The Carrizo Plain, one of our most visited sites, is turning many pretty shades of brown right now as everything dries out.

As our season here winds down  (wow, I can hardly believe there are only a couple months left!) Rachel and I have been focusing more intensely on a few late-seeding plants. One of the plants in full bloom right now is Eriogonum fasciculatum var. polifolium, or California buckwheat. Although the USDA plants profile lists this species as “Eastern Mojave buckwheat,” it grows readily in sites within the Bakersfield Field Office boundaries. This shrub has pretty white flowers that fade to red, then brown and orange as the seeds dry. This is a fairly common plant that grows abundantly along roadsides, so we are happy to have a good number of sources. Here is a picture of Rachel collecting seed at a site near Lake Isabella, CA.

A less common plant that we colleced recently was Isomeris arborea, also called Bladder Pod. According to the seeds of success webpage, it hasn’t yet been collected.

I spent an entire day a few weeks ago re-learning GIS so I could make a map of the San Joaquin River Gorge. We were getting ready for a bioblitz, specifically a plant- and bug-blitz, a three-day long marathon of biological surveying combining the skills of our mentor, a photographer, a coleopterist from Berkeley, and a member of the Southern Sierra Foothill Conservancy, who provided the initial inspiration for the event.

The SJRG is a gem of a parcel just outside of Yosemite, featuring its own interpretive center with outdoor education programming, something of a rarity among BLM land. It is best known for its stunning views from the large footbridge which crosses the San Joaquin River.

Anyway, while mapping I noticed a layer called “cave.shp” describing the length of Millerton Cave, a pile of granite boulders. For some reason, I thought this map had been made with a GPS unit, but after a few failed attempts at getting satellites inside buildings and cars, I realized that cave mapping has to be done the old-fashioned way, using radar and tape, a compass and clinometer.  Cave maps are also three-dimensional, and Millerton cave has a 40-foot drop and descending back passageways.

I had forgotten about the cave until returning to the Gorge this past weekend for the second time with Eric, an ACE intern in our office who also happens to be an awesome local botanist. He agreed to come out and collect seeds with me and chop down some nasty scotch broom that has been residing in the gorge for at least 15 years (we counted the rings!) We also wanted to say goodbye to Andrew, another ACE intern working strictly in Squaw Leap (SJRG’s nom de plume) whose internship ended on Memorial Day.

One of my favorite California flowers is in the genus Clarkia, and goes by two names, harbinger-of-summer and farewell-to-spring, a cool name describing its phenology. It puts out a good number of seeds so we should be able to collect an abundance for the Seeds of Success program. We have at least four species in the gorge!

Farewell, spring!

While Eric and I were walking down the trail surveying the castilleja and clarkia, we suddenly heard running water, and I remembered the cave.

After searching around and following our ears, we found the cave entrance. To the west were what looked like a spilled handful of boulders, where the sound was loudest and a small waterfall ran through several pools, eventually descending into an insurmountable darkness. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen so far in California. Another person with a waterproof camera took some pictures here.

Again and again, I was told “Don’t go to Bakersfield.” It’s hot, hotter than the desert, where a stagnant wind whips the dust into a meringue that sits in the air for days at a time. This is oil country, with many acres dedicated to extraction, for instance in McKitrick, where you can actually see the “bubbling crude” pour out of, and merge with, the ground. My mentor, Denis, tentatively admitted: “getting around in Bakersfield may be difficult without a car.” We will occasionally be working with dust masks. There is a cool local disease called “San Joaquin valley fever” caused by a fungus in the soil that gets kicked into the air during sporadic rainfall.

Since I am a contrarian to the core, and a “different kind of drummer” (says Rachel,) I wanted to see just what made this place so difficult. Have you ever had that carrot juice? The expensive one on sale at Safeway? That’s made by Bolthouse Farms, located here in the southern San Joaquin valley. The valley, which receives relatively little precipitation, grows 3% of America’s produce and extracts a little less than 1% of the world’s oil, which is a lot. So the urban explosion of Southern California is synonymous with water scarcity.

from SJV geology: steam drilling

It is easy to fall into the trap of forgetfulness, to forget that everything is connected with everything else.  How could drinking a carton of carrot juice impact a population of burrowing owls or the kind of water that flows through the taps of the Buck Owens Crystal Palace? If you’re coming this way, come to Bakersfield. I want you to see, breathe, smell it and feel it for yourself. I want to take you to the orange groves. We made this place difficult to live in, and a life of ease is a life of ignorance.

One of the BLM’s great projects out here is an attempt at restoring wetlands near the original site of Tulare, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. The fight still rages for every last drop of water, and our acquisition of Atwell Island is, when put into perspective, quite impressive.

Wait, what lake?

This lake. (source: Delta national Park.org)

Tulare Lake used to capture all of the meltwater from the Sierra mountains, an important stop for  waterbirds on their inland migration. Today it looks quite different, as nearly all of that mountain snow gets intercepted by the farmers who live upstream. On the site itself, the soil has become too alkaline, too enriched with selenium and salt, to prove profitable. Gradually, farmers are selling their unprofitable cropland to the BLM, where a massive wetland restoration is taking place. So far, Atwell Island consists of land and water along an old sandbar. You wouldn’t believe what you’ll see if you head to Atwell Island or to the national wildlife refuge nearby. Birds sighted  on a count in 2007  included

“…sandhill cranes, barn and horned owls, kites and harriers galore, red tails a-courting, several sparrows, marsh wrens, black phoebes, redwing and Brewer’s blackbirds, shrikes, whimbrels, long-billed curlews, killdeer, black bellied plovers, avocets, stilts, cinnamon, green-winged and blue-winged teal, mallards, ruddy ducks with bright cheeks, cormorants and ring-billed gulls. Several sightings were records for the project.”

Although recovery for birds seems dire in a salt-drenched and blazing hot landscape like this, there’s a glimmer of hope for wildlife.  Somehow the birds keep finding their way back. We are actively introducing them as well; one of our first activities as a team was the release of four burrowing owls from L.A into artificial dens originally intended for another nocturnal predator, the San Joaquin Kit Fox. You can watch a video of my mentor, Denis, releasing a burrowing owl here.

https://picasaweb.google.com/100594521801634340032/AtwellIslandBurrowingOwlRelocation?feat=email#5727351485441522850