As the other interns have returned back to school I am the only remaining one in the office. I welcome any days out in the field, which are few and far between since our hydrologist just left as well. I have had some exciting opportunities recently, such as going on a 3 day rafting trip with FWS down the Colorado River looking for the endangered Spiranthes diluvialis. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any but I had a great time learning how to raft. Eight river otters began swimming up to us but then a train went by and scared them away! It was pretty annoying that trains continuously rode alongside the river day and night blaring its horn. I wonder what the impacts are on the riparian ecosystem…

I also was able to do another macroinvertebrate survey on West Creek where an oil tanker flipped a few years ago, spilling around 6,000 gallons, I think. At ground zero the stream was filled with algae but appeared to be recovering better downstream. Unfortunately this stream was an important trout hatchery so there are many people, such as Trout Unlimited, invested in its recovery. With fewer field days ahead I’m spending most of time turning NEPA documents into pdfs so they can be published online for the public to see. Pretty boring, but gives me an idea of what working in an office is like. Bring back the outdoors!

Lindsey B.

BLM Grand Junction, CO

July at the BLM Grand Junction Field Office provided more fun work experiences and opportunities than the ongoing search for the Colorado Hookless Cactus in the North Desert. I was able to join about 20 office employees on a field trip to Pine Ridge, an area near DeBeque where a 40,000 acre fire raged in 2012, the largest my office has dealt with. The purpose of the trip was for everyone to see how fire rehabilitation efforts were working, despite some initial complications, such as the fire happening at the end of a fiscal year so they were not able to chain and re-seed as soon as they hoped to. And then there was little rain for about a year for what they did seed, but things are looking okay for most areas with a few areas dominated by Bromus tectorum, of course. The first thing they seeded was a manufactured sterile grass to just stabilize the soil and prevent erosion (they had a big problem after the fire of ash and soil eroding into nearby water supplies) and even though it was supposed to be sterile it is still around a little bit… They did not re-seed any forbs so it was good to see some globemallow and others popping up on their own!

We have ventured beyond the desert to some creek beds and canyons to search for Sclerocactus glaucus and were rewarded one day with seeing wild horses! They were beautiful but I felt a little bad because as soon as they saw us they immediately froze and didn’t twitch an ear or flick a tail while we snacked nearby for 20 minutes. Eventually the mother and colt continued grazing but the others didn’t dare move at all until we left.

Wild Horses

We also got to help the office hydrologist do a stream health assessment in the Dominguez Escalante National Conservation Area. We did macroinvertebrate sampling and discharge and flow rate monitoring. The water was high from monsoonal rains and it felt soooo good!

Macroinvertebrate sampling

macroinvertebrate sampling

Flow rate and discharge monitoring

I took last week off to visit my fiance who is working in Jackson, Wyoming and my mom drove from NC to meet me there. We went to Yellowstone and Teton National Parks and saw these guys pretty close up (it was scary when one tourist started whistling at the grizzly bear….):

Elk

Grizzly bear

Elk

Baby bison

My mom and I then continued on a little road trip to visit Ouray, Telluride, Mount Evans (where I saw bristlecone pines over 1,000 years old!), Denver, Rocky Mountain National Park, Eagle, and Glenwood Springs. I especially loved RMNP because above the treeline was cloudy and misty and reminded me so much of Ireland and Scotland, and I also finally saw a moose!

Back to work this week!

Lindsey B,

BLM GJFO, Colorado

Greetings from Grand Junction! While my mentor was gone for a week I had the awesome opportunity to go out in the field to help work on various projects, such as a migrating birds survey and the famous Sagegrouse Habitat Assessment Framework. But now I’m back in the groove of surveying different areas for the threatened Colorado Hookless Cactus (Sclerocactus glaucus) with a fellow non-CLM intern. We’ve been hiking these mountain bike trails in an area called Tabeguache for a race in August called the ‘Epic Bike Race’ and for the Colorado Mesa University Bike Race. Unfortunately, we did find one right on the edge of the trail so I’ll probably have to monitor that during the race. We’ve also been looking for them in the North Desert in Grand Junction which is a highly used OHV recreation area. Imagine steep rolling desert hills interspersed with pipelines and oil drills. We’re stuck with a small manual 4-WD truck so it seems like we spend more time trying to get up hills and getting stuck than looking for cactus. But on our first day we got lucky and I spotted these monsters from the window:

These are the largest we’ve seen yet and the biggest clump of them together! It was pretty exciting. So that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing. Putting on my cactus glasses and getting dizzy from staring out the window for them. On a side note: I went to Moab to visit Canyonlands and Arches National Parks last weekend and it was 107 degrees! I can’t believe how hot it gets here. When we hike we have to leave at 6am and it’s still blistering hot by 10am. Hopefully we’ll get some monsoonal rains this weekend…

Lindsey Bargelt
BLM Grand Junction Field Office

Three days after graduation I drove from eastern North Carolina to Grand Junction, Colorado, and started my internship with the BLM field office here the day after I arrived. It has been a whirlwind and a complete change of environment. Everything is different here! Every day I look around me at the Book Cliffs, Grand Mesa and the Colorado National Monument and have to pinch myself and ask “Is this real life??”  Definitely not the flat plains I’m used to (and I thank God every day for the lack of humidity). My knowledge of the flora and fauna are completely lacking though, as my fellow local interns have been quick to point out. But I’m quickly learning and want to learn more about this beautiful landscape. The past two weekends I’ve been playing tourist and visiting all the big destinations…unfortunately I can’t get myself up early enough to search for moose on the Grand Mesa. But who knew Grand Junction was in the middle of wine country? Or dinosaur? Or wildflower? I also got a chance to visit Teton National Park and Yellowstone over Memorial Day weekend

In the past two weeks I’ve mostly been doing all the standard training (Is four hours of defensive driving necessary? really?) and a variety of projects out in the field, from mending fences on exclosures, to big game transects. I’m slowly learning about the relationship between the public, the federal government and public lands. I’ve attached some pictures that glimpse at what I’ve seen the past two weeks.

The largest flat-topped mountain in the world!

Sclerocactus glaucus, a threatened species

Colorado National Monument

Prickly Pear

Barrel Cactus

Mule Deer

Wild Rose

Elk

All the best,

Lindsey B.

Bureau of Land Management

Grand Junction Field Office