Vestal and Arrow Peak catching first light in Colorado’s San Juan Mtns.

My CLM adventure began 17 months ago. At the time I was unsure whether or not I should accept the offer and move to California. I had a couple other things in the mix and having a background more inclined to the non-profit conservation world I suppose I was somewhat skeptical about a variety of things, and most certainly somewhat skeptical of the BLM. Since then, my time as a CLM intern has had two distinctly contrasting chapters, and I feel lucky that my experiences encapsulated much of the reality of what it means to work within federal land management in this day in age.

My time with CLM started out in the Alturas Field Office in northeastern California. I was hired to work with the ubiquitous upland game bird the greater sage grouse – which, as many of you likely know, has become the poster child for species conservation in the intermountain west. I had worked with the bird previously as a telemetry technician in northeastern Utah. I spent the previous summer batting around the brush of the Wyoming Basin for up to a hundred and twenty hours in a ten day work week searching out birds, following them from their winter capture near leks, through nesting and brood rearing seasons. Through the field season I got to know the birds I was following and the landscape they inhabit intimately, but through that experience I also developed a distain for the bird and the political quagmire that surrounds the species.

Working for the BLM in Alturas only accentuated the details of the quagmire. The Alturas Resource Area covers an area on the periphery of the bird’s historic range. The Modoc Plateau contains slivers of suitable sagebrush steppe habitat bracketed by the juniper and fir uplands of the Warner Mountains and the Southern Cascades. Alturas only has three active leks (leks which have had birds present during the past the three years). During my lek count surveys I counted a total of five birds on one lek within the Alturas Resource Area. I found it difficult to believe that the Nevada Dept. of Wildlife (NDOW) and the BLM were operating under a “no net loss” premise regarding the future of the bird. I struggle with this fact since our best understanding of the biology and ecology of the species warranted federal protection some 15 years ago, but that due to other vested interests it is doubtful that the species will ever be listed.

To be quite candid, my first internship was a bumpy ride. I struggled communicating effectively with my mentor and struggled with the lack of acceptance of forward thinking in the office. These challenges were only magnified by the blatant incongruences within much of the data that I was being asked to collect. I say this not to nock the agency, many of the challenges faced by field personnel and field offices are very real and stem from one of the great fallacies of federal land management – which is that its possible to responsibly manage a quarter billion surface acres with one agency comprised of a limited staff – a problem which has only gotten worse due to the sequester and the lack of congressional leadership.

Having the opportunity to work in a remote field office allowed me to realize many of these challenges and experience them first hand. I began to wonder how it’s possible to have long term goals with a short-term budget – or even worse, no budget at all. I left Alturas with a feeling that the system has inherent inefficiencies in the way it operates. I also left at a loss of what to do about it. On my way to Colorado I took three weeks to explore the northwest coast and clear my head with Cascade vistas and chilly ocean breezes. I lucked out though; back in Colorado I was offered a position to resume my status as a CLMer at the State Office working with the botanist. After some back and forth during the government shutdown and frozen funding I started work mid-winter.

I grew up in Colorado, and have spent the majority of my life in the southern Rocky Mountain region. I have studied there and identified with it as my home. Though, my work has always taken me elsewhere – so I was excited by the prospect of working for the state botanist, and to get to work in places that I have grown up with as my back yard.

My experience at the state office was something I couldn’t have predicted. A lot of the pieces fell into place and things started making sense. Being at the State Office allowed me to interact with a wide variety of specialist filling different roles within the agency around the state. Working with the procurement office was an experience that every aspiring land manager or conservationist should have. If you don’t understand how funding works, or the vast sums of money that change hands between federal, private, and academic institutions it is really difficult to understand why or how the BLM operates that way it does. Additionally, working at the state level allowed us to travel around and interact at a variety of field offices.

Since my work began in the winter I spent the vast majority of my time conducting analysis on demographic data from previous years of trend monitoring. I had always been the field technician, collecting data that left my hands for analysis (if it made it that far). Having the opportunity to practice statistical analysis most certainly allowed me to connect the dots to see how data collection affects real land management decisions as well as how to design meaningful research. Most of all though, my co-CLMer Nathan, and our mentor Carol, and myself had a very functional dynamic and were able to work successfully as a team. Having the opportunity to step up to the plate and design my own projects that contributed to the goals of the program was a big step for me, and I owe it to Carol for giving us that freedom.

All in all, working at the state office enabled me to see how to develop, implement, and nurture a program that is based on employing established and accepted methodologies to collect meaningful data that can be used to assess management practices with the goal of conservation in the face of an uncertain future (a mouthful). Working within the federal system certainly has its challenges and it’s most certainly not all peaches-and-cream, but ultimately that is the goal. I suppose in retrospect, my CLM experience gave me a complete and comprehensive picture of the struggles and the solutions to these struggles. The tides are changing in land management (albeit slowly at times) and we are in need, now more than ever, of having effective individuals doing the work of the future within these agencies – a lot depends on it.

As for my future, next week I’ll be beginning an MS program at Colorado State University pursuing a degree in Conservation Leadership. Our research and conservation project will be conducted in the Toledo District of southern Belize.

Until next time, best of luck and best regards!

Phil Krening
Colorado State Office – BLM
pkrening@gmail.com

Two weeks ago Nathan, my co-intern, and I departed Denver in a mid-May snow storm which had socked in over the southern Rockies and turned mid- May into what seemed more like mid-winter. Such is the weather on the crest of the continent. We were headed to the western slope to run the Gunnison to complete cactus surveys. The Gunnison is one of the Colorado’s principle upper tributaries which drains the western aspects of the Continual divide as it runs through the Sawatch and San Juan mountains. Despite the snow rapidly accumulating outside my house in Denver the previous evening, I shoved board shorts, sandals, and the typical warm weather river gear into my dry bag feeling like I was packing more for a tropical get-away than for the wintery wet conditions outside.
The storm wore on the next day as we passed through South Park, down into the Arkansas River valley, and over the continental divide at Monarch Pass. Tomichi Creek and the town of Gunnison were encased in a wintery blanket of white. We continued westward into the evening passed Blue Mesa finally pausing at the rim of the Black Canyon to rest for the night. It was late and we needed to be up early, I hesitated before setting up my tent but finally conceded considering the conditions. It snowed late into the night accumulating lightly on the rain fly of my tent every so often cascading off in miniature avalanches. The temperature dipped low but I stayed warm insulated inside my goose down bag.

The following morning the snow had stopped but a heavy fog still shrouded the Black Canyon. As we drove off the rim toward Montrose the red rock country lay in the distance basking in the early morning sun; leaving us hopeful that the weather had finally taken a turn for the better. We met Brandee and Ken at the Uncompahgre Field Office in Montrose to assemble the gear and meet with river rangers Blaire, Ryan, and Rooster the head honcho. We were going on a cactus hunt.

The BLM on the western slope has been caught up in a debate over a small barrel cactus. Sclerocactus glaucus has consumed most of my time at the state office for the past several months. Earlier this year I conducted a literature review and compiled a status report for the species with the ultimate goal of getting a delisting package and petition drafted this coming winter. While the cactus most certainly has a limited range of distribution; being that it is endemic to several counties on Colorado’s western slope, it is certainly more abundant than USFWS believes it to be. I recently received an update to the Element Global Rank documented by the Colorado Natural Heritage Program estimating a total global metapopulation size of 25,000 individuals. Having been working with the cactus for the past three months it was clear that this was likely a low-ball estimate.

Unlike many other rare and endemic species S. glaucus doesn’t appear to be a specialist. In fact, within its confined range we’ve found it occupying a wide variety of habitat some of which is very intact and other areas which would be considered marginal by the most generous assessment. We’ve found it occupying sites with highly developed cryptogrammic soils, on selenium shale badlands, areas of hardscrabble as hard packed and scabby as concrete, and in areas nuked by grazing where you literally have to peel back the cheat grass to find the plants. In general though, S. glaucus doesn’t venture very far from the alluvial river terraces of the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers in the upper reaches of their basins. A broad swath of potential habitat exists in a rather remote region which spans the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area and the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness and is only reasonably accessible by floating the river.

As we drove to the put-in north of Delta, low clouds and a fresh layer of snow clung to the broad flanks of the Grand Mesa, but by the time we shove off mid-morning the temperature had climbed into the mid-sixties with cobalt blue skies and a slight breeze and only promised to improve. The weather in the high desert canyons of the western slope is capricious by nature. During the short spring season you could experience a variety of weather ranging from rain and snow to temperatures in the upper eighties. The river was cappuccino muddy and running reasonably high at 3,500cfs. Rooster informed me that with the monumental snowpack still clinging to the divide and the coming warm temperatures that in a few week’s time the river would be ripping at at least twice its current volume. The stretch we were running though was fairly tame and lazy so it wasn’t difficult to sit back, relax, and watch the canyons unfold around each meander.
We were targeting areas on the rivers west bank which is encompassed by the wilderness area; the goal being if we can locate significant populations which are already within a protected area that our pitch for delisting will be strengthened. Despite having nine people and the better part of three days the amount of potential habitat flanking river left was remarkable, stretching nearly the entire 26 miles between Escalante Canyon and our take out a Whitewater just before Grand Junction. We focus on areas surrounding establish river-rat campsites fanning out along alluvial slopes and ledges. It isn’t long before were into the cactus. We assess areas quickly, pin flagging individuals to keep a running count, mapping polygons, and moving on downriver – a process we keep up for three days. The river rangers aren’t the only ones astounded by the amount of cactus we were finding. You could barely walk a few feet in any direction without bumping into it clustered cactus bunches crouching squat in the grass and shrubbery. On one afternoon we effectively counted close to 2,000 individuals in a five acre area.

By the time we reached the take-out at Whitewater we were nearly cactus’d out and feeling pretty good about ourselves. After three days of surveys in only a portion of the potential habitat which flanks the river through the canyons, we successfully located 6,000 previously undocumented individual cacti, or nearly 20% of the previously believed global population. With another few tours in the boats it is very conceivable we could locate an additional 25,000 individuals. It remains to be seen what the fate of the cactus will be. But for now it feels good to know that hard work and persistence pays off.
Until next time from the Front Range,

Phil Krening
Colorado State Office – BLM
Lakewood, CO

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Dominguez – Escalante National Conservation Area

Entrada sandstone and the muddy Gunni

Pyramid Rock ACEC

S. glaucus

Last week Nathan, Carol, and I met with Ken Holsinger and Brandi Wills from the Uncompahgre Field Office to complete our first monitoring trip of the season. We were investigating a rugged area formed by tributaries of the Gunnison River which has carved the sandstone and shale landscape of the high desert basin into dissected canyons as the river arcs north towards its confluence with the Colorado in the Grand Valley. The Grand Mesa, the world’s largest flat-topped mountain, the snowcapped West Elk, and massive San Juan mountain ranges crown the scene gleaming snowcapped in the hazy distance.
We were looking for cactus. Not just any cactus, we were looking for Sclerocactus glaucus, a small ball-shaped cactus which often doesn’t exceed the size of a tennis ball and has a proclivity to hide out in these shaley areas of hardscrabble amongst pygmy woodlands of pinyon Juniper. A species listed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened, S. glaucus is a deceiving species, shrouded in a cloud of confusion surrounding its precise taxonomy. I had found out just how contentious views of the species are over the previous six weeks or so while sifting through all of the available literature while compiling a status report for the species.

The genus Sclerocactus consists of approximately 15 distinct species based on systematics. The trouble is that, like other genera of cacti, Sclerocactus’s morphology is highly plastic, making it difficult to classify based on structure alone. Populations of Sclerocactus are isolated in unique environments across the arid west, and most display unique morphological characters. The trouble has been that recent phylogenetic investigation has been beginning to illustrate that the cactus are actual more closely related than previously believed. Some populations which are believed to be genetically pure even possess mixed morphologies, suggesting that the genus may be composed of a large complex of individual ecotypes dictated by geography more-so than effects of genetic drift.

For being a local endemic S. glaucus is notoriously difficult to locate. Known only from four counties on Colorado’s western slope, its patterns of distribution are somewhat confounding in that it is found in a variety of different habitat, soil types, and densities. Plants are small, cryptic, and difficult to locate in the field outside a couple weeks a year when they are flowering; thus making our task to locate new populations to understand the full extent of the range and generate a realistic population estimate based on sound statistical methods a somewhat daunting task.

After a month of in-depth research into the species, seeing it in its native habitat shed light on the difficulties this species presents when trying to get a sense of its abundance and distribution. Miles and miles of potential habitat exist in the form of alluvial river benches and adobe badlands stretching to the horizon.  Yet Sclerocactus populations are few and far between, existing in patchy niches where plants are at times locally abundant. Despite this fact, we were able to locate several populations suitable for sampling, and set up several new plots.

The coming weeks are slated to hold more cactus work. We will be setting up new plots on BLM and private land to monitor the trend of specific populations. We are additionally scheduled to search for populations on the large High Lonesome Ranch near Debeque, Colorado. As well as raft a twenty some miles stretch of the Gunnison to clear areas of suspected cactus occupancy in the Dominquez Canyon Wilderness Area.

Phil Krening
Colorado State Office – BLM
Lakewood, CO

The Adobe Badlands of Delta County, CO (Mancos shale formation) ©Phillip Krening http://headwaters.sqsp.com

Sclerocactus glaucus in flower ©Phillip Krening http://headwaters.sqsp.com

Spring appears to be on the not so distant horizon here on Colorado’s Front Range. Although spring in the Rockies is typically characterized by capricious and unsettled weather; Chinook winds rush off the mountains as the peaks are warmed by the growing strength of the sun. In town, temperatures climb momentarily into the seventies coaxing people from their winter repose. Although, just as you’ve gotten used to the idea that winter may be relaxing its frosty grip, the weather takes another turn and we wind up with six inches of sloppy spring snow on the ground. Spring appears to be further off in and among the high peaks and parks. Last weekend while skiing through the lodgepole pines of Grand County I was taken aback by the greater than two meters of snow which still insulates the cold hard ground. Somewhere down there beneath that blanket of white are the plants we hope to be monitoring in a few months’ time.

At the Colorado State Office my attention has been focused west of the high peaks on the high desert canyons and plateaus of the Western Slope. The Grand Valley and Gunnison River basin form the banana belt of the state; so to speak. The climate is relatively mild and supports vineyards and extensive orchards of peaches during the summer months. On the plateau the flora comes to life months earlier than do the alpine congeners. Out there, hiding in the shaley alluvium, is a particular cactus with has been the object of my time over the past several weeks. Sclerocactus glaucus is a small barrel cactus with highly plastic morphological characters which have long confounded its systematics. Due to variation in its form and a range which overlaps with other taxa of the same genus it is presently unknown exactly how rare or prolific the species is. Over the past couple of years, in addition to several revisions in taxonomic status and demographic monitoring studies, there has been quite a bit of work investigating the genetic structure of the species at a population level. This research has begun to illustrate that Sclerocactus glaucus might be less ‘threatened’ than it has been determined to be by the Fish & Wildlife Service. I have been working to synthesize a comprehensive literate review and status report which reflects the most current and up-to-date understanding of the species and its range.

Field season is shaping up to be a busy one. It seems that several times a week Carol (our mentor) receives a request from someone else to assist with surveying and monitoring. It is becoming apparent that we will be tending to a generous amount of demographic monitoring of rare and endangered species across the state this summer. These monitoring projects will take us from the Mancos badlands, Roan Cliffs, and red-rock canyons of the Western Slope, high into the alpine tundra of the Mosquito Range, to the dunes and sage-steppe of North Park. In addition to monitoring established trend plots, my fellow intern and I have several new projects to implement.  It remains to be seen how much time we actually end up spending in the office this summer.

From the Front Range,

Phil Krening

Colorado State Office – BLM

Lakewood, CO

It’s been an eventful first month here at the Colorado State BLM Office in Lakewood.  This is my second stint as a CLM intern after spending last field season working at the Alturas Field Office in northern California. It is a definite change of pace and scenery to be living and working in the hustle and bustle of the highly developed and urban Denver Metro Area after spending six months in the Wild West of the Modoc Plateau. I am looking forward to working around the great state of Colorado in some of the off-the-beaten-path areas which characterize the western slope.

As the snow continues to fly in the southern Rocky Mountains (and in great quantities) it will be a while before our field work kicks into gear. In the mean time I am working on a report and demographic monitoring design for an extremely rare endemic species of mustard of the genus Eutrema (related to wasabi). The species was isolated in the high elevation alpine tundra of the Mosquito Range in central Colorado as the glaciers retreated post last glacial maximum. The species from which Eutrema penlandii apparently diverged now persists over 1,000 miles to the north on the arctic tundra of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. This ice-age relict is perhaps the most rare and endangered taxa in all of Colorado; consisting of 13 small populations which cling to extremely specified habitat above 11,800ft.

For me it is fascinating to work with a species which exemplifies the complexity of a changing climate and the dynamic processes which shape life and diversity within the biological community. I am excited to spend the next half a year or so working in various capacities with rare and endangered species while developing my skills both in the field and the office. There should be plenty of good stories and photos to share over the coming months; so stay tuned.

Until next time from the Front Range,

Phil Krening

CLM intern

Lakewood, CO