Today I wrap up  another great few months as a CLM intern. As I was lucky enough to have the opportunity for two CLM internships I suppose the most important question I am asking myself as I head out is whether it was worth doing a second internship. Did I learn new and valuable about myself and land management? My response would be unequivocally yes.

The grouse are on the move as fall approaches just like me.

After my first internship in Miles City, Montana, I was left with a lot of questions. In Montana, I performed a lot of wildlife work in remote areas, saw a lot of public land, and gain confidence in the field. However, as I worked alone, I did not come away with a good understanding of how the different departments of the agency worked together to manage public lands. This summer I gained a much clearer understanding of how the different cogs of the BLM (and at times other agencies) fit together to preserve and mangae our public resources effectively. For example, I contributed to wildlife clearances for a number of fuels and range improvement projects. As the separate departments made plans to effect great change on the landscape, for example clearing pinyon/juniper woodlands or constructing fences, it was my job to survey the action area for wildlife and denote any wildlife constraints or recommendations for the project. Often the Fuels or Range Departments are presented in opposition to Wildlife considerations. But for all the projects I work on, I met folks on both sides dedicated to a balanced approach that would benefit everyone.

Flaming red maples herald the end of another field season.

The small jaunt into the document writing these clearance reports required also gave a me a great appreciation for the work my superior biologists are engaged in. As a seasonal or intern you mostly get to do the fun stuff and are out in the field everyday. But a permanant wildlife biologist spends an enormous amount of time drafting of official documents and reports, like the wildlife clearances. Though I recognize the invaluable nature of these communications, I must admit it has made me apprehensive about seeking a permanent position, which most likely chain me to a desk a bit more than I’d like.

Luckily this summer I was still an intern and out in the field almost everyday, which was a joy. My only major complaint is that much of this time was spent (hours and hours) driving in the truck. I realize, however, that this is inescapable  if you work in a large field office with a number of remote areas.  I suppose this is a good moment to give a nod to my field partner and fellow CLM intern Jen Schmalz, who helped make those long drives a pleasure. In fact, getting to work in the field with Jen was a highlight of this internship.  Her presence greatly augmented the enjoyment and learning I experienced working in the field. We bounced ideas and questions off each other, shared our amazement at intriguing natural wonders,  and exchanged our complementary skills. Additionally, a relief driver on the exhausting, terrible two-tracks was a blessing. I believe we became an efficient, effective team. Thanks, Jen!

As I leave this internship to move onto a position with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Non-Game Wildlife Division, I am looking forward to comparing and contrasting the two experiences. The two positions, though both focusing on wildlife, will take place in wildly different contexts. Work with the BLM out west involves large tracks of public lands, areas where management regimes can be instigated on large swaths of territory. Whereas the DNR on the east coast is constrained by a setting of mostly private holdings. To be effective in wildlife management, the DNR must work extensively with private landowners in a way much different from the BLM. An additional difference between the two agencies will come in their aims and goals. The BLM, with its multi-use motto, must balance wildlife with a number of other imperatives. The DNR, on the other hand, is dedicated more exclusively to conservation and preservation. Despite these differences, I feel that through my time with CLM I’ve built a repertoire of knowledge and skills that will serve well in the new agency.

Golden aspens mean my time as a CLM intern is up.

I’d like to thank the Chicago Botanical Gardens for giving me this second opportunity. Also thanks to my mentor, Christine Pontarolo at the BLM, for giving me independence and responsibility while at the same time being available for any question or concern. I definitely attribute my desire to continue in wildlife management to my time as a CLM intern; it has been a formative experience both pragmatically and ideologically. Thanks so much!!

The past few weeks have seen me chasing grouse all over hill and dale. I don’t know if grouse have a great appreciation for scenery, but they sure do love to hang out on top of hills with beautiful views. Though I’ve mastered the tools of telemetry sometimes it still throws surprising curveballs. Once we heard a pretty strong signal from the top of a mountain. We went down to the foot of the mountain, hiked around searching for the signal, and finally found it faintly pulsing from miles away in the valley. From the opposite side of the valley we could hear it ever so faintly back in the interior. With square miles of roadless valley between these two listening points we had to stop for the day and hope that the bird moves by the next time we look for it.

One of the perks of tramping these hills is all the other wildlife that turns up. Like the golden eagle perched solemnly on a fence post or darting kestrels with voles hanging from the talons. Tiny praying mantises with stunning defensive displays. When we startle a herd of deer or family of antelope I think of the hunters who would enviously place themselves in our shoes. Of course that’s what makes the area so splendid. It is public land so anyone can come and stalk around and see the awesome animals and even hunt them if that is their desire.

Much of the area inhabited by the grouse is the site of an old burn. It’s fascinating to see the progression of recovery. The diversity of forms post-burn that attracts the grouse. I’ve seen all stage of burning at this point. An actually fire, its terrible billows of greasy, poisonous smoke. So visibly foul and polluted, striking fear even when one is safely out of the way. Since then I’ve seen a wash of green grass appear in a matter of days on the slopes. We visited another burn site where the BLM had flown seed and was chaining the ground to turn up the soil and promote germination. A powerful piece of machinery. At the same site a bullhog was in action, placidly chomping down on the  the charred junipers. It’s very thought-provoking to see these powerful forces of destruction, both wild and man-made, that are contradictorily serving to revitalize the landscape.

My internship here ends in just a couple of weeks. Let’s hope I’ll manage to track down the lingering confounding grouse and see the elusive wash of green on the burn fill out and soften the blackened hillsides.

The past couple weeks have been dominated by learning the art of radio telemetry and tracking sage grouse through the hills. I have been helping a graduate student with her research on their movements and habitat use patterns. The grouse is not a federally listed endangered species here and a lot of effort is going into better understanding and hopefully building their populations so it stays that way.

They are funny birds; I love to see their snaky little heads and necks bobbing just above the level of the sage brush before you startle them. Tracking them with the telemetry equipment is like a treasure hunt or a child’s game of hot and cold. As the beeping signal gets stronger and louder you’re are ‘getting warmer’. When you do finally find the bird and it flushes, it is ultra rewarding. They fly up in a great rush and fuss of feathers, often leaving a small rain of droppings as a parting gift. The telemetry can be very tricky as the signal bounces of hills and funnels through drainages. Often we thought, “Oh, the bird is just over this ridge!” only to find it was hanging out (or loafing in grouse-speak) two valleys over.

Another part of the research is doing vegetation transects where we find birds, estimating plant cover mostly. This is less exciting but it’s still great to be outdoors and in the field. I often find myself wishing I was in a kid’s public television show called Cyberchase. In this show (designed to teach math and problem solving), these kids go into a Cyberland that is essentially a computer. When they are faced challenge to solve, they can just use these little remotes to project say a perfect square on the landscape or equally divide a piece of wood or make all the plants of a certain species glow green. Doesn’t this sound like it would be handy for field work? No dragging around tapes or pvc pipe Daubenmire squares. Alas, my fieldwork is in Utah, not Cyberland.

Other than sage grouse, this past week I got to take a look at some wild horses removed from a piece of private land. Our office wild horse guy gave some startling stats about the costs of managing the wild horses herds in Utah. To keep the horses and the rangelands healthy, thousands of horses have to be removed yearly. Used to be a large proportion were adopted, but with the economy down adoptions are way down as well and the BLM has to pick up the tab for maintaining the left over horses. It’s a puzzle. One interesting solution is a pairing with a prison here where the inmates help with the care and breaking of the horses. I had heard of horse therapy for troubled youth and people with disabilities but prisoners was a new and interesting idea.

That’s bout it round here, should be tracking more grouse next week. Maybe will pin down the one elusive female with a brood whose been hiding out in  a remote wash…

Hello!
My name is Catherine Reuter. I am here in Cedar City for a second round as a CLM intern. In 2010, the program provided me with an amazing experience working with the Bureau of Land Management in eastern Montana. Through this opportunity, I built confidence and skills and cemented my desire to participate professionally in conservation fieldwork. But more than anything, that summer showed me how much I have to learn about conservation and left me with innumerable questions.

So I am back this year working again at the BLM hoping to explore some of these questions and no doubt generate new ones! This field office deals with many of the same issues as Miles City Office. Sage grouse are a huge concern in Utah as they are in Montana, prairie dogs as well. However, while energy/mineral development was a huge factor in MT, here it is almost non-existent in the Cedar City Office. So I am excited to build on issues I already have some experience in. But southwestern Utah is NOT eastern Montana! On a basic level the habitats are much different, drier, less diverse plant makeup, the wind (avg. 37mph today!) comes tearing across the Great Basin Desert till it strikes the mountains that begin in earnest behind Cedar City. My nostrils suffered terribly the first week from the desiccated air, so many bloody boogers! But my body is adjusting. Coming from the east coast (my home is in NE Georgia, which is humid and really lush) I’ve do have a lot to adjusting to do. My eyes already ache for green.

But the landscape has so much to offer in its own unique way. In the evening, the low sun just glows on the area’s red rocks and cast deep shadows off the juniper trees and sagebrush. The coloration is more subtle, grey-blues and purple greens. And I’ve already found pockets of verdure. The other night for example we hiked up a small box canyon to survey for a Mexican spotted owl. We will be hiking up this canyon once a week to keep tabs on a male that has been living there for the past few years, sometimes with a mate. A stream runs through the canyon and it is alive with box elder trees, cottonwoods, willows, and horsetails. Apart from the owl (we got an amazing look at this rare species) we spotted a red, yellow, and black king snake, heard the cartoon call of a canyon wren (reminiscent of the sound of Mario falling off a cliff), and found some beautiful blooming penstemon. In fact the array of wild flowers everywhere have really stunned me, even though it has been an extremely hot and dry spring. All colors, purples, pinks, blues, orange, red, yellow, and many of them with a delicious scent. I can only imagine the glory of a wet spring!

Beyond wildflowers, the dry spring will also impact other field office activity: wildfire for example. Cedar City does a lot of fuels projects concerned with providing protection of local communities from the threat of fire. Often these projects (which frequently entail removing juniper and pinyon pine from areas to diminish the threat of fire) are coupled with goals for wildlife habitat improvement. This is a whole realm I’ve had little experience with and I look forward to learning more!

So far, the last couple weeks have been chock full of required training and reading to orient myself in the field office along with a couple of tantalizing days out in the field. On top of the owl survey, we’ve done some other surveying for another threatened bird species, the the southwestern willow flycatcher, along with some vegetation trend surveying for a fuels project. I’m just getting my feet wet and getting familiar with the plants and animals of the area. Can’t wait for the season to get into full swing! I am also excited because during this internship I will have the pleasure of working with another CLM intern on a day to day basis. It will liven up those long ten hour field days that I hammered out completely alone in Montana! So all in all its looking to be a good next few months; I am so thankful for the opportunity to explore new area and a new set of management paradigms and practices.

So I have been working here in Montana at the BLM Miles city Field Office for almost three weeks. What has really struck me so far about working with the BLM is the emphasis on land use (not preservation or conservation) with the integration and compromise of dozens of different interests going into managing the land. I am based out of the Wildlife Divisions and we must reconcile the needs we see for wildlife withe the needs identified by the Recreation, Range, and Minerals Departments. Everyone has different priorities that often clash and it is mind-boggling the number of things going on in a single piece of country. While the interdependence can be frustrating in terms of compromising on important management decisions, this intertwinging of all the departments has already allowed me some neat opportunities way outside my job description.

For example, to better understand the dynamics between the field office and permittees (ranchers renting land from the BLM), last week I got to help out at a cattle branding. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of helping out at a branding, it is just what you image: men on horses roping calves with lassos, cows bawling in the background, blood, mud, and manure everywhere… I had a terrific time! Wrestling calves all day so they can be branded vaccinated, and castrated may not seem like it has much to do with wildlife, but it really gave me a glimpse at land management from the other side so to speak. I got a few interesting opinions on the wildlife I will be working with. For example, later this summer I will be working with prairie dogs, which to me are fascinating, cool wildlife. But to ranchers, prairie dogs are dangerous pests, destroying pastureland, breaking cows’ legs, and spreading Bubonic plague. Therefore, many ranchers have few qualms about using them for target practice. Working and eating alongside some ranchers for a day (a branding traditionally ends with a ‘feed’ – three kinds of pie!) helped put my work in perspective, as part of a whole range of land use imperatives. And more generally, this kind of interaction between the BLM and ranchers helps keep an open dialogue for establishing management practices acceptable for all players.

In other news, I saw a porcupine and a badger last week…

Catherine Reuter

Miles City, Montana

BLM