorite bird!), one beaver, one black bear cub, two marmots, approximately seventy five caribou, assorted song birds and insects, and of course a plethora of spectacular flowers 🙂

Aside from the best float trip ever, my work recently has focused on other invasive plant surveys and weedpulls. I have surveyed and removed Melilotus officinalis (white sweetclover) and Vicia cracca (bird vetch) on major highways and other points of anthropogenic disturbance. When it comes to invasive plant management strategies in AK, you just can’t beat good ol’ manual removal! A little elbow grease. It builds character.

The winds have shifted and saturated skies swirl amongst the Madrean Archipelago of southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora. The onset of monsoon season has redefined life in the Sky Islands. The month of rain has nourished this corner of world with over 8 inches of rain – nearly half of the year’s precipitation. The monsoon season started with a bang, dumping 4.69” of rain in 24 hours after receiving 0.12” of rain in 4 months.  This incredible display of moisture has metamorphosed the crispy, golden grassland into soft, verdant rolling hills. But plants aren’t the only creatures responding to dampness.

As I travel around Santa Cruz County collecting seeds and restoring vegetative regimes, I encounter what this land is best known for – diversity. I find myself turning entering the mindset of a National Geographic photographer and recollecting factoids from college animal behavior courses. One day a Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake slithered in front of my car, reminding me that when red stripes touch black you’re OK Jack but when red touches yellow, you’re a dead fellow. Another time, I was hiking around the wilderness collecting seed and I encountered a mountain lion footprint. Seeing this evidence of this top predator reminded me of the grandeur of the natural world. The work that I am doing lays the groundwork for ecological restoration of the smallest species but will one day affect top predators such as the mountain lion.

Another time I was walking my dog along a rural road in Patagonia when I encountered a pool filled with swirling life. Upon a closer inspection, I realized that they were tadpoles numbering in hundreds if not thousands, swirling in spirals like schools of fish. I thought of the ephemeral nature of these creatures, how they must complete their aquatic stage of life before the puddle dried up. What adaptations to the seasonal abundance!

However, encountering the abundance of pollinators has been most exciting for me this season. I’ve been living and working in Patagonia for the past year, in an effort to increase the habitat for bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, bats, etc. Being able to witness the pollinators emerge and thrive has afforded me a fantastic opportunity to appreciate my work. I’m excited to continue documenting these creatures and their ecological niche on Borderlands Habitat Restoration Initiative’s Facebook page.

July/August have been my busiest (and hottest) months so far at Big Thicket. Here’s some of my adventures in pictures.

Scouting Little Pine Island bayou by kayak:

Lake Hyatt at the Watson Rare Plants Preserve:

The very rare Chapman’s fringed orchid:

Slime mold spores on a blade of grass under the microscope:

It’s official: my least favorite plant of all time is Bromus madritensis.  Wait no, make that ANY Bromus species!  They are all equally evil!  I thought I had escaped Bromus handling forever after our field season ended a few weeks ago.  Boy was I wrong!  Apparently you have to check, recheck, fix, and refix all collected annual plant samples….and since most of the samples were Bromus, guess what I’ve been doing for the past week straight?????  GAH!!!!

End rant.

That being said, with a little help from my friends, I should hopefully really be done with Bromus handling in the next day or two.  Then I can start the cool stuff!  Our mentor is really excited about analyzing all the data we’ve collected while we were here, and she’s given each of the four of us interns a project or two to work on data-wise.  My project is to analyze measurements of ambrosia to see if there are any morphological differences between source populations or seed transfer zones across the Mojave.  Our mentor used an ordination test to check this but it showed depressingly little.  So I’m going to go back and run your basic ANOVA test on the measurements individually with the stats program, R.  I’ve dabbled a bit with the program (I got it to make a pretty graph!), but this will be my first real experience with statistical programs and analysis and I’m really excited about it!  It’s actually a little embarrassing how excited I am about it…so everybody cross your fingers for me so I finish all the stupid Bromus soon and get to the R programming!

In closing, I would just like to remind those of you in monsoon areas to keep an eye out.  Stay out of washes during flash flood watches!  Storms are cool (I actually witnessed a palm tree burn after it got hit by lightning last week), but floods are bad, mkay?  Stay safe out there!

   Hello from Southern Idaho.   We have been camping for three weeks in the Jarbidge Field Office at Buck Flat Well.  My Mentor Pattie Jo Courtney assigned me crew lead and this is my fabulous crew.  From left to right, Dan, Me (Lori Shafer), Holt, and Kent.  We enter all of our data on the lap top or toughbook, this makes uploading to the data base a breeze when we get back to the office.  I am having a great time and love working in the field.  Everyday is an adventure.

Hello from Idaho…  We wrapped up today with our last upland trend site.  The forbs are getting dry and a little hard to identify.  We will be continuing our HAF sites for sage grouse, which we only identify perennial forbs.  These sites are further south in higher elevation and the forbs are still plentiful and fairly easy to id.  Next week we are going to Indian Hot Springs and looking for a special status plant, Epipacits gigantea the common name is chatterbox orchid.  We have to float the Bruneau River to properly scan the entire area along the reach. Looking forward to it, until next time.

There has been a lot of work accomplished these past two months, and a lot of knowledge gained. Aside from the regular schedule of scouting for new seed collections, collecting seed, and monitoring sensitive plants; I have been given the opportunity work on different projects and with people from many different organizations.

1) Hells Canyon: The botanist in the Northern Resource Area of Vale District needed help collecting a sensitive plants seeds for conservation purposes. Rubus bartonianus – which is Bartonberry – is endemic globally to Hells Canyon along the Snake River. The other intern, the botanist, and I had to climb steep talus slopes to collect the berries, and it made for a very tough hike. The views were amazing, and we stumbled upon an abandoned mine. Didn’t fall in, luckily (thanks for the heads up CLM training workshop).
2) Traveled to the Nevada border to monitor Emergency Rehabilitation and Stabilization trend plots for a fire that consumed nearly 500,000 acres of shrubland last July. The point of monitoring the plots is to determine when the land is stable and ready for grazing to be allowed back on the land.
3) One of the most informative weeks of the internship was the week I got to help out an ID team with Geographic Management Area standards and guideline monitoring. An ID team of a hydrologist, botanist, horse and burro specialist, wildlife tech, and Range Conservationist were put together to interpret rangeland health through qualitative indicators. The objective was to gather information at the site, determine the health at the time, and if the land was degrading due to grazing: determine what method should be used to monitor the change, and if needed, use adaptive management to improve land. Overall, I loved this week most because it brought together much of what I have been learing the months I have been here. Also, a comprehensive overview of the purpose of the BLM was made clear to me this week.

4) Hunt Mountain: This was another great week for learning and working with people from other federal agencies other than the BLM. There was a collaborative effort between the Forest Service, a private contractor, and the BLM to monitor Blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) on White bark pine (Pinus albicaulis). We set up transects on Hunt Mountain and followed a particular protocol for determing if there was blister rust present and the severity of it on the white bark pines. Hiking up to 7200 ft on Hunt Mounatin was definitely worth it.

So far I have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge, and cant wait to learn more! The amount I have written in this blog is only a small portion of what I have learned.

Hells Canyon, Oregon

In the last couple of weeks, we resampled our Sierra Madre and Choke Cherry sites.  The trips were pretty fast since we have our system down, and other than a couple rebar stakes damaged by cattle, uneventful.

A cow contemplates messing with our traps

Hanging out at camp

A difficult fence

We have been spending a good amount of time processing insect samples in the lab.  I enjoy this task and find it relaxing.  Once you settle into a groove, the pinning goes very fast and I am always amazed by the beauty of the insects.

Melecta, an Anthophora brood parasite

Lasioglossum and Bombus bees

an Ichneumid wasp

Agapostemon, a common halictid bee

Swallowtail (Papilio)

Hawkmoth (Sphingidae)

Some gorgeous Osmia, orchard bees

A robber fly (Asilidae)

Pinning is an art and always done with full respect to the animals.  While it is difficult for me to actively (and passively) kill so many insects, I am happy to be part of a conservation project and be able to document the insects in an understudied area.  I also enjoy handling and identifying them.  After collection in the field, the insects are stored in whirlpaks until we can process them in the lab.  They are cleaned, sorted, and lovingly pinned, then stored until the field season is over, when I will start to identify them.

Insects in a whirlpak, waiting to be pinned

Aaron correctly positions the pin on a wasp

My workspace

Me in our storage area with a small subset of the insects we’ve collected this summer

Next week will bring another field trip to Sierra Madre and pinning, as well as recreational enjoyment of the fading Wyoming summer.  Being on a college campus and watching students trickle back to town is certainly a reminder that autumn is looming!

Sadie Luna Todd
CLM intern, UWyo WYNDD/BLM
Laramie, WY