Not much has been going on lately at the Carson City BLM office for us besides seed collecting and even that has been slow.  Right now it seems like we are in a period when plants have either just dropped their seed or are still in flower.  But when we stumble across the rare wet area in the desert we have been finding that the Juncus and Carex species are ready to go.  These end up being easy collections because there are so many seeds per plant.  It sounds like we will be starting fire rehab soon which entails going out and surveying the damage of the fires that have been going on around us.  Then we write up a fire rehab plan and suggest a course of action.  There have probably been 5 or 6 fires in the past couple weeks so we will definitely be busy.

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

I have been at the Carson City BLM district office for about 5 1/2 months now and it has quite the experience.  We started seeding the grass Poa secunda in an area that had recently had a fire go through.  Then the snow came and we were inside the office for about a month and a half doing trainings and computer work.  Eventually were able to get back into the field where we finished the seeding project and started working on invasive plant control especially of Tall whitetop.  We just recently finished a long term project that called for our team of nine interns to plant and cage 21,000 bitterbrush seedlings for deer to graze on.  With the temperatures rising and the field season in full swing, we are starting to do some weed monitoring and surveys for multiple rare plant species.  The jobs change from week to week so there is always something new to do and new places to go see.