I am now more than half way through my Wildlife internship in Lewistown, MT and things keep getting better and better. The weather has become agreeable to field work and I have had the opportunity to attend some wonderful training and networking events.

Having opted out of the CBG intern orientation last month my travel funds were freed up for me to pursue wildlife-specified training. Just last week I attended a mammal tracking course in Yellowstone National Park with renowned tracker and scientist Jim Halfpenny, who specializes in wolf and bear research. As if you need an excuse to enjoy your time in Yellowstone, I cannot think of more interesting subject matter than learning to identify the footprints and gaits of its most charismatic residents. By meticulously searching along muddy riverbanks and flood plains my two classmates and I learned to read the stories that tracks leave- interpreting the size, speed, direction and behavior of an animal. For example, we followed the trail of what we determined to be a young female wolf as she ambled along the riverbank and gathered clues to determine why she slowed down, sped up, stopped or looked around that morning. We also measured and took plaster casts of the best preserved footprints and I cherish my souvenir wolf, elk and grizzly prints.

Big male Grizzly print

Although standing in the same spot where a wolf had been hours earlier gave me a near-spiritual chill, there has been no lack of controversy regarding their reintroduction and management in the West. Some people dedicate their lives and careers protecting them while others want them all exterminated- how are such polarized opinions possible?

It was while I was helping a colleague with a plant restoration project that I was given insight into the psychology of preservation. Although an advocate for endangered animals, I found myself at a loss when trying to muster the same enthusiasm for the plight of plant species. There was an upcoming botanical meeting where they would be searching for a rare plant, and I was excitedly invited along. “It will be really neat” they said, “there are only a few square miles in the whole world where these are found!” But this rare plant had no known medicinal value, nor was it especially colorful or pleasant-smelling or have any other stand-out characteristics. The poor thing was small, twiggy, and brown. I found myself forcing a polite smile and thinking to myself “what’s the big deal” and instantly realizing that I had seen the same polite smile before, and that I was having the same response most do to endangered wildlife. I now understand where they are coming from, and how my compulsion to keep species from going extinct is not shared by everyone.

I began examining my own motivations and asking what the purpose of it all was; what is the point? Surely there must be some logical reason why people work so hard to preserve endangered species. In the end, I decided that although we can try to use rational arguments (there may be medicines in there! it may cause the food web to collapse!) the heart of the matter cannot be produced or negotiated with. It is an ethical and emotional response that some people feel, a reluctance to lose any of the world’s hard-won and awe-inspiring diversity. The botanists and I share this feeling, and I am doing my best to never again become so entrenched in my position that I cannot see when our goals are same

After being at the Bend Seed Extractory for nearly a year, I can open most seed collections and know immediately which cleaning method will bring the best results.  This was not true of my “challenge of the week”, Grindelia squarrosa (GRSQ).  Members of the aster family are usually difficult because the seeds are often fragile and come accompanied by a lot of vegetative material.  This collection of GRSQ, or curlycup gumweed,  held true to those characters of the aster family but had some additional challenges – the exterior of the flower heads were sticky and prickly.

GRSQ before extraction

Without the sticky material, I would have no hesitation to put this collection in a brush machine, but my worry was that the brushes and the seed would become coated with the goo, making the finishing process much more difficult.  So, what to do?  Whenever I find myself asking this question, I turn to the incredibly knowledgeable staff at the extractory for advice.  The recommendation was to use baby powder, and lots of it.  We often add powder or corn starch to seed lots to control static, but I always forget that it can be useful for coating sticky and coarse-hairy trash so that seed won’t attach to it.  I jumped on this advice and decided to change the brushes in my machine to paddles, just in case the goo was too much for the powder.

paddles on the small brush machine

One pass through the brush machine after a good dousing with powder and…success!  The flower heads were broken up and the seeds were flowing freely.

GRSQ after brush machine, ready for finishing

Considering that this species was not only tricky to clean, but smelled like dirty gym socks and released itchy hairs into the air, I was happy to send it along to the next phase of cleaning.  I hope it doesn’t pass my way again, but at least it taught me a few new tricks.  On to the next challenge…

regards from Bend,

Sarah Garvin

I have completed my first full week as a Seeds of Success intern for the Bureau of Land Management in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I made my trek southwest one week ago from the Land of Lincoln. My largest concern about the area was it’s proximity to Juarez, Mexico, but upon driving to my lodgings it was hard to feel unsafe when I was nestled against the Organ Mountain Range with the city below. I am pretty confident that I was the only intern who had not began working at my site when we attended the CLM Training Workshop. Hearing everyones stories about their internships, meeting my future roommate/co-intern, and receiving an overview of the SOS program successfully prepared me for the months ahead.

I have had a variety of experiences in the past four days ranging from working in the office to hiking the Organ mountains to plant seeds. On Monday I was able to experience the thrill of a driving uphill on rocky terrain in a huge 4 wheel drive truck and completing my driving test. Tuesday called for us to use GPS to find a Nightblooming Cereus. We roamed through the grassy mesas on Wednesday and searched for petroglyphs on hillsides. Thursday was my favorite field experience yet: We nearly hiked to the tip of the Organ mountains on the Aguirre trail and spread seed on our way back down to restore the area from fire damage. I also discovered that 80 pound bags of concrete are heavier than they look when we helped unload a trailer.

I am so grateful to Marian and Krissa for this opportunity to work with my fantastic mentor in this breathtaking setting. It was great meeting all of the other interns in Chicago, I really hope to see some of them again! Until then I’ll keep enjoying the magnificent sunsets in Las Cruces…

The field season is picking up here at the Sierra Front Field Office in Carson City.  Our days consist mostly of multi-purpose plant surveys.  We are out in the Great Basin and Sierras looking for noxious weeds, T/E plants, and possible areas for seed collections.  Last week we started chemical treatment for Perennial Pepperweed (Lepidium latifolium) at a nearby area in Washoe Valley called Winter’s Ranch.  The Nevada Park Service is lending us their herbicide truck which has 2, 200 gallon tanks in the back with sprayer guns attached which is helping us make quick work of the acreage we have to cover.  We camped out at Sand Mountain at the end of last week and were able to collect some sand dune species as well as practice our ATV dune driving skills.  It sounds like the next couple weeks we will be very busy with fire rehab monitoring in areas that have had fires recently.  I have noticed that my botany skills have slowly but surely been improving and I feel I can I can some what keep up with my more skilled co-workers.

The weeks have been flying by. This past Wednesday marks my fifth week in Cedarville. Much has happened in these few weeks; I have become acquainted with many projects that are conducted by the BLM. My third week of work began by traveling to Chicago from San Francisco. The week spent in Chicago at the Chicago Botanic Garden was wonderful. The workshop in Chicago gave me the opportunity to meet two other interns at the Alturas office twenty miles away. On Wednesday myself and the other two SOS interns from Alturas went out with a crew from the Forest Service to conduct vernal pool surveys. The following morning we were able to help out at our neighboring National Wildlife Refuge by conducting duck brood surveys. It is rewarding to start work early in the high desert because then fewer hours are spent in the hot afternoon sun. I am beginning to get a handle on my project. I have scouted out many populations that will be ready for seed collection in the coming weeks and have already made a few collections of species that are currently ready for collection. I can navigate myself around this region much more successfully now that I have done some seed scouting. In addition I am becoming confident in my ability to recognize and identify many of the species that are present in this area.
The high desert is more and more intriguing every day. The vast landscape appears to be homogenous throughout but once a closer look is taken it can be seen that the geology changes drastically over short distance. The geology largely affects the type of vegetation that will flourish in this dry climate; the soil type is often reflected in the variety of sage that is abundant at a particular site. Another quality the desert embodies that I find soothing is the constant hum of insects in the air. In some areas, often times surrounding riparian areas, while conducting a seed collection I am accompanied by the most beautiful fluttering butterflies.  I had the opportunity to visit blue lake which is located just on the other side of the Warner Mountains. The area surrounding the lake burned in a wild fire a few years ago. I had never seen the beautiful destruction that a fire can cause. Awe struck is the appropriate way to describe how I felt. I am nearing half way, and aim for a new experience every day!

This is Justin checking in from Carson City BLM.  From a distance the entire Great Basin may look like one big xeric wasteland, but it most certainly is not. Well, the basin half comes close with just 5 inches of annual precipitation. But a week in the field on rangeland survey revealed plant diversity in the basins. And the mountains ranges are just teeming with life. My fieldwork notes are beginning to be dotted with memos saying, “return to ______ Mountains next weekend.”

So far I am enjoying the company of my coworkers. Like America’s population, the staff of the BLM are beginning to age. This is great for me because I hear humorous stories accumulated through years of working for the fed. They are also experts on their locals and make learning new ecosystems and management practices far easier than reading a book. I’m also lucky to be stationed in a field office with 6 other CLM interns, leading the old-timers to lament the “under-30 invasion.” That’s all for now!

We arrived back in the office after a week in Chicago and a long holiday weekend only to find out that our mentor was being sent to a fire in New Mexico to help with the mitigation of post-fire effects. We had just had our Seeds of Success training at the Chicago Botanic Garden and were ready to get to work collecting seed, so we assured our mentor that we would find plenty to do in his absence. I was pleased that he would be working in my home state in the Jemez Mountains, where I had spent nearly every summer of my childhood escaping the heat of Albuquerque, but I was disappointed that we would not be able to go out in the field with him.

This past week on a seed scouting trip, we were able to experience the crazy weather that makes field work in the Western US so exciting and dangerous. We went to a site that our mentor had told us about that was fairly close to our field office in Alturas. Several people in our office warned us about the terrible road conditions where we were headed, so we allowed plenty of time to get there. It is good that we had been warned, because it took us nearly an hour to go the three miles to get to an old ranch house from the county road. We were constantly thrown around by the large rocks that made up the road, and when we stopped, it felt good to put my feet on solid ground. We parked and hiked past the ranch house, up a hill and into the forest. We looked for species to collect, and took herbarium voucher samples for those that were now flowering. It was a very pleasant hike through the trees and we walked along a small creek for much of the way. After lunch we headed back to the truck, collecting the seed of another species of grass along the way. We decided to drive a bit further to check out a spring that was just off the road.. While looking at the plants around the spring, it began to sprinkle. After a few minutes, it stopped raining and we assumed that it had passed over, but instead, it began to rain again. It started raining harder and harder, so we headed back to the truck (where of course we had left the windows down) to drive back to the office. Soon it was pouring rain and the road that had been hard-packed with big rocks to drive over became oozing mud with big rocks mixed in. We drove through pockets of hail that was so thick that we had to stop and wait for it to pass, and then back into the rain, which continued relentlessly. The thunder was deafening and seemed to make the truck shake even more on the bumpy roads. There were some close calls through some long sections of pure mud, but I was determined not to get stuck. After a very stressful hour and a half, we were back to the county road where it had not rained a drop. I stepped out of the truck to let my partner drive the rest of the way to the office, and could hardly straighten my back from being bent forward for so long. I stretched out my hands to release the tension that had built up from clenching the steering wheel like a lifeline, and plopped into the passenger’s seat, thoroughly exhausted. On the drive back, I found myself with a smile that would not go away. We had certainly had an adventure-filled day of seed collection! I was ready for another adventure the next day, but more than that, I was ready for a long night’s sleep in my bed.

As many recent college graduates, I spent the last four years staring at computer screens, huddling over books, and idling in classrooms. Though I dedicated countless hours to reading and writing about the natural world, only a fraction of my time was spent experiencing it. My life was governed by arbitrary deadlines and sustained by florescent light bulbs. The last few weeks have been the exact opposite. As a Seeds of Success intern I have been jolted back to reality; the reality in which the world runs on the sun’s clock and life succumbs to the forces of nature.

“No, no, it’ll be dry here. Vale is in the desert, the hot, hot, desert” Gillian, my mentor, mentioned before my trip out from Colorado. Shorts, tank tops, and sandals all flew into my trunk in large numbers. I threw in one warm hat, a rain jacket, and a few pairs of old jeans, just to be safe. Three weeks later, sopping wet from the snow and muddy to my knees, I thought of my large brimmed sun hat still untouched in the trunk of my car. Faintly, over the gusts of wind I heard the familiar “No, no, seeds still not ready” from the others.

Three weeks of persistent rain, cold, and wind not only affected my choice of clothing each morning it also affected every aspect of our SOS goals. In mid-June most of our potentially collectable plants had only slightly matured, if at all. For three weeks our team, 3G, waited, watched, and wished for the sun to come out so our plants could start going to seed.

Still not warm...

Finally the clouds parted and gave way to full days of sunshine and warmth. Giddy and excited we reassessed which populations would be ready first. Balsamorhiza sagitata moved to the top of the list. Driving to the site, I was excited for my first full day of seed collecting. We got out of our rig, hiked to the exact location and…nothing. Looking closer we spotted the large, sagittate basal leaves. Disappointed and confused we walked back to the car hardly noticing the dozens of cows happily munching on our Balsamroot seeds.

Though my days often end with mosquito bites on my legs, ticks in my clothes, and sunburned shoulders, the daily blast of air conditioning at the office reminds me how lucky I am to have a job so interwoven with nature.

My first month out of the redwood fog in Northern California has been a great learning experience.  Its been great learning the plants of this bioregion,  starkly different from where I came, characterized by the chaparral plant community.  I am truly grateful to be able to spend my days looking for plants, gathering seed, and cleaning seed.  This station is full of motivated people with various projects one can plug into such as cactus wren habitat monitoring and kangaroo rat habitat restoration.  I didn’t realize other members of anacardiaceae occured in California, so it was cool to meet the genera rhus and malosma.  There are a lot of scenic mountain areas here, more than I thought, in a place I thought was just strip malls and urban sprawl.  It is refreshing to note how much biodiversity still exists in San Diego county. I look forward to further exploration of this new, mediteranean-style home.