Greetings from Baker City, OR!

I am writing this as I finish up my final day of my internship. For the 5 past months I have had the opportunity to work in Baker City doing forestry work. I have always missed the trees when I move from Michigan for the summer so I was excited about working in the trees. After completing my internship I am still excited about that. It has helped me to define more of my career goals and help me to realize that I would love to get a job working with forestry. It also would be a way for me to hopefully find a job closer to my home state. While I greatly enjoy being able to more to new places and experience new ecosystems, I miss my family and friends.

I finished up my forestry duties with about 2 weeks left so that gave me the opportunity to do other things and expand my learning and experience. Since we had a week of rainy, wet weather that was not great for field work I had the opportunity to visit a project that will be started next summer. I got a chance to see some of the early planning that goes into setting up this specific project. With our projects complete I also got the chance to go out with the new forestry person and pick her brain for knowledge. She transferred over from the west side of Oregon where the forestry program is run differently and their methods vary. We set up a day where we went out in the woods and I just asked her questions. I was able to see how other areas of the country practice forestry and gain a lot of useful knowledge. I also got the opportunity to go out with other people in the office to see what they do and get some experience with other areas of work.

The Project area for next summer’s work

Our main project area for the work we did this summer

Overall, my internship has allowed me to gain some valuable real life experience that will be beneficial for anybody wanting to work in the federal government. You also have the freedom to tailor your internship to your liking. If you have an interest in something you can go out with an employee who works in that area. Its a great way to help narrow down your career goals without getting stuck in something you end up disliking for the whole summer.

Farewell,

AZ

Baker City BLM

It’s crazy to think I have one month left until I end my internship here in Wyoming. After four months I have gotten pretty settled in here. I’ve learned a lot from my mentors, co-workers, and the people I have met in this small mountain town, and it is going to be a lot harder to leave this place than I imagined when I first moved here (even though I don’t consider snow and freezing temperatures to be a welcoming fall climate). I have honestly fallen in love with:

• Collecting data for habitat assessments and wildlife management.
• Long drives on sometimes difficult terrain through the mountains.
• Snowcapped mountains, even if it’s only September and this already feels like winter to my Kansas pansy self.
• Gannet Grill pizza (for shame, if this wasn’t included in my list).

Recently snowcapped mountains of South Pass, Wyoming. They will stay this way until near the end of May.  It’s a love hate relationship, really. Love the beautiful mountains, hate the cold. Although, the longer I stay here, the longer enduring the cold feels worth it.

In addition to the town, my office has been great, and I have gotten to meet some remarkable humans. The people I have met here have been so kind and willing to share the knowledge they have gained from years of experience. I have had opportunities to go out into the field with the Fire and Fuels Lead, the Botanist, the GIS specialist, and the Archeologist in addition to both of my Wildlife Biologist mentors. I have learned that the path to a permanent position, or a long term career, is often a winding road, and that sometimes, you don’t realize you love something until you try it.  Many of the people I have had the opportunity to talk with in the office had started out on a different path before finding what they wanted to do, and it is often not what they expected. And my mentor, Leah, is more than supportive of the different avenues I was to explore. She has also put up with our quirks and eccentrics all summer, and proudly wears the matching “Wildlife Lead” shirt we made her (ours say “Wildlife Crew”). The design, representative of our yet to be grasped hopes of seeing a bear this season.

From Left to Right: Coli Huffman (Shadow), Brittany Culp, Leah Yandow, and Caitlin Ryan (Me).

Hearing the stories of how others were lead to the positions they now fill has opened my eyes to an even broader mindset in how I search for jobs in the future. I have realized that getting your foot in the door is usually the biggest obstacle, and that sometimes, it might look different than you think.  I have enjoyed working with the many different specialists in my field office and I feel substantially more confident in my pursuit of a career in conservation as I have continued this internship. The group of interns I have been blessed to work with this summer has also been something that will stick with me. I love learning where other people come from and sharing experiences we have had before and during this internship. We have made a lot of memories in the field together. With the support this office has shown, I know that when I wind down my internship in a month, that I will be leaving with great connections for the future.  Below, a documentation the intern crew braving South Pass, on the first day of snow.  Only the strong survived. Just kidding, we all survived.

A very cold, snogwy day in the mountains. The name of the game is layers, layers, layers.

A less snowy, but still cold day in the mountains. Myself, Brittany Culp, James Noyama, and Coli Huffman (no longer a shadow).

Well, all things must come to an end, but it is certainly hard to imagine how quickly this summer flew by! My time here in Idaho has come to an end and it’s about time I head back to home to Mississippi for a short break. Before I make it back home though, I’ll be sure to stop by a few national parks and forests on the way that I just can’t go without seeing!

Awesome tree haven found during a holiday trip

This summer was filled with a lot of new friendships and some unexpected lessons to be learned. While unfortunately I didn’t get to certify myself for wildlife fighting, I still grew as a person and renewed a few of my other skill sets. I was able to re-certify my CPR training in the beginning of the summer and throughout, I was able to continue practicing my bird, plant and invertebrate (as well as other organisms) identification skills. Even though I don’t feel like I’ve necessarily learned any new skills, I feel it is still important to keep practicing skills essential to one’s profession, which I am certain I have. The training provided throughout the summer was very valuable and I was happy to add new knowledge whenever I could, whether it be sage brush identification, or riparian habitat training. Also, learning your way around a GPS model that is new to you can take some practice. I had no idea that GPS units could vary so much! In addition, I also feel like whenever you are given the opportunity to work so closely and continuously with people from different backgrounds in your field, it provides an opportunity to grow and this should not be taken for granted. Socialization and teamwork are skills and attributes that continuously grow throughout your lifetime and I believe each year and each new field partner I receive adds another chapter to my growth. I wouldn’t have enjoyed my summer experience as much as I had if I didn’t have a field partner I could relate with so well on a professional and personal level. Experiences and friendships formed such as these are something I cherish forever and will always be grateful for. You really don’t know how much you appreciate a great field partner turned friend until you’ve experienced working with someone in the past who was a total nightmare! Details like these can make all the difference and can make working your dream job either a living nightmare or a dream-come-true depending on what attitudes and energy you are surrounded by. Thankful to be on the lucky end of things!

the CLM crew electrofishing in Ketchum

burrowing owl

Hera buckmoth found near Malta, ID

little garter snake with a water droplet beard <3

What was rewarding to me was being able to give a helping hand to the BLM, as well as other government entities, whenever I could on a variety of projects. Not only did we assist with sage grouse monitoring, but the BLM also got us out there to pursue studying other organisms of interest whenever they could. From raptor surveys, monarch tagging and jewel beetle wrangling to electrofishing some impressive trout, I feel like our field office tried it’s best to fit in as much wildlife experience as they could in addition to our time in the field studying botany. I found it very rewarding to be able to do both whenever possible, as I have a natural tendency to prefer wildlife over botany. There were a lot of first sightings for me in both the wildlife and botanical realm this summer, and that’s always a plus for me too. 🙂

white lined sphinx caterpillar

the smallest of monarch caterpillars during our search for adults and larvae 🙂

Lycaenid butterfly

I wanted to highlight these experiences that I mentioned above because I don’t want to seem ungrateful at all for the time and experience I gained this summer. The Burley field office has a very welcoming crew and I feel like they did whatever they could to preoccupy us with as much biological surveying as possible. It’s an honor to be the first batch of interns they received from this program and hopefully they will continue to do so in the future!

Beautiful rainbow trout caught while electrofishing with USGS

wood river sculpin also found while electrofishing with USGS

However, I would like to be honest and highlight some expectations that were not met, as requested by the CLM program employees as hopefully this can help other interns in the future. Before accepting the position, it was my understanding that this internship would be majority botany and/or wildlife related. After interviews and questions were all said and done, I went into this thinking that I would be utilized the majority of the time for botany field work. While I did end up working outside more than in the office(which personally, I always appreciate), I feel like the botany aspect was not as prominent as advertised. All in all, the data collection for AIM (habitat assessment for sage grouse) plant surveys, which I understood to be at least 3 out of 5 months of my internship, only lasted about a month. On the other-hand, my field partner and I spent nearly two months placing plastic markers on cattle fence in order to lower sage grouse mortality. While I am not refuting the importance of going to these locations to make sure the fencing is safe for this species, my understanding was that we would be doing majority botany work and I would get a greater opportunity to practice my botanical identification. However, we also got the chance to be involved with the data management aspect of AIM, which is just as important. After the field season for AIM was over, we were also involved with some habitat assessment projects which is a great skill and experience to have, especially if one wants to be involved with ecology. So while I am not trying to knock the internship as a whole because I definitely had some great experiences and cherish this opportunity to look into how the BLM functions, I feel like there is room for improvement for the CLM program.

Coming here as a 3 year alumni from another internship program (Student Conservation Association), I feel like I already had a certain expectation for internships working alongside DOI , which should certainly be taken into account. While working with the people at the Burely office, I could feel that they were doing their best to try and give us as many interesting surveys as possible and I really appreciate that they went out of their way for us, even though they have plenty of their own work to do. This critique is not something that I feel is unique to our field office, as I spoke to other CLM interns in other offices and they had similar thoughts. On the contrary, I feel lucky that our office worked so much to give us as much experience as possible because I feel like compared to other offices, we had more opportunity to work with wildlife and botany surveys. As with many things in life, I am sure this a matter with a multitude of layers and is not something to be pointing fingers at one particular thing. I realize that CLM and BLM are different from other internship programs and government entities, and my only wish is for both of them to continue to flourish despite any obstacles or critiques.

All-in-all with that being said, I know a part of me will certainly miss Idaho and the beautiful views and natural wonders it granted me while I was here. Thanks to this summer, I feel ready and prepared for my next endeavor, which is to attend graduate school, and look forward to what the road has awaiting for me.

Much love to the sagebrush steppe xxxx

-Izzy

City of Rocks reserve near Alma, ID – a must-see if you’re in the area

Field work is really hard! Especially in the desert!

Sometimes it feels like the desert is playing tricks on me, warping my perception. It has been a struggle finding viable seed to collect for our seed banking efforts. Many of the plants that are most important for post-wildfire restoration have produced little to no seed this year.

About a month or so ago, Mike and I took a walk through the site of the recent Long Valley fire. It was pretty spooky. There was no sign of any herbaceous plants and all that remained of the shrubs were blackened twigs. At first glance, the area looked like a desolate wasteland. Then I looked closer. Ants scrambled around the charred gravel. A lone mushroom stood, flushed by all the water from the firefighting effort. Desert peach sprouted from the bases of charred bushes.

What had appeared to me as a lifeless landscape was actually full of vitality and regeneration. It reminded me that the apocalyptic rhetoric that we conservationists often use to galvanize support for our cause can overlook the innate regenerative potential of threatened ecosystems. How often have seed banks been billed as “doomsday vaults”? I think that this sort of apocalyptic thinking is not only destructively pessimistic, but also endows us conservationists with a false sense of self-importance. As soon as we start believing that the earth is dying because of us, we start believing that we alone can save it. Not to say that we haven’t caused irreparable damage to this planet. But I think it is important to acknowledge that ecosystems are incredibly resilient and that they will recover from our impact regardless of whether we welcome a few sacred species onto our ark. Granted, this recovery might not take place on a timescale that is acceptable to us as users of the land. It will probably be millennia before natural antagonists evolve to put a check on invasive organisms.

On a lighter note, I went to Lake Tahoe this past weekend. Such beautiful, such wow, such boats. We went on a gorgeous hike to the top of Twin Peaks, visited an “authentic Scandinavian castle” and swam to a small island in the middle of the lake.

As we are more than halfway through our seed collecting internship, I have once again revised my list of favorites among the sites in which we collect, and Mast Rd Natural Area in Epping, NH has consistently been near the top.

Mast Rd Natural Area is turning into quite a friendly space for the weekend hiker. It is a forested site containing a few wetland areas and a meadow and is currently undergoing restoration to make it more accessible to pedestrians. When we first visited the site, the felled trunks and the tire marks revealed that Mast Rd Natural Area used to be an ATV trail system. The construction has been apparent with each visit and the trails are starting to take shape; gravel has been lain and bridges have been constructed over less than solid land.

Both the weekend hiker and the seasoned field worker will find plenty of fascinating sights here. That is part of the beauty of Mast Rd Natural Area. Though New Hampshire rises to mountain elevations further inland, this natural area is rather flat, providing for an easy walk that will allow hikers to focus on what they see along the trail instead of whether they will reach the end.

As seed collectors, we love this site. We have made thirteen collections here to date, which speaks to the range of diversity among the habitats that support a variety of native plant populations. The Carex species are well represented, with different ones growing in different areas, depending on soil wetness. We have collected Sparganium americanum and Eleocharis obtusa, which generally grow in standing water. We have also collected species that are typically found in bogs with acidic and moist, spongy soil, like Rhynchospora capitellata and Triadenum virginicum. We will probably collect a grass growing in a drier part of Mast Rd Natural Area next month, Schizachyrium scoparium. Also, we never made an official collection of Vaccinium angustifolium or Vaccinium corymbosum, but we taste-tested these highbush and lowbush blueberries to our heart’s content and mostly agreed that the highbush is more delicious. You too can pick wild blueberries at Mast Rd Natural Area in the summer months.

Bog habitat at Mast Rd. PC: E. Tokarz

Every time we have been to Mast Rd Natural Area, we have also noted a spectacular nature sighting. Once we saw a grasshopper molt its exoskeleton. It unfurled a large abdomen as it waddled away from its skin, its back legs still glued together. We gaped in wonder at the shell it left behind, which looked to be less than half its new size. Another time, we nearly stepped on a quail. It sat unfazed by our near step as we reached for some Scirpus, seeming to be more curious than concerned. We all agree there is always more to explore and to notice than we have time for, and that we can best appreciate this natural area on foot.

The exoskeleton of the grasshopper at Mast Rd. Natural Area, NH. PC: E. Tokarz

P.S. This site has a bonus. It is only ten minutes away from the Lindt chocolate factory outlet store. You’ve never seen so many truffles in your life!

A room with a view. The red tundra in the Denali National Park backcountry.

September has been a month of change. In the span of a short couple of weeks, the landscape has completely changed color. Snow has beginning to creep down the mountain slopes. The tundra has transformed red from the dwarf birch and the boreal forest has become spotted with brilliant yellow from the aspen. Having gone to school in Vermont (aka where leaf peeping is a sport), fall foliage is a pretty big deal to me and I must say Alaska did not disappoint.

Besides helping out the recreation crew, working on my plant collection, and continuing to inventory forest resources out at Tanacross, I also had the opportunity of attending the Cook Inlet Chapter of the Society of American Forester’s Aspen Workshop. It was three-days jam-packed with learning all about the spectacular species that I have worked with so much in the past three months here. Though I pass by these trees on a daily basis, I honestly hadn’t scratched the surface of how important this species is ecologically.

My main “Take Aways” from the workshop:

1. Alaska is still truly the last frontier when it comes to studying plant diseases! There is still so much to learn!  

The USFS Plant Pathologist Lori Winton led us in a field exploration of the aspen running canker, a fungus which has infected 70% of aspen in sampled stands and is basically a death sentence for the tree. Even experts are baffled by this fungus because no reliable fruiting bodies could be found to make a positive identification. The spread of this fungus is advancing quite quickly across the interior. On one of our many field trips, we got to observe the canker in action. After scraping back the thin bark of some of the young trees, you can actually see the line between dead and live tissue where the canker has infected.

The running canker itself! Note the cut in the distinct line between the dead cambium (tissue) where the canker has infected versus the yellowish green living tissue.

Lucky 13. My fellow CLM intern Rob Tepperburg discovered the sunken in sign of the canker on this young aspen!

USFS Plant Pathologist Lori Winton and CLM Intern Jacob DeKraai examine an inoculated aspen for signs of the mysterious running canker!

2. Just because there is no large scale timber industry does not mean that forestry is a thing of the past.

Yes, most of the mills are inactive and one of the most profitable wood products is firewood. However, after learning from state foresters, researchers, and silviculturalists, forestry projects are alive and well here! Some areas of state land are currently being managed to increase aspen response which can promote wildlife species that depend on early successional growth like ruffed and sharp-tailed grouse. We got to visit some treatment sites where crazy equipment like roller-choppers were used to increase aspen regeneration and promote grouse and moose habitat. Another vastly undervalued use for aspen is its potential for biomass energy. The local Tok School has a wood boiler that they use as both a heat and power source. Though currently only spruce is generally used, there is a potential that aspen could also be used in the right mixture to help heat the school.

A massive roller-chopper! This piece of machinery is pulled behind a dozer and often filled with antifreeze to increase weight. The blades chop and break apart larger stems and can cut into the ground to help scarify the soil and roots.Long story short: Since aspen is a clonal species, if you cut the mature trees in a stand and cut into their vast root network, younger stems will sprout from the response in the growth hormone auxin.

A disc-trencher- another site preparation tool to help scarify and break up the soil and roots to increase the response of aspen regeneration.

Bear markings on an aspen. Bears are said to mark their territory by cutting into trees. Aspen’s thin bark makes them an especially good choice for showing other bears who’s part of the woods they’ve just entered.

3. Cooperation Counts! Land managers and scientists are a huge asset to one another.

One final take-away message I learned from the workshop was just how incredibly valuable interdisciplinary communication can be. From the get-go, Dr. Paul C. Rogers, an aspen connoisseur and creator of the Western Aspen Alliance (WAA) stressed the importance of managers and scientists working together in a close relationship. The purpose of the WAA is to produce sound scientific publications that can keep land managers up to date so they can transfer this knowledge to action in the field. The compartmentalization of disciplines from forestry, wildlife, ecology, entomology, pathology, etc. is in the past! I believe the most valuable science is applied and the most valuable land management is guided by science! It’s a win-win! It was amazing to see the discourse out in the field among the group of professionals from a whole suite of different disciplines. You can really tell that workshops like this one really help get their gears turning and allow for future partnerships down the road.

A sea of yellow! A successful influx of young aspen coming in after last year’s roller-chopping treatment, part of the state’s grouse project.

After the workshop, it was great to go back to work and actually take what we were learning and apply it to our inventory project. We started noticing canker right off the bat in the aspen we were coring and also saw a bunch of grouse busy at work in the aspen stands we are working in. What a month September has been in the 49th state!

Running canker in a core of an aspen?

Until next time,

Katlyn Williard

CLM Intern, Glennallen, AK Field Office

The aurora borealis!!! Spotted in Tok, AK

Fall. It is truly the most wonderful time of year. Not because of the pumpkin-spiced everything (which I believe to be an overrated economical addition to the season, not to mention I am allergic to cinnamon). Rather, it is because of the warm autumn yellows, reds, and oranges, the cool, crisp air and frost on the tips of the mountains, and the feeling of accomplishment after a busy field season.

Fall colors presenting themselves and tips of mountain tops white with new snow in the distance, near Berthoud Pass, Colorado. Photo: B. Palmer.

Speaking of which, it has been one whirlwind of a season! I have seen so many fantastic places, and have been able to get some marvelous work experience. I am honored to have been a part of the T&E monitoring projects of the Colorado BLM as well as a small part in Seeds of Success.

Just weeks ago we finished up our last full (not to mention hot) week of field work from Montrose, Colorado. Our crew went to check out the rare deserty-endemic, Eriogonum peniliophylum. Its demography is very restricted to Mancos Shale scrubland, only found in this little area on the western slope of Colorado. We could easily see the landscape was parched, as we drove to monitoring sites that looked like they haven’t gotten any rain in months! The little buckwheat plants were holding on though; despite their ramshackle appearances and low reproductive numbers, they seemed to be doing all right, at least from second glance.

The drab colors of drought – grays and browns oh my. I don’t think I saw a single green color those few days we were out there! Photo: B. Palmer

A very dried out – but still living – Eriogonum penilophyllum. This was a normal sight those few days we monitored this plant.

On this same trip I also took part in some point-in-time counts for Sclerocactus glaucus. This was one of the first things we monitored in the season, so it was neat to go back in the end of the season to see these little cacti again – feels like I have just about come full circle. My mentor wanted to include landscape aspects of this species in the yearly review of the cactus, and this meant including as many point-in-time counts as possible. To jog your memory, the point-in-time helps calculate the density of the populations with a high confidence interval, and compare populations to each other to understand what is going on with those populations at a landscape level. The multiple point-in-time plots we calculated varied greatly, but now we are a step closer at understanding landscape population levels, and hopefully can use these data to understand how it may change in future years.

Although we saw Sclerocactus glaucus in the spring with cute little flowers, with some difficulty we were able to find these in the wrong time of the season for the point-in-time counts…little cacti pups and seedlings included! . Photo: B. Palmer

The crews setting up a point-in-time for Sclerocactus glaucus. We met up with seasonal workers from the Uncompahgre (Montrose) Field Office and Grand Junction field office, all of which have been helping out with finding Sclerocactus glaucus populations. Photo by: B. Palmer

Of course, I have been able to make a few more SOS collections in between helping with the Threatened and Endangered (T&E) plant monitoring. Between T&E and SOS, it has been a very busy season and difficult to get a lot of collections, but I am glad I have been able to contribute even at least a little. It has been very rewarding to go out in the field and see the plethora of seeds that have so much potential, yet at the same time, I am a little disappointed that I couldn’t get to them all on my own. Of course, I hope to have a few more collections made in the coming weeks, before the first freeze on the Front Range.

A dried-out and ready -to-collect population of Orthocarpus luteus, Yellow owl-clover. One of many SOS collections I was fortunate enough in getting.  Photo: B. Palmer

With the exception of a few cool season grass collections (and hopefully a sagebrush or two), as the days shorten, the colors change, and the morning air becomes brisk, the field season comes to a close. One of our last days out, the Colorado State Office Crew drove up to Rifle, Colorado. We were welcomed with changing colors of the Aspens on our way there, and yet again, I noticed the field season coming around full-circle. The first trip we took was to monitor a milkvetch (Astragalus debequaeus) in the same area of Rifle, Colorado, Anvil Points. And yet here we were just a few days ago, on one of the last trips of the season to monitor Penstemon debilis. On our way to the site I was pleasantly surprised with one more SOS collection, a native thistle only found in two counties of Colorado.

Anvil Points, a location of an old, abandoned oil shale mine, and also home to many Colorado native and endemic plants. Photo: B. Palmer

Instead of helping out with the Penstemon debilis monitoring plot (thankfully there was lots of help), I decided to take advantage of the hundreds of fruiting Cirsium barnebyi that lined the road and slopes on the way up the side of the shale mountain. Even though I prickled and poked my hands continuously while grabbing the heads, I am happy to make SOS collections when and where I can! Photo: B. Palmer

I believe I took a picture of a similar sight months ago back in May, marking my first day of field season, and this as one of my last of 2017. Photo: B. Palmer

As I said before, it is the most wonderful time of year. I love autumn, and everything that goes with it – the soft, warm colors, the crisp morning air, the season of hot cocoa (and yes, pumpkin-spiced lattes). But this year, it includes the feeling of a successful, accomplished season – like I have been able to contribute, even at least a little, to the world. Before I wanted into botany, I previously worked as a line cook, with the goal of becoming a chef. I can honestly say I never felt the way about that job as I currently do now. I love this line of work, and hope I can continue down this path in the future. What does the future hold? Who knows – I will be taking the GRE in the coming months, and applying to graduate school for either plant conservation of plant phylogenetics, so I imagine going back to school may be near. What I do know now is that the CLM has been a wonderful program to be involved in, and I couldn’t have asked for a better crew to work with this last summer.

These guys are intelligent, hard working, and good sports! I have learned to much from all of them, and I am happy to have been able to work with them for the 2017 field season! From left: BLM State Botanist Carol Dawson, former CLM intern and BLM contractor Phil Krening, CLM intern Taryn Contento, and of course, myself.

Thanks for an incredible journey CLM!

-Brooke Palmer, Colorado State Office BLM

When I first came to Frazier Park, I was scared. It was two days after graduation, my first summer away from home, and my first time moving to a new place with no one that I knew. However, when I first stepped out of the car, smelt the Jeffery Pines ad fresh air, I knew it would be an amazing summer. I was right. This summer has been one of the best. I have made new friends, had amazing experiences, and made steps to conquering some personal fears.

Through this internship, I have realized that field work is amazing. Before, I knew I enjoyed being outside, but this summer allowed me to work outside for extended periods of time. Certain days, I was not sure if I could continue on. I was tired, sore, and hungry. But then just over the next ridge we would make an amazing discovery, and my energy would be restored. I have learned how to use a radio, which is much different than a walkie-talkie. I have become more familiar with GPS equipment. Best of all, I have improved my academic learning, and used it in hands on situations.

The Chumash used to call Mt. Pinos the “Center of the World,” and being here this summer, I completely understand what they meant. When standing at the top of the mountain, you can see for miles and miles in all directions. However, I do not believe the Chumash named the mountain just for its amazing view. While being in nature this summer, making collections and documenting locations, I felt at peace with the world. This may sound strange to come, but I believe the Chumash named this area the “Center of the World” because it brings a sense of calm to people, unlike anywhere else. I am very sad to be leaving this special place, but I am leaving thankful of the experiences and opportunities it has provided to me.

This past month in the BLM office has been a lot of office work. Since collections have come to an end, I have getting the last bit of information wrapped up. With Seeds of Success out of the way, I have free time to help co-workers in extra work they might not have all that much time for. Many of my hours have been spent organizing the herbarium. The goal is to get our herbarium up on a symbiota so it can be found by fellow researchers who might be wanting to herbarium research in our area. This is a long and tedious process, since each herbarium specimen needs to be entering manually into the symbiota, but it sure does give me something to do.

Other extras I have had the chance to do is help out with the greenhouse. The greenhouse has been neglected for about 2 years now and getting it up and running again takes a lot of work. Special measures have to be done to ensure everything is sanitized and ready to use. We also get to do a education outreach with the greenhouse for 6th graders from the nearby elementary school every other week. This is a good experience because it gives me skills in working with children and education.

Mussel surveys have been another task that filled my spare time. This was a nice change from other tasks I have been doing. The surveys would of been a great thing to do when Redding temperatures were out of control, but it was still cool to wade in the cool water and count native fresh water mussels that were fastened to the stream floor.

With one more week to go in my internship my emotions are feeling scrambled. I am excited to take my new found skills and apply them to other jobs in the future, but am also scared to leave the secure feeling I have here. I have made friends and I like my co-workers; I will be sad to leave them. Life will go on though and I am eager to see what comes next.

-Amanda, Redding BLM Field Office

Summer has drawn to a close and the focus of my work here at Cosumnes River Preserve has shifted slightly. While I am still involved in a wide variety of tasks from day-to-day, lately my time has been spent working in our wetlands and learning the wetland management system that is used here. With the guidance of our wildlife biologists, I have slowly but surely been learning the ins and outs of providing good habitat for the over-wintering waterfowl that we and the public love to see at the preserve.

As a wetland preserve with numerous ponds, tasks begin with first knowing what ponds need to be flooded up, the date on which they are to be flooded, and any work that needs to be done to the ponds prior to their flooding. Earlier on in the summer I was tasked with collecting GPS data points for the infrastructure of the ponds. This has turned out to be a critical learning opportunity for me because knowing the ponds (their location, design, and infrastructure) is, not surprisingly, absolutely necessary for managing the system.

Once any work has been done (mowing weeds down, moving soil around, treating invasives, etc.–essentially the focus of our work this summer), we then proceed to put boards into our water control structures. These water control structures basically act as mini dams to keep water in or let it out as we deem fit. After checking all of the valves to see if they are in their appropriate state (open/closed) for the task at hand, we turn on our pumps to flood the ponds. This is done much the way irrigated pasture or rice fields are done in the area. In fact, as a preserve with farmers practicing wildlife-friendly agriculture, they use the same system for maintaining their organic rice fields.

Due to an array of factors such as size, depth, valve output, etc., each pond takes a different amount of time to flood up. As a beginner, this would be troublesome. However, I have well-experienced co-workers who have been teaching the system and know very closely how much time it takes to fill these ponds.

Each day I have been going out to monitor the ponds for depth and bird usage to ensure we are providing the habitat we wish to be providing. With only basic familiarity with the waterfowl, this has been extremely helpful for letting me practice my on-the-fly counting skills and my bird ID skills. 

On an quite exciting note, the Sandhill cranes have finally arrived at the preserve. As our “superstar” birds, this is an exciting development and it has definitely increased the amount of visitor we have been receiving. One thing I have learned is that some people really, really love birds.

I have been challenged every day to learn something new and I have been really enjoying the focus of my recent work. With a little over a month left, it is hard to believe that my experience here is almost up. Each day I continue to do my best to get the most out of this great opportunity and am very thankful for it.

Until next time,

Tyler Rose

Cosumnes River Preserve

Sandhill cranes utilizing a managed wetland pond.

More Sandhill cranes