Entering my last month of work in Roseburg, Oregon, I feel like I finally have a moment to breathe!  The last few months have been hectic with population monitoring and seed collection, with my fellow intern and I attempting to maintain the balance of collecting seeds too early and risking that they’re not viable, and waiting too long and missing them completely.  It’s a much more complicated task than we ever imagined!  Now, however, with nearly three months of sunny skies and no rain, many of our targeted species populations have finished seeding, and we’re left with a lot of brown grass!  Amazingly, however, we’ve managed to identify a few lone native species hanging on throughout the hot summer, waiting until now to bloom.  Neither of us can believe that we can still go anywhere in the Roseburg district and still manage to find something worthy of collecting -I feel very thankful to be here!

Liz Thompson

Roseburg, OR BLM

Starting our internships with the Bureau of Land Management in Roseburg, OR, has been an eye-opening experience for both of us. We are from New Hampshire and New Mexico, respectively, and neither of us had ever been to the Pacific Northwest before. We have had a lot of work to do just learning the hundreds of plant species we come into contact with every day. Additionally, we’ve been attempting to simply acclimate to all the moisture Western Oregon receives – so far it’s rained, snowed, or hailed every day we’ve been in the field, though we’re told in a few short weeks the green hillsides will all dry up and we’ll begin to battle the summer heat.

We’re collecting thousands of native seeds for the Seeds of Success program, so most of our days are spent learning the long list of target species and scouring the district for populations large enough to collect from. Roseburg had a long, wet winter, so many of our target species have yet to bloom. All this moisture gives us hope for a good seed crop though, so we’re patiently waiting for the rain to stop to finally begin our true task for the summer.

Despite not being able to begin our collections, we’ve managed to stay very busy for the past month. We’ve explored much of the Roseburg District, attempting to learn the immense network of active logging roads that we’re still learning to navigate safely, avoid the treacherous and tenacious poison oak that covers much of the landscape, and quickly learn to identify many species we’ve never before seen. So far, the most important thing we’ve learned since we began our internship in Oregon is how much work and dedication goes into seed collection. We’re the first Seeds of Success collection team at this BLM office, so most of our time has been spent simply hiking in the woods, learning to use a mobile GPS device, and hunting for wildflowers. Once we’ve located populations that are appropriate to collect from, we hope to provide the basis for collections for years in the future, aiding in both restoration and research.

Liz Thompson and John Boornazian, Jr.
Roseburg, Oregon
BLM

Beatty Creek Research Natural Area, jointly managed by the USFS and BLM, and one of our favorite collection sites

Calochortus tolmeii, one of the only target species to bloom so far!

A Columbia white-tailed deer fawn, a federally threatened species, that we discovered while looking for target species populations