These recent weeks have been a whirlwind of activity.  After returning from a long vacation I got back into the office and strait to work.  I had to catch up on my ongoing eagle monitoring whilst juggling various other projects with seemingly ever shortening due dates.  We headed up to the Columbia River to check on Washington Ground Squirrels while they are still active.  They are only active from March till early June and then they spend the summer and winter underground.  That is the life!  Those surveys proved to be long days, but we did locate some new colonies and confirm previously mapped colonies.

More recently I have been working on Special Recreation Permits (SRP’s) as the wildlife point of contact.  I have really enjoyed the SRP’s as it brings together field work and decision making together to determine the effects of a proposal and whether or not it should go forward.  Hopefully I will be able to work on more projects like these including some NEPA work, possibly CX’s or other smaller projects.

Currently temperatures have spiked into the 90’s, making hiking up and down hills slightly less exciting and surely more exhausting.  The silver lining is that roads are no longer muddy messes and instead are a wonderful dusty beige just waiting to be explored.  It looks like it is going to cool down for the next couple of days, so that will be a welcome respite.

In my spare time I have been working on a owl survey with a local birder and I am having a great time.  Surveys can run a little late (1am) and waking up the next morning to work isn’t always the most fun.  However, it is a wonderful opportunity and we have already heard great-horned owl, northern-pygmy owl (We saw it fly over and it was calling non-stop from within 15ft) and even Flammulated Owl, the bird for which we were surveying.  I have continued to go birding and have had a great time watching the great horned owl chicks around town goofily walk and fly around.

The next weeks and months are sure to be busy, so I will try to enjoy a relaxing Memorial weekend and keep everybody updated to my goings on as they go on.

An early-spring sunrise on the Williamson River.

Our mission began in the icy 2:47am darkness. A brisk Monday morning, if one can rightfully call that hour morning. It was too early to hear the calls of birds welcoming a new day. The only sound was from a stiff breeze rustling the pines. Occasionally a car’s headlights sliced through the night on the nearby highway. Joel emerged from his truck, and we greeted each other quietly. Noise seems inappropriate at such an hour. Joel slipped a key into the door and turned. The deadbolt retracted out of its nighttime abode with a loud clack. As we entered the office, we moved with calculated haste. We had 60 seconds to disarm the alarm. With precision that can only be described as akin to a neurosurgeon, Joel swiftly entered a four-digit code into the keypad. Beep beep, bop! We were in. I maneuvered the light switch to the “on” position as I rounded the corner. Down the hall I went, finally arriving at my productivity and action facilitation station. Here I began to prepare for the morning’s arduous tasks. Bag? Hat? Gloves? Check. I got up and moved with an excited urgency down the now-lit hallway and met up with Joel by the office kitchen. We loaded our chosen vessels with an energy vector formed by sending highly active water molecules through a barrier of ground African beans. And so, with coffee in hand, we left the office, now only a memory in the taillights of the truck. Admittedly, on any normal work day one must go through the same process we had just gone through. But at 2:47am, every action is magnitudes more exciting. Positively invigorating!

As much as I’d like to say that Joel and I arrived at work while most are innocently asleep because we relish the splendors of an early start to the day, that is not why we were there. Instead, we had arrived at such an ungodly hour because just a 30 minute drive away, something peculiar was happening in the Williamson River. Thousands of minute endangered larval suckers were going on a journey. As the earth goes about its daily plunge into transient darkness, the larvae drift. These minuscule newly hatched fish, a scant one centimeter of translucent flesh, rise up from the river’s rocky bottom and migrate to the top of the water column. To a scientist trying to capture larval suckers, this is a thrilling behavioral pattern! A simple zooplankton net can be deployed from a bridge for 20 minutes and left to “fish” in the coursing currents of the Williamson River. Several sets of these nets can yield anywhere from a handful to several hundred to several thousand of the wondrous drifting larvae. Joel and I plied the waters for several hours that morning, managing to secure just 150 larvae as the earth emerged from its daily dose of darkness. As we pulled in our last net, a robin chimed in to welcome the sun. In no time light was erasing the long shadows of our early dawn.

What does one do with 150 endangered sucker larvae, or ideally, several thousand? Nurture, love, and care for them, that’s what. Coddle the precious lives of these young beings and prepare them for the arduous journey of life. Joel and I transported the larvae south to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s controlled propagation facility. At this rearing location, we meticulously counted each future adult fish and gently placed them in a tank swirling with waters tuned to the biochemistry of the larvae. A little salt bath and rinse in some medicine, and the fledgling fish are good to go. With any luck, in a year or so these larvae will have grown into mighty sub-adult suckers, ready to be released into the sometimes perilous but often bountiful waters of Upper Klamath Lake. Early mornings collecting larval fish may be challenging, but they are necessary to help endangered species avoid extinction. Personally, I find days go by quicker when onerous tasks are turned into exhilarating life or death, covert missions to push the bounds of science. Now time for my nap.

Jeff Mogavero
US Fish and Wildlife Service
Klamath Falls, OR Field Office

It’s Monday morning and we are getting ready for a full week in the field. We will spend this week, like the past two, searching slopes for Ivesia webberi, which has a threatened status under the ESA. Each morning, we will unfold the various GIS maps we made designating the survey area and determine where we will search that day. Using the GPS, maps, and compasses, we spend the day walking transects, trying to cover every square foot of the possible habitat for the species.

Surveying for rare plants is definitely a high-effort, low-reward field activity, and some might find it boring to walk for hours in a straight line, spaced with fellow surveyors at 15 foot intervals. I admit, it can be a bit discouraging to survey for days with no sign of our target species. Mostly, though, I am just thankful that my job allows me to hike all day. I may be staring at the ground most of the time, but that means I see every plant (and insect, and reptile) I pass. There is nothing like the wide open skies in sagebrush country, so I can’t complain about hiking under those.

A perfect mid-survey lunch spot.

Last week, persistent rain forced us to return to the office after just two days of surveys, and a few skids on the muddy roads on the way out of the field made us glad we hadn’t left any later than we did. This week, with temperatures of 90 degrees to look forward to, I don’t think we’ll have that problem. Hopefully, by the time we troop back into the office, dusty from a week of walking, we’ll have found some more Ivesia webberi to report to the Fish and Wildlife Service!

Last fall, when I rolled down the leeward side of the Sierra Nevada and landed in the Mojave Desert, I finally understood why the word “enchanted” is so often used to describe the southwestern landscape. To someone born and raised east of the Mississippi, the desert looks impossible, a landscape too strange to exist. Bare ground dotted here and there with lonely shrubs; enormous, rounded boulders piled haphazardly together like toys; the eerie sight of Joshua trees, arms outstretched, waiting for some unknown sign that may never come. I was only able to stay for a few days, but I had a feeling that I would be back sooner rather than later. Lo and behold, here I am, beginning my 24th year as a Las Vegas local, and an intern of the US Geological Survey.

The Mojave Desert, just south of the Hoover Dam.

Compared to the cold desert of the Intermountain West, the warm southwestern deserts of North America have a remarkable history of escaping postcolonial mass disturbance. The Mojave and Sonoran regions are too hot and dry to support large-scale livestock operations, and are not as rich in fossil fuels as their northern counterpart. In short, the landscape didn’t have much to offer, so there was little reason to tear it up. However, in the last several decades rising incidence of severe wildfires and the development of renewable resource infrastructure in the southwest has made ecological restoration a priority, particularly in regards to desert tortoise critical habitat. The Mojave Desert and Sonoran Basin and Range Native Plant Programs were created to begin developing native seed sources for restoration needs in accordance with the national Native Plant Materials Development program. This is a massive, long-term undertaking involving seed collection, genetic and ecological experimentation, and collaboration with an assortment of interest groups, from public land managers to private business owners.

Before any of these steps can be taken, however, land managers must first determine which species to use for landscape-scale restoration. In desert ecosystems, where succession takes place on a scale of decades to centuries, it is particularly important to carefully select pioneer, mid-, and late-seral assemblages that can transition smoothly from one to the next. This is where I come in. My job is to develop lists of priority restoration species for both the Mojave Desert and the Sonoran Basin and Range ecoregions. Both of these programs are in their infancy, so while this internship project is a hefty responsibility, I also have considerable room for creativity.

The first item on my plate is to enhance the Mojave Desert list. For the first few weeks of my internship, I educated myself on the ecology of North America’s smallest warm desert, particularly in regards to succession of disturbed communities and the impact of invasive annual grasses such as Bromus madritensis. Once I felt I had a good working knowledge of the ecosystem, I set to work. Researchers at my field office had already developed a species list regarding the diet and cover plant needs of desert tortoise, but other important taxa, namely pollinators, had been neglected. Using this original list and other literature on diet and cover plants used by G. agassizii as my baseline, I compiled a list of candidates. I then researched each species individually to assess its potential use in restoration projects; this involved researching traits like successional stage, ease of collection, propagation, and seed storage, and whether or not each plant hosted native pollinators.  

Desert Globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) with some insect visitors.

Unfortunately, I quickly learned that there is a great dearth of information on pollinators of the Mojave Desert. Aside from a few highly impressive natural history papers from the 1950’s – 70’s, very little research has been conducted on native insects and their relationships with desert plants. Considering that the desert southwest is a hotspot for bee diversity, I found this surprising, not to mention frustrating! A 2006 USDA study found that in Carbon County, NV alone, there are nearly 600 species of native bees, over 30 of which are endemic (for more information, look up the Pollination Ecology Final Report for the Clark Co., NV 2003 Biennium). Environmental heterogeneity in desert regions promotes evolutionary divergence, and speciose taxa range from pupfish to insects to cacti. Combined with a high incidence of monolecty (ecological relationships in which a host species is visited by only one pollinator species), this makes the Mojave Desert a difficult but imperative environment in which to conduct pollinator research.

Much of what pollinator research has been done in the Mojave focuses on Larrea tridentata, the iconic creosote bush. As a ubiquitous, dominant presence throughout the Mojave, Larrea is visited by over one hundred species of bee, twenty of which are specialists. With such a massive guild and widespread distribution, one wonders if creosote facilitates pollination of other desert plants, acting as a pollen “pit stop” of sorts. While L. tridentata already performs many services to its community, if this idea is correct, creosote bush may turn out be even more important to warm desert ecosystems than we realize!

The iconic creosote bush (Larrea tridentata) at the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley National Park.

After several weeks of work, my principal investigators and I are in the revision stages of the Mojave Desert priority species list. Our ultimate goal is to craft a tool that land managers can use in conjunction with seed transfer zones, a novel and instrumental tool to help land managers effectively source native seed for use in revegetation and restoration projects, to make the best choice of a species suite for use in restoration projects. Such tools would expedite the process of restoring public lands with seeds that are best suited to each project restoration site.

In addition to reading papers and writing species profiles, I have had the opportunity to assist with ecotype research at the USGS greenhouse and a few of the common gardens that are established in the Mojave Desert. This spring, we have been growing Chylismia brevipes and Plantago ovata in the greenhouse. Chylismia will be outplanted in a garden south of Las Vegas as part of a study of native plant transplantation methods. The Plantago seeds will be harvested and used in other restoration experiments. Much of the greenhouse work involved daily hand-pollinating sessions for the Chylismia (as we cannot allow it to cross-pollinated between populations and genetically muddy our research specimens) and bagging the P. ovata to ensure that we don’t lose any seed to natural dispersal. In the gardens, I have assisted with monthly plant assessments, conducting morpho- and phenological measurements of Ambrosia dumosa, L. tridentata, Sphaeralcea ambigua, and Achnatherum hymenoides. These assessments are part of a long-term ecological research project on the limitations of seed source in restoration sites across the Mojave Desert. The results from this research further contribute to the development of seed transfer zones.

A suncup blossom (Chylismia brevipes), ready to be hand-pollinated!

A tray of desert plantain (Plantago ovata), some of which has been sacked in order to prevent seed escape!

And, since 40 hours a week of researching and working with native plants isn’t enough, I have also spent quite a few evenings and weekends botanizing in the amazing natural areas that surround Las Vegas. Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Red Rocks National Recreation Area, Death Valley National Park, and Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge are just a few of the places I have ventured into, armed with my hand lens and a borrowed copy of the Jepson Desert Manual. As I am not spending a substantial amount of time out in the field during my internship, this is a way for me to both enjoy desert natural areas and begin to learn the flora of the Mojave. A few of my favorite spring-flowering desert plants have been sand blazing star (Mentzelia involucrata), turpentine-broom (Thamnosma montanus), Mojave hedgehog cactus (Echinicereus triglochidiatus), ground cherry (Physalis crassifolia), and desert sandmat (Euphorbia albomarginata).  

Ground cherry (Physalis crassifolia), a member of Solanaceae.

Sand blazingstar (Mentzelia involucrata), a member of Loaceae, a family that I’d never encountered before coming to the Mojave!

Whitemargin sandmat (Euphorbia albomarginata), a member of Euphorbiaceae and possibly my favorite desert wildflower.

To my knowledge, this is the first CLM internship of its kind. It’s been very exciting to be part of such groundbreaking work. After my work on the Mojave Desert is finished, I’ll be working on a similar document for the Sonoran Basin and Range – an ecosystem which, with its biannual blooms and distinct subdivisions, may prove to be even more challenging to understand than its northern counterpart.

I arrived in the quirky town of Buffalo, WY on May 10th, which gave me a few days to settle in before starting work on the following Monday. Moving in was a relief after driving 2,000 miles from Massachusetts in a matter of days. I was pleasantly surprised by how welcoming the town’s residents have been. Buffalo is a far cry from my city of Worcester, MA, but it is a welcome change of pace. The close community of a small town like Buffalo has quite the charm. I’ve had the chance to explore some of the town’s shops and restaurants as well as the surrounding areas. The landscape is incredible, though vastly different from the New England forests I know and love.

Starting my internship with the BLM has been exciting, but not without hiccups. Getting my Access card and account set up for work has been a slow process as a result of some miscommunication. Luckily everything should be good to go next week! I haven’t been able to do much of the online trainings, so until then I’m filing paperwork and organizing data. I really don’t mind either of these tasks. I’ve found them to be meditative almost in their repetitive nature. I did get out in the field this past Wednesday to check out a small oil spill and an improperly installed culvert. Had I been by myself, I definitely would’ve gotten lost on the back roads we took. So far I’ve learned a good deal about navigating Wyoming and the BLM’s roles in resource extraction. Next week is packed full of training, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about!

Until Next Time,

Jess McDermott

Alternative Training Opportunity

I feel like my knowledge of first aid was definitely lacking, and don’t know what I would do should something happen to myself or a companion if weren’t able to get help immediately. As a replacement for the training workshop at the Chicago Botanic Garden I took a Wilderness First Responder certification course. Now, I’m very confident in my ability to handle emergency medical situations in the field, though I hope I never have to use those skills…

Understand that prevention is the best medicine. Never purposely attempt to put crew members in harm’s way. Euthanasia is also strongly discouraged, and is illegal to perform in a wilderness setting.

I got to Buffalo, WY a little over a week ago, a timespan that seems impossibly short given the whirlwind of moving, meeting, and mingling that has occupied everything since. Oh, to think back on that young lass, doe-eyed and naive in the ways of AIM methodology and Wyoming weather patterns. Now, a week-long lifetime later, wise to unbiased sample design and the importance of QA/QC, I shiver forth through a foot of Mid-May snow where previously I wore shorts. It’s honestly awesome.

The snowy ride back from Lander. Though not ideal for field work, it makes for the most glorious landscape.

Buffalo’s a sweet town in north eastern Wyoming with a great public library (statewide interlibrary loans!! amazing!!) and a population of 4,585. I am one of nine CLM interns at the field office, all of whom are pretty rad and it’s been nice to flow through that getting-to-know-you process and begin to familiarize with actual people instead of anticipatory illusions. Six of us are dealing with veg so we share a room and a lot of time. We’ve been in Lander, WY for the past couple days, learning about AIM, DIMA, and Calibration, all of which has been fun as an intro to sound data management and this internship, though I remain dubious of my capability when it comes to grass ID.

Intern crew! Whiling lunchtime away at our training field site.

In that vein, this first week has mostly consisted of training. Training to collect data, training to drive government vehicles, training to find the grocery store, training to then find the cheaper grocery store in the next town over (s/o to Sheridan). As overwhelming as the work-related information has been to take in, the culture shock is what’s really bent me backwards. It’s lessening exponentially, but just as a point of reference, when I got here I didn’t even know Buffalo Bill was a real person. Thought he was just some fictional character made of myth. Serious egg on my face. As an adult, I’ve never needed a car or ridden a horse and I’ve always been able to rely on cell service and walk down the street while maintaining some anonymity. This will be, quite distinctly, my first rodeo. And as embarrassing and uncomfortable as ignorance is, I am extremely grateful to get this opportunity to learn the ropes, explore new territory, and grow both in plant knowledge and personally. It’s going to be a good summer 🙂

A riveting roller coaster on the Buffalo scene circa 1866.

“Drive slowly. Watch out for the speed limits” was something I needed to remember on my second day of work, but, instead, was reminded by the very serious officer looking through my window. The conversation went as follows:

Him: Is there a medical reason why you’re going 28 on a 15
Me: Besides the fact that I’m new and the speed limit in LA is 120, no.
Him: Tries not to chuckle. “Can I see your license please”
Me: Late to work and a reckless driver…great.

I’ve been in Fairbanks for less than a week, and already, I’m the speeding maniac. Needless to say, it’s been six days of transitioning to a new place that could not be more different than city life in southern California. The mosquitoes, green scenery, very large trucks, and the nearly twenty four hours of sunlight has given me quite the culture shock, in a good way. That being said, there are some things that remind me of home, like the plethora of fast food chains and the shockingly big Barnes and Noble. Unlike SoCal, the weather has been unpredictable with chilly rainy mornings to warm (65 degrees) in the afternoons. However, according to the locals, this is very predictable and nice whether. I believe it.

Currently, I am staying at the barracks located on Fort Wainwright. The first couple of days were challenging here, because I did not have the proper identification to get on/off base. So, for future CBG/CLM interns who will be living out of the barracks, you will need your Drivers ID and a visitors pass. Once the DOI access card comes in, you will be able to get on/off base. My plan for now is to stay at the barracks for the rest of the summer, since it is the cheapest option in Fairbanks. Also, since most cabins in Fairbanks don’t have water, I’m more inclined to stay at the barracks. The biggest drawback with the barracks is not having a kitchen. I LOVE to cook. I HATE eating out. Luckily, I’ve managed to get a mini frig and a toaster oven (thanks to a friendly soldier). So, I’m making it work for now.

With all that is new, it’s easy to forget that I’m actually here for employment. The office feels like an attraction at the amusement park. It’s located in beautiful pine trees and has an amazing view of the Chena River. It’s also a giant maze, and I keep getting lost. My mentor, Ruth, gave me a tour of both floors, and towards the end of the tour, she showed me the hidden gym. I was shocked by the fact that there was a gym inside the building! How cool is that! But, I don’t think I’ll be using it much, because I haven’t been able to find it. Also, everyone in the office is so nice! I’m really excited to explore all the possible opportunities outside of this internship, because so far, Fairbanks is really great.

Besides getting lost in the office, I’ve also been doing work. So far, this internship has been very different from my first internship last summer in Susanville, CA. On my second day last summer, I was already out in the field collecting Elymus elymoides, squirrel tail. Perhaps it was because of how late we, the CLM crew, started, but this time around, I’m spending the first few weeks catching up with some training. This includes: WFA, ATV/UTV, Bear Safety/Awareness, Aviation, Invasive Species, FISSA and much more! In two weeks, we’ll be flying to Anchorage for a meeting to discuss revegetation of mined lands. Later in the internship, I’ll also be taking a GIS course at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF), which will substitute the training in Chicago. Soon, I’ll be incredibly busy helping out with invasive plant management and terrestrial AIM surveys. I am excited to start the field season, and hopefully can survive the bugs. There is so much that I am looking forward to, and I am curious to see how much will happen between now and the next blog post. Hopefully, you are too!

My first few weeks working with the Spokane District Office (SDO) has been nothing short of amazing. My first day I was filled with your typical first day nerves, but that quickly washed away as the week continued on. That first week, I was flying mostly solo, as my mentor had been scheduled to attend botany meetings! Unfortunately (or fortunately, only time will tell), due to technical difficulties, I had yet to gain computer access, so I got to really dive into non-computer related work. I spent my first couple of days getting acquainted with my cubicle, office mates, and plants I would be focusing on collecting. That Wednesday the office was having a work day at Douglas Creek with the Wenatchee Field office, where I got to meet the botanist there, Molly, and CBG’s interns from last year. I spent the work day with Molly and last year’s interns creating cages around desert globe mallows, which are rare plants in Washington. While it was a long drive out there, and a very early start to the day, it was a lot of fun for my first day in the field. My second day in the field was that Friday, where I got to go out with Jason, one of SDO’s wildlife biologists. We were meeting up with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to conduct surveys on Washington Ground Squirrels. When we got to the survey site, I was lucky enough to see and hear what these little guys look and sound like. I wish I had snapped a few pictures! These little guys might have been some on the cutest creatures I’ve stumbled upon in the wild, and they make a high pitched squeak as a warning call. I was also lucky to have heard them because I was going to working with SDO’s wildlife biologist, Jason, that has never been able to hear their high pitched calls. We walked twenty 100 meter transects, but we did not find any that day. We did, however, come across plenty of vole holes and 2 mule deer enjoying the sunshine.

Out surveying for Washington Ground Squirrels in Odessa, Washington.

Week 2 at the office wasn’t really spent at the office. My mentor, Kim, was back and since the weather was cooperating (it’s been an unusually wet spring for Spokane), Kim and I spent every day in the field. I got to explore many of eastern Washington’s public lands and was quickly learning to identify native plants! Not only that, but I’ve been getting decently good at using a Garmin to navigate and take data points, too! Tuesday, Kim and I went to Juniper Dunes in search of a rare plant, Cryptantha leucophaea (Payson Gray cyptantha). Juniper Dunes are a known site for these plants, however, due to the differences in weather from last year to this year, the plant hasn’t started blooming. It also has been having a difficult time growing as the plant prefers unstabilized dunes, and many of the previously known sites have become stabilized in the recent years. However, we weren’t disappointed, because we found a lot of western wallflower growing, and decided to collect tissue samples! Friday of that week, I was able to go out with Jamie, one of our archeologists, to Huckleberry Mountain. Don’t be fooled, as I was warned, Huckleberry Mountain does not have any huckleberries. We went out so that Jamie could survey some abandoned mine adits before Jason and his team built cages around the openings in hopes of protecting bats from white nose (a terrible fungus that is responsible for the rapid decline of many bat species). While out hiking in the mountains, I came across many avalanche lilies, their brilliant yellows sparkling in the green mountainsides. As we hiked through the mountain to the adits and other sites of historical importance, I was learning a lot about the history of eastern and central Washington from Jamie.

Adit entrance in Huckleberry Mountain

Erythronium glandiflorum (Avalanche Lily) at Huckleberry Mountain

Huckleberry Mountain

While it’s only been 3 weeks, I am growing stronger in my skills at identifying native flora, which so greatly differs from what I was used to in the midwest, and growing increasingly fond of the Pacific Northwest, which isn’t hard to do. This week the office was helping organize Root Day at the Twin Lakes Rec Site with the Spokane Tribe. Root day is where children ranging from elementary to high school spend the day helping dig up biscuitroots to give to the elders of the tribe. The day was gorgeous and it was great attending the ritual, watching/helping the kids identify biscuitruits, and dig them up. Since I still don’t have access to computers I wasn’t able to access the awesome picture of a biscuitroot that I dug up and presented to the elders, but I am told I am now famous at the office as it’s featured on our website! Thursday, I went back out with Jamie, so she could screen for artifacts. While she screened, I was on the hunt for Lomatium bicolor var. leptocarpum – another biscuitroot. While searching for it, I stumbled upon more native plants (Happy belated Native Plant Appreciation Week!!)

Lomatium bicolor var. leptocarpum

Balsamorhiza hookerii (Hooker’s Balsamroot) and a pollinator

Phlox hoodii (Cushion Phlox)

It finally seems to be springtime over in Eastern Washington and we got our first taste of 80 degree temperatures. I am more than slightly ok with the IT issues that have caused me to spend the past 3 weeks in the field, rather than at my cubicle completing trainings. I’m hoping a rainy day will come when I have access, so I don’t miss out on too much! I’m fully prepared to be swamped in blooming flowers in the coming weeks as temperatures continue to warm up; I couldn’t be more excited.

Until next time,

V