It seems difficult to remember now, but only a scant four months ago I had no idea what to expect from my time as an intern with the BLM in Richfield, Utah. No anticipations for this diminutive, predominantly Mormon town of approximately 10,000 residents – nor any for its surrounding natural environment, which I must have flown over dozens of times on my way to or from college, but never gave much thought to. Now that I’m more than halfway through this experience, I feel almost as if I own the place, or at least feel that my share in collecting seeds for restoration and research entitles me to throwing up a defiant fist at the ever-rampant All Terrain Vehicle riders tearing through local meadows of sagebrush and bee plant, and stirring up the pollen of that awful rabbitbrush which has been assaulting my nose, eyes, and throat for several weeks now.

I could not ask for a more beautiful natural setting in which to be exposed to the absolute horrors of post-college life: paying rent, buying groceries, the laundromat, and OxiClean. That’s part of the reason this internship has been a real godsend; getting away each work day from the apartment, the town, the claustrophobic cubicles that define so many others’ internship experiences – and getting to work among the splendors of the Intermountain West, with all its endless expanses and pristine air, has been a form of daily therapy. Making some dough while doing it has on occasion felt nothing short of criminal.

I am blessed to work with a team of other field botanists that includes two other CBG interns and a former CBG intern from last year. Last year’s intern, a 60-year-old woman whom we have lovingly titled Mormon Mama Melinda, is one of the most amazing taxonomy whizzes the world – or Sevier County, Utah, at the very least – has ever known. She keeps us more than entertained on our often-treacherously long hauls to collection sites (I reckon we are averaging about 3 hours of driving a day), plus keeps our stomachs fat and happy with home-baked wonders. And, perhaps most fortunately for us new interns, Mormon Mama Melinda is capable of keying out species we encounter in about ten seconds flat.

I have to admit, I had a reservation or two when I learned that the majority of my internship would be spent collecting seeds. Surely, it is not as glamorous a job as monitoring the mating habits of gopher tortoises (sadly, not an option for CBG interns in 2009), nor does it elicit many jaw-dropping reactions from family and friends back home, who generally can’t come to grips with the importance of such employment. But the benefits of this internship have been nothing short of extraordinary – and it will be with a very heavy heart that I leave this surrogate home of mine: the incomparable state of Utah.

-Evan Poirson, BLM Field Office, Richfield, Utah

This isn't Massachusetts anymore.

Coming to live and work at Kalaupapa National Historical Park has been a great way to ease back in to mainstream American life. Kalaupapa is a tiny community with a unique history located on a very isolated peninsula on the Island of Molokai, “the most Hawaiian island.” I applied for the Conservation and Land Management Internship while finishing up my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. Having lived here at Kalaupapa for 4 months now, I can’t imagine a better way to transition back to the American culture and workplace.

The history here is special, not least of all because it is a living history. Beginning in 1866 the Kalaupapa peninsula was the site of the forced isolation of Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) patients. Since 1969 patients have been free to come and go; the patients that remain here today do so by choice.

I came to the park to resurvey permanent monitoring plots that were put in place in 1995 to monitor the growth and vigor of native trees and associated understory and overstory vegetation in a remnant tropical dryland forest. Tropical dryland forests are among the most disturbed ecosystems on the planet. In Hawaii only 10% of these native forests remain, and even these are threatened with conversion to other species.

A wiliwili (Erythrina sandwicensis) tree is the center of a permanent monitoring plot.

I am continually amazed at the dominance of non-native invasive species in Hawaii. In the northeastern US, where I call home, invasive plant species in forests are a relatively small concern. Here elevation bands of entire islands

are completely overrun by non-native invasive plants. This is compounded by the loss of pollinator species, and overgrazing by feral ungulates. It makes me appreciate and want to protect the mainland US with its large patches of intact native plant communities.

I’ve had several great opportunities for diversion from my main project. I attended the Hawaiian Conservation Conference in lieu of attending the Grand Canyon Workshop. I was also able to attend NPS wildland firefighter training. On a day-to-day basis I have helped with a variety of other projects at the park including seed collecting and processing, constructing fencing to protect native plants from feral ungulates, and digitizing maps and aerial photos of the park.

Lu'au pig roasting pit with the cliffs of Molokai in the background.

It is a small community down here, but people have been very welcoming. We play volleyball twice a week, and there are very competitive nightly cribbage games- don’t get skunked! We even started a book club. One recent highlight was the community lu’au. I got to help butcher and clean the stomach, intestines, heart, and other inside bits of a pig that was cooked underground overnight. The next night we feasted and danced the night away.

My mentor has been great. He’s very open to suggestions and ideas that I have. He’s been a great help when I need advice and resources at work, but he has also given me the leeway and freedom to explore and do things in my own way. He has opened his home to me and welcomed me to spend time with his family on several occasions. I have gotten a lot of good advice on career options and grad-school options from my mentor and many other people at the park. I’ve also learned a lot about the native Hawaiian perspective on the environment and management of the land. They’ve been here a lot longer than we have and the knowledge they hold could be used in resource management much more effectively.

All in all this internship has been a wonderful opportunity for me and I am very grateful. I would never have imagined I would be working on a tropical forest ecology research project in Hawaii, eating papaya and mangos all summer long. Then again I never would have thought I’d live in a rural village in Morocco and learn Arabic and Tamazight. Life is strange- time to embrace it and go play some volleyball!

-Nathan Johnson

meadow at black rock hot spring

Coming from the lush, green, deciduous forests of Kentucky where every step outside reveals another dribbling creek or hanging vine to push aside, I wasn’t quite sure how I would fare in sagebrush country. I remember back to my first day…I met my mentor and fellow intern and we headed out to familiarize ourselves with the surrounding area of northeastern California and into northwestern Nevada. The dirt roads we followed were splashed with the colors of spring wildflowers: deep purple delphinium, violet lupins, and all the colors of the sunset captured in the Indian paintbrush. We saw pronghorn antelope run up and over the mountain mahogany covered hills and Jack rabbits dart out from under the greasewood in front of the rig. But it wasn’t the wildlife that sold me on this strange new place. It was the wildness of the place itself.
It didn’t take long to be mesmerized by the vastness of this place. This desert. Sure, we’ve got “country” in the South, but this is a new definition of the word for me. This is the Wild West and never before had I looked out over a seemingly never-ending landscape. Never before had I been to a place where I can stand on top of a mountain and fail to see one glimmer of human civilization. That is rare beauty.
Just as I was surprised by my new found love and respect of the desert, every day at the BLM Surprise Field Office has been, well, a surprise! Looking back on the last 3 months, I am amazed by the variety of projects I have been able to participate in as a CLM intern here in Cedarville, CA. Each day I anticipate another amazing opportunity awaits…and to think I still have three more months to go!
As a plant enthusiast, I was especially enthused to find that the first couple of months would be spent searching for rare plants in the Black Rock Desert, specifically within the Jackson Mountain range. This has been our longest ongoing project so far. The work week usually consisted of spending 3 to 4 days out in the field at a time.

View from the top--looking down on potential rare plant habitat in the Jacksons.

We most often camped at our favorite canyon, McGill, because of a deep pool of fresh spring water we could bathe in after a long day of work. Once we located and identified the plants, we collected data such as population estimates, habitat type, and exact location using a GPS unit. More recently, we have been analyzing the data by making maps using GIS and preparing reports.
As I said before, I have been part of a wide variety of projects. So far I’ve seen real cowboys round-up horses with a helicopter at a wild horse gathering, was dropped off at the top of a mountain and backpacked for 3 days on an aspen stand monitoring project, and most recently, went to Burning Man 2009!

A rainbow on the playa pre-Burning Man.

Burning Man is held in the Black Rock Desert on the largest playa in North America (the dry bed of ancient Lake Lohontan) and is part of 1.2 million acres of NCA managed by the BLM. For only a week out of the year, Black Rock City, the home of Burning Man, becomes the fourth largest city of Nevada. Burners (attendees of the festival) live by the “Leave No Trace” motto and are encouraged by the event to incorporate green principles into their everyday lives in the “default world”.
One of the many things that impressed and inspired me at the event was the fact that not one trashcan was provided to attendees and yet very rarely would there be a piece of trash on the ground! FORTY-THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE AND NOT ONE PIECE OF TRASH?! I find the implications of this phenomenon to be incredibly powerful. All burners are highly encouraged never to create M.O.O.P. (material out of place) and the community follows these golden rules for the most part.
That’s where my job came in! I worked with a team of volunteers as an environmental compliance officer to ensure that these principles the event holds dear were constantly in practice. Each day we patrolled Black Rock City ensuring that no serious M.O.O.P. violations were occurring. For example, gray water is an issue that all camps/villages have to deal with. Some have elaborate contraptions set up so that their gray water evaporates over the course of the week. However, sometimes there are issues of gray water leakage or dumping on the playa which is prohibited. Our job was to make sure these things weren’t happening.

The Man!

Needless to say, I saw some amazing, bizarre and beautiful things while protecting the environment and educating people on how to be a green burner. And just as I feel I did my part to spread the word on sustainable activity on the playa, I venture to say I was even inspired and enlightened by the event myself.
So here I am with three two months to go and I continue to learn something new every day. This internship has been one of the great experiences of my life and I cannot wait to see what else is in store for me at the BLM Surprise Field Office!

Alecia Brantley, BLM field Office, Pinedale, Wyoming

Within a few weeks of arriving here, I was entrusted with the job of planning and implementing the monitoring of the endangered Texas Trailing Phlox (Phlox nivalis subsp. texensis) reintroduction project. There are 17 plots, each originally planted with about 100 plants back in 2003. Today, most of them have died but monitoring continues for the survivors. I have really enjoyed working on this project because I’m working autonomously and making my own decisions. I have one supervisor that gave me an outline of what I need to accomplish, but she is there for me if I have any questions. For the monitoring, up to this point, only survivorship trends have been analyzed. However, plant sizes have been recorded since they were planted. I have taken it upon myself to figure out how these measurements can be utilized, possibly in conjunction with prescribed burn dates. Did I mention that this species of phlox can only survive if it is burned dead to the ground every few years? I love that!

The work has been very rewarding. For most of July and August we had very little rain, but by the end of August we had several torrential storms. Because the phlox only blooms in March and April, I had given up hope of ever seeing it bloom. But, with these storms, several of the plants must have gotten confused because they had numerous blossoms on them, even in September! They were pretty pink little things with five perfect little petals.

Working for NPS is giving me a great experience to learn how a federal agency works. Resources management is extremely important here for several reasons. There are oil companies on the preserve land because the companies have the mineral rights. Logging takes place on land directly adjacent to ours. In fact, most of the preserve land used to be timber land. Also, fire is ecologically required in most parts of the preserve, so planning prescribed burns is an essential and large part of the park’s infrastructure. Our resource manager told me that when he worked at Bryce Canyon NP, there wasn’t as much need or a challenge for him because the park was founded in 1924 and all the problems have already been worked out. But the Big Thicket is another story. It became a national preserve in 1974 and has such complicated resource issues that our resource manager is kept constantly busy. He says he enjoys the challenge it here. I thought his was an interesting perspective on choosing an agency or company for a career. Even though he held the same position, the two parks provided much different kinds and amounts of work.

Klamath Falls Resource Area

Since June I have been working at the Klamath Falls Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management. My main role has been to manage the native plant seed collection program. This is the first year Klamath Falls has been part of the Seeds of Success Program, so I’ve been scouting for plant populations that will be suitable for seed collection. As timing has allowed, I have also been able to collect seeds of target species from 20+ locations.

One of the things I’ve most appreciated about this internship experience is the opportunity to be involved with multiple aspects of on-the-ground land management. Klamath Falls is a ranching community, and much of the public lands are grazing allotments. I was able to spend a lot of time this summer with the Range Conservationist, monitoring the allotments for impact of cattle on local vegetation. This work involved doing nested frequency vegetation plots and surveying riparian areas that are important for the spawning of endangered sucker fish. Other land management field work I’ve gotten to do include: noxious weed treatment monitoring, weed assessment on juniper units, wetland monitoring and shoreline vegetation aquatic measurements, and rare plant inventories.

This past Saturday was our National Public Lands Day event, and ~40 people from the BLM and community came out to work on projects at a local wetland. Projects included bird box repair and installation, mile post marker installation, weeding, and re-vegetation. All aspects of this event were great, from the planning to the advertising to the working at the event.

Rocky terrain- basalt lava rocks in the Gerber area

Land management; Juniper cutting

Hauling timber across BLM roads

Creeks- important for sucker spawning

Workers at National Public Lands Day

Getting ready to plant at NPLD

Another worker getting the ground ready for planting, NPLD

Laurel Goode, Klamath Falls Field Office, Bureau of Land Management

I am stationed at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in Northeast Indiana.  It is part of the National Park Service but lake-side style.  We are right on Lake Michigan and even though I know it is a freshwater lake, it tricks me as an ocean every time I step on the beach.  It is truly a beautiful area that is only an hour by train outside Chicago that I probably would never know about unless placed here.  I’m participating in Wetland Restoration work in old property sites but I’ll go more into the details when my scheduled blogging time approaches.

Today I wanted to add a special entry  because last week I got the amazing opportunity to travel up to the Chicago Botanic Garden for a lecture by Michael Pollen and the Plant Conservation Science Center grand opening.  I am certainly one of the lucky ones to be close to our headquarters and got to see first hand how amazing the gardens are.  Additionally, finally being able to meet Krissa and Marian put this experience into a new perspective because unfortunately I missed the orientation week back in June.  The science center is now equipped with labs that the public can watch in on and a fantastic green roof and other LED certifications.       

The gardens themselves are gorgeous and I had a lot of fun taking photos of the flower arrangements all around this 300+ acres of land.  I recommend anyone to stop by if you ever get a chance to come to Chicago.  Also, if any of you do not know about Michael Pollen, he writes about how our food production is causing both health and environmental issues.  All his books are enjoyable and informative and if you are interested in these issues you should check them out.  His famous ones are called “The Omnivores Dilemma” and “In Defense of food”.    It was great hearing him speak after reading so much about what he is trying to do.  There were about 750 people attending too!!

I’m glad this internship has allowed me to experience all aspects of the environmental field and so far has been a great learning experience at the park as well as through cool events such as these.

Christy Goff

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

Chesterton, Indiana

As a CLM Intern, I have had the pleasure of venturing beyond my home-base of Vernal, Utah to some magnificent places to work (and, of course, play). This past August I had the extreme pleasure of working in Yellowstone National Park for a couple weeks. To switch agencies, going from the BLM to the NPS, offers quite a different work experience that most people never get to see. For that alone, I consider myself quite fortunate.

Working in the Old Faithful area was quite exciting...especially when a gyser erupted. My favorite in all of the park is seen here: The Beehive Gyser.

While in Yellowstone, I worked with several amazing botanists studying rare plants and their habitats in areas where heavy visitor use is a major concern. I got to take part in the efforts to inventory and monitor these plants which is probably one of the coolest things anyone can do. Spending a few days working in the Old Faithful area, walking off the boardwalks that visitors must stay on gives quite a bizarre power trip. It also means visitors will ask to take your picture (though some take it without asking). As many of you know, the Yellowstone supervolcano  has achieved quite a bit of fame in the past few decades.  Naturally, the visitors ask whether or not I was checking to see if it was ready to erupt since I was obviously some type of a scientist wearing my bright orange vest and walking around the bacteria mats. After I told them what I was doing and mentioned a few plant names unfamiliar to them, they seemed a little bit less interested in what I was doing. I, however, got even more excited thinking about the fact that here I am in one of the most historically significant and picturesque landscapes in all of American surveying for little bitty plants. “This is my dream job,” I tell myself.

I also did quite a bit exploring during my hours off, climbing several of Yellowstone’s famous peaks, doing some amazing backcountry hiking and venturing into wolf, bison and even grizzly country. I saw quite a few bison up close. Fortunately, it was from the comfort of my car. The same went for the one grizzly I saw while in the park. However, no wolves.

For most of my time in Yellowstone, I lived in the Lake area where I grew quite fond of one of Yellowstone’s most treasured assets: Lake Yellowstone, one of the world’s largest high-altitude lakes above 7000 feet. Sunset at the lake is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. It’s quite humbling.

The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is one of Yellowstone's rarest plants. I got the unique chance to survey for this beauty along the shores of Lake Yellowstone.

I did indeed find quite a few of the rare plants I was surveying for and learned quite a bit about documenting habitat characteristics. My new favorite being soil sampling and classification. It’s fun to play in the dirt! All of the information I helped gather will go towards the park’s ten year plan to protect the rare plants located in high density visitor-use areas. I also got the chance to participate in Yellowstone’s first ever BioBlitz which was also incredibly amazing. Being surrounded by scientists from all over the country and searching for rare or historically significant plants is a pretty sweet gig.  Definitely a CLM experience I’ll never forget!

Truly,

Daniel Winkler, CLM Intern

The beginning of my internship in Cedar City, UT with the BLM entailed monitoring greater sage-grouse habitat. These birds are not listed as endangered by the IUCN, but populations have declined due to loss of habitat.

OUR MISSION: Habitat Assessment … and saving the world

Crossing a creek with some field equipment to get to one of our sites

We took our truck (a very large, white, Silverado named “The Queen Mary” due to its boat like ride) into the field. The adventures began here. My fellow intern, Nelson, and I did not have much experience operating large trucks or 4WD prior to this summer, but we made it in and out of every situation relatively unscathed. We became accustom to 4WD and asking for someone to spot us as we traversed a dry wash or nine, some days. A wet meadow may have caused mud to be thrown onto the truck’s roof, sides and passengers (the windows were down) one time. In the end, Nelson and I have not damaged The Queen, and we have not been stuck -I intend to keep it that way too.

A sample of the pictures taken at each site. Please also note Nelson's aweseome field worker tan line.

After we parked The Queen as close to the sage grouse site as possible (which varied from 50 feet to 2 miles up hill, both ways), we would equip ourselves with the necessary field gadgets and navigate to the site using our Trimble (named Hank, after Henry the Navigator). Upon arrival, we set up a vegetation transect. Constructing the transect consisted of hammering two pieces of rebar into the desert ground and stretching a measuring tape between the rebar posts. Sounds straight forward and painless, but I usually hit four to eight rocks before finding ground that would support the post. Stretching the tape measurer, piece of cake right? Now always, some sites were comprised of dense sagebrush, bitterbrush and our thorned Rosaceae friends. Pictures and a GPS point were taken at each site. Then we began to assess

Measuring the height of the sagebrush while Nelson records the data.

the sage-grouse habitat using line-intercept and vegetation height, which measure important factors such as vegetation percent cover and percent composition. These monitoring techniques allowed us to determine if the site was suitable sage-grouse habitat and if not what was needed to improve its habitat quality. Sage-grouse need some cover in order to nest and avoid predators, but too much cover is not optimal. Also the type and abundance of forbs was taken into consideration when assessing a site because forbs attract insects, which sage-grouse feed on.

The next step in the assessment was a pellet count. A pellet count is a fancy term for counting poop. Yes, I said it-poop. We got paid to count poop or scat if you prefer. We scanned a 50 foot radius around the southern positioned rebar pole. As we scanned the circle, we yelled out the number of pellet piles we found while another person recorded it. This usually resulted in dialog such as “eight rabbit, five cow, one canine”. Occasionally, we were able to shout “two sage-grouse”! I never thought I would be so excited to find sage-grouse pellets. When I did make this remarkable discovery, I honestly felt like I had just come across a hidden treasure I had been searching weeks for. We even found over 40 pellet piles at one site, an obvious sign of sage-grouse presence. Finally, we packed up our belonging and data sheets, hiked back to the truck and moved to the next site. We visited 60 sites in the course of a month and half. These sites were chosen by our mentor and all were within 3 miles of a lek. I loved monitoring sage-grouse habitat and it is rewarding to know that the data we collect will aid in future land management decisions.

Measuring the very tall sagebrush. An example of a site that causes some work when extending the measuring tape from one post to the next.

Overall, my experience in the west has been nothing short of absolutely amazing. I have learned more than I ever thought I would about wildlife surveys, western vegetation, government policy and the BLM’s mission, “multiple use”. Besides learning things that will definitely be applicable to my career, I have met some wonderful people here in Cedar City. Nelson and I have worked over 570 hours together this summer and during those hours he has shared an ample amount of information with me. He has educated me about topics such as bacteria growth, video games and now he has me seriously questioning time travel. I know the next month of my internship will fly by and I plan on enjoying every moment of it.

Aspen in the Fall

Michelle Downey, BLM, Cedar City, UT

P.S. Check out the Aspen Fall colors. Being from Connecticut and all I was worried I would miss leaves changing, but I feel content now.

Trillium sp.

It has been a little over a year now since I started interning in this stunning NW corner of Oregon. On any given day I find myself harvesting native seeds at a BLM seed orchard, attending meetings to coordinate the restoration of a decommissioned dam site, searching mistletoe for butterfly larvae, or adding data to a never-ending pile of spreadsheets. I’ve been fortunate enough to get two extended internships, within 60 miles of each other, which complement each other incredibly well. The first was based out of the BLM’s field office in Salem, and the majority of my work there focused on riparian restoration and native plant materials projects. I traipsed around the Willamette Valley looking for blue elderberry, cascara and nine-bark seeds one day and participated in a design charette for a new recreation day-use facility the next.

Hard at Work: Johnson's Hairstreak Surveys

Now that I’m in the Portland, OR, office, I work with the Forest Service on an interagency team of rare and threatened species specialists. My daily environment still varies wildly, from my lavender-hued cubicle in the heart of downtown Portland to moss-laden conifer forests and wind-whipped coastlines. Some of my favorite projects were surveying for endangered tiger beetles and Johnson’s hairstreak butterflies, the latter of which I got to do with a fellow CLM intern, Camille Duncan.

Over the last few months I have been working with crews to conduct surveys for a rare polypore fungus, Bridgeoporus nobilissimus. These fungi are associated with true firs, which grow at higher altitudes. The fruiting bodies can be quite large (some up to 5 feet across!) but they are often very inconspicuous, hidden under litter and duff at the base of the trees, and don’t seem to fruit very often. This brings up questions as to how rare the species truly is. Could it be that people often overlook it? Or is it much more prevalent in an ecosystem, but not in fruiting form? To tackle these questions, we designed a protocol to set up random sampling plots around known occurrences and take tree core samples of a variable number of true firs within these plots. The core samples are then sent out to a contractor and tested for B. nobilissimus DNA. The results of this will let us know how to survey for the species in the future, and how to manage our forests for it. Hopefully we can also glean more information about the range of this species, and better insight into its life history.

Our final survey of the season is tomorrow, and then I’ll be tying everything up in the next few weeks before I head off on new adventures. I’ll join the chorus and say that this job has been incredibly rewarding and inspiring. Everyone I have worked with has imparted some little note of wisdom or a new perspective, and my field work has reinforced a personal desire to always work with our wild areas and do what I can to protect them. Next step: grad school!

Candace Fallon, Forest Service Regional Office & BLM State Office, Portland, OR