This is it, my CLM internship has come to an end. I am so thankful that I had this opportunity straight out of school, and that I have the opportunity to return for another season of greatness. Both my internships, one in NM and one in OR, made me a much stronger and more confident botanist. I worked with great people and explored incredible places. I soaked in local knowledge of culture, food, and ecology. I got to do work that was meaningful and important, and that I felt proud of. I really improved my skills in fieldwork and gained an understanding of how federal land management agencies work. I’ve just signed up to do a term with Americorps, but after that I intend to continue a job search with USFS or NPS. I can prove on my resume that I have experience driving 4-wheel drive through sand, mud, and even over rocks :)… and I can tell you if the flower receptacle was chaffy or not, in a raceme or a panicle. I can’t believe I got paid to do all of these wonderful things that I loved, in places that I loved. Deciding to be a CLM intern is honestly one of the best choices I have ever made. I am grateful to the moon and back for this experience and will remember my time in this internship for all my years. To Krissa, Rebecca, the rest of the folks at CBG that make this possible, my mentors Sheila and Kristin, friends met along the way, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my CLM intern heart.

Before I write my final FINAL blog post, I thought I should include some pictures of the area that I have had the pleasure of living in for the past 7 months due to my CLM internship. I really feel lucky to have landed in central Oregon, and that I won the “BLM location lottery” so to speak. Working here and learning about local ecology helped to enrich my experiences outside of work too. After all, part of being an intern in the CLM program is exploring a new land, at work or play, and at the best times, it is both! Being in the center of the state was great because most any part of Oregon was accessible within a 4-5 hour drive. It is an extremely diverse place with countless things to do and very friendly residents. I drove most of the Oregon coast, backpacked in the breathtaking Wallowa mountains in eastern OR, and soaked in hot springs in the middle of sagebrush country. Here are some pictures to pay tribute to a lovely state.

enjoying the high desert with my little buddy

Elk!

The wild and desolate southern OR coast

Redwoods (small forests in OR)

Typical high desert-blue mountains ecoregion where I worked and collected seeds

Lava flow in the Cascades, the three sisters mountains

The Painted Hills

Rainy day in the usually dry Ochoco Ntnl Forest dominated by golden tamaracks and ponderosa pine

Crater Lake – unbelievably blue

Tumalo Falls, less than an hour from where I lived in OR

Wallowa Mountains

I was a CLMer last year and thus attended the workshop at the Botanic Garden in Chicago. This year presented a different opportunity, the Oregon Vegetation Management Association (OVMA) annual conference, and the Oregon Plant Conservation meeting.

Let me begin by saying, the two events couldn’t be more different! OVMA is geared toward invasive plant control and attracted land managers, weed warriors, and chemical company representatives. Many talks were about regulations, safety, and the newest materials available for the weed killers’ toolbox. A “nozzlehead” dream come true. I did learn quite a bit on these topics, and I appreciate the role that herbicide use plays in land management, but I’m not super enthusiastic about the whole thing. My favorite talk was from a company that uses goats as an approach to controlling weeds. It was a nice break from the chemical focus of the day. Goats can be advantageous in certain situations and a part of the Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) approach. While they are not going to completely solve your problem, they can drastically reduce the amount of herbicide or mechanical treatments needed. Goats can easily get into difficult to access areas and love what they do (eating weeds). They can really put a dent in English ivy, poison sumac, himalayan blackberry and a host of other weeds. They are agile and light, therefore ideal for delicate riparian areas. I was excited to learn about how the business was run, and I would definitely consider this as a retirement! My mentor even said that if I can think of an appropriate project area on our BLM district that she would hire a goat crew there. Overall it was an informative meeting.  I just wish there was more focus on IVM methods other than herbicide, like goats!

Next it was off to the college town of Corvallis, OR for A Meeting of the Botanical Minds! This is a big event where all the BLM Botanists and guest partners share ideas and their work with each other. A big part of the meeting is deciding which plants need to be the focus of conservation efforts – rare, threatened, and endangered – on all levels, BLM, state, and federal recommendations. Peggy Olwell, the BLM Plant Conservation lead from Washington D.C. was even there! Peggy introduced the National Seed Strategy, which SOS relates directly to, and really made a point to recognize the hard work that botanists (and CLM interns) are doing for native plant conservation. She encouraged everyone to keep up the good work and to be assertive in situations where the importance of native plants is being overlooked. I really enjoyed meeting everyone! It felt like I was with my people and everyone was welcoming and down to earth. I learned so much hearing the perspectives of botanists throughout the state, and it was very inspiring. I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to attend, and the experience reaffirmed that I want to continue a career that works to protect native plant resources!

groovy lichen

just gorgeous!

pronghorns!

Wetland plants in the burn

Another handsome guy

collection buddy

the dread plant yellow starthistle

Keeper of the sheep

Update # 1: The Northwest is on fire, as many of you know. The Canyon Creek fire just east of our district began over a month ago caused by a lightning strike, has claimed over 40 homes and gobbled up over 110,000 acres. It got real to me when the smoke of a fire to the north hazed up town each evening when the wind shifted. The day I could finally see the Cascade mountains again was incredible. Firefighters died tragically battling the Okanogan Fires in WA, and it will be a struggle to protect an ancient grove of giant sequoia’s from crowning to the south in California. The USFS has spent over half of it’s operating budget this year just on firefighting attempts. In the ring of fire, volcanic mountain chain, we are surrounded by a non vulcan type of blaze. Locally it is looking like it will wind down, but it sure has opened my eyes to the issues with fire that the west has to look forward to in the years to come. With climate change (causing drought) , the takeover of invasive annual grasses and past fire suppression, it’s the perfect storm. The seeds we are collecting are so important! Not just for sage grouse or pollinators, but for entire landscapes. We are the post-firefighters. It will be the West’s great challenge to thrive in this fiery environment.
Interesting sidenote if working in burned areas or fire ecology enthusiast: Have you noticed the plant community in past burned areas? I kept going to burned areas and vaguely puzzling over the plants I saw there, but didn’t give it much thought. Then I heard about this study that shows that after a burn the trees that died are tapping water out of the earth no more, and this actually causes the water table to rise. This makes water near the surface more accessable to plant life then previously, and you get a early successsion of wetland plants. Weird, but good good to know the fires might not be all bad.
Update # 2 : Assisting the weed technicians with invasive species mapping on our GPS’s, one of our most startling discoveries was an infestation of yellow starthistle, Centaurea solstitialis. This weed was only known to be present in a few places on the district and is of high concern, so recording it is important so that plans to control it over the next few years can be made before it spreads. Yellow starthistle can rapidly decrease water availability to desirable native plants and thus result in large economic and environmental costs. It is also toxic to horses. Myself and the weeds gals spent two whole days manually pulling this prickly weed to aid in its eradication.
Update # 3 : I will never tire of seeing pronghorn antelope, I’m sure of it. These are some seriously cool animals. Did you know scientists think that their incredible speed is due to co-evolution with the now extinct N. American cheetah? I just think they are beautiful, and their cute white butts make them easy to spot.
Update # 4 : I have had the pleasure of tagging along with the wildlife CLMer’s to record western long-eared bat roost site data. I think that working with other people in other areas of focus in your office is one of the most important things you can do as an intern. I would echo this for land managers in general. We need to work together within our offices, our agencies, our communities, and the world. Anyway, I got to use forestry equipment that I haven’t used since a breif lab session in school so I was grateful for some real-world experience. I also learned something new about the western juniper.
How do you determine it’s an old growth juniper? Well overall it just looks old. Better indicative factors however, include: copius growth of macrolichens on branches, no leader creating pointy-topped silloheute, instead rounded. Deeply grooved and twisted bark (lots of bat roost sites) and many (often dead) sprawling lower branches. two or three of these characteristics and you got an old growther. They are supremely beautiful.
Update # 5 : Fun fact, listening to NPR is a good thing to do when you have to drive a lot, alone, as I do. You learn about new science discoveries, local happenings, cultural phenomena, history, geography, and become a more informed world citizen.Your IQ may even rise. Also, I have found that NPR is often detectable when other good music stations are not. Try it out in the field.
Last update (# 6) Fun botany vocab of the month, as taught by using wordy and confusing dichotomous keys: Cordillera: mountain range chain. Secund: inflorecences situated on only one side of the stem. Glaucous: powdery stuff that makes plants look misted. Blue-white until rubbed with finger, then green. I love that botany has a special word for that.

It was long, but my blog is overdue and I had many random thoughts to share. Until next time!

Where to hideout for the Apocalypse if you happen to be in OR

It’s getting crispy here

lovely view typical of the district

Wild horses try to drag me away on BLM land

the closest they would let me get

sagebrush mariposa lily

failed collection technique

As summer advances here on the Prineville district, my priority seed collections are shifting from sage grouse forbs to grasses and pollinator supporter species. The desert sagebrush steppe is home to target plants that are “crispifying” as I like to put it. A pair of brief but intense heat waves throughout the northwest region has brought this crispification on, and now we must let go of these too crispy to collect plants. So, leaving the crispy northern basin and range ecoregion for the E. Cascades and blue mountains I’ve spent several collection days on Dalea ornata at two different sites. I’m getting to know this plant really well now that we’ve spent so much time together. It’s a likeable plant being a nitrogen fixer, pollinator attractant native perennial. The seeds are encased in soft fluffy pillows, and it lends a very pleasant minty-floral aroma to the hands after collection. Little munching insects like it as much as me and the pollinators do though, so my collecting has been a bit of a struggle. I tried a tactic I’ve seen some teams use on species of lupin – tied little baby shower style mesh baggies over the seed heads, hoping to catch them before they dispersed or were consumed by hungry bugs. This backfired pretty good at the first site. I think instead of keeping bugs out, I locked bugs in the baggies, leaving them no choice but to devour all my seeds. At the second site I cut my losses to dispersal and insects, and decided to just way way overcollect to compensate for poor fill. My goal was to collect from more than 1,000 individual plants on my own. (sigh). Luckily, a youth empowerment Americorps group, the Heart of Oregon corps, stepped in to the rescue. Working with these recent highschool graduates was a lot of fun, and at the end of the day one of them even told me that he thought he’d like to become a botanist. Yes! I was happy that maybe my enthusiasm and babbling about the plight of native pollinators at the beginning of our day had a part in his declaration. I love turning people on to the natural world. The corps members helped me achieve my collection goals and I am looking forward to hearing back from BSE on our yield. Hopefully we added a great restoration plant to the Prineville seed mix.
I’m also contemplating native thistles. So much is talked about invasive thistles that I think some of our lovely native thistles may have gotten overlooked. Have you ever watched a thistle flower? It’s a pollinator smorgasbord! Unfortunately the bees and flies and other critters do not seem to make much distinction between native and non native nectar sources, so I hope that by seed collecting from the local yocals I can eventually “flood the market” with a better choice for them to dine. Collecting this year has taken me to some of Prineville’s more beautiful and sometimes more quirky sites. Pictures following! Good luck with your collections interns, I’m happy to report mine are going well. Remember your pollinator friends, and even if it is not top priority, perhaps try to get a few collections for their benefit.

Central Oregon has been a blast so far and I love it more here every day. If it’s outdoors, we’ve got it. There are endless places to explore; obsidian flows, ponderosa forests, scenic riverways, mountain biking hotspots, and the list goes on. The landscape is varied and with all this volcanic geology, never boring. On the cultural side, there is the happening city of Bend, real rodeos, breweries, great local food scene, good music and friendly people. There are these little espresso shacks all over the place, even in the tiniest towns. I’m told it’s a northwest thing. It’s kind of dangerous because I never had a coffee habit, but am steadily developing one here. Who could resist?

Work life in my second internship has been fulfilling and informative. I’m swamped with seed collections and spend 95% of my time in field, which is great! I am particularly excited about some surprise plant populations I found that will be collected for pollinator conservation. I’m also learning a lot about invasive plant species here and how to control them. One of particular interest is medusahead rye, Taeniatherum caput-medusae. It is a shrimpy little annual with crazy long awns and packs a wallop. When it dies off, the dead material creates a mat that does not break down quickly in this dry environment. The mat prevents other plants from competing and encourages a medusahead monoculture. It’s also a wildfire hazard.  Part of my time in the field is spent hiking remote areas that burned in last year’s wildfires and mapping the weed infestations that have moved into these areas. These are long, sometimes hard several mile days, but I am thrilled to be getting so much more familiar with how to use the GPS units, spend the day observing wildlife and flowers, and soaking up sun and cool breezes on desolate ridgetops (all while seeking out those nasty plant invaders). Plus it’s pretty good exercise! I have seen 3 rattlesnakes so far, after never meeting any my whole season last year. I reviewed first aid procedures for an encounter with these fellows, although so far they have been politely reserved. They are beautiful animals to see at a respectful distance, so I consider myself lucky. Anyway, it’s back to work for me! There are seeds that need a’collectin’, and I’m the gal for the job!

Lupinus in the rain

Salvia dorrii – an upcoming pollinator collection

Minding my own

I’m a second season CLMer now! I arrived in Prineville, OR almost a month ago to work on botany projects, especially weeds and seeds on the District. My mentor and fellow seasonals are great and I’m enjoying the change of scenery compared to last year. Central Oregon has a pretty diverse landscape, and the weather here is crazy. You’ve got to be prepared for anything from 35 degrees and snowing to pelting rain to 80 degrees and sunny, all in one field day. I’m learning how to use GIS, which will probably be one of my greatest learnig curves this season. I’m in the middle of lots of exciting trainings, and have already had much variety on the job. I took a workshop on bumble bee conservation that was absolutley fascinating. Did you know bumble bees are the only pollinators that can access the pollen of the Solanaceae? They vibrate at just the right frequency for pollen to come shooting out of those closed off anthers. Pretty cool stuff!

A bunch of the SOS teams of OR got together this week to do seed collectors training and tour the Bend Seed Extractory. It was informative to get the perspective of the receiving end of SOS and watch all the machines and x-raying in action. As the SOS collector in Prineville, I get to hand deliver all my material to Bend, so I will be seeing a lot of Kayla and Sara this summer. I will be getting an OR state pesticide applicator lisence so that I can help the weed crew take care of nasty post-fire invaders. We will also be conducting a lot of weed mapping on these fragile areas. There’s been some sensitive species monitoring that has taken me off the beaten path to some of the districts’ best kept secret beautiful locations, and I’m looking forward to meeting more of our sensitive plants. Last but far from least, I’ve started scouting for our seed collections and developing strategies for prioritizing those collections. This office is very involved in restoration projects and grow-out utilizing the seed that is collected, so it’s a bit different from last year where we focused more on long term conservation storage. I’m looking for important Sagegrouse habitat forbs, workhorse grass species, pollinator collections, and then the opportunistic stuff that happens at the right place and right time. Everything is blooming! So there’s lots of work to be done. It’s good to be back in the CLM family again! Pictures coming soon,

Hannah

I’m living in the end times. End times of my internship, that is. First, I want to say that moving to New Mexico to be a CLM intern is THE BEST THING I could have done after graduating. I am so glad that I took a leap of faith and did it. I’ve got just a little over a week left to work, and I’ve already asked if I can come in a few more days as a volunteer because I’m not quite ready to say goodbye. I’ll get a little more herbarium time in and maybe even some final field visits.

Sunny even became a better botanist this summer!

This internship has really helped fine tune my botanizing skills. I’m much more confident with grasses and the mega plant family Asteraceae especially. I know that with a couple of good books and some time I can learn the ID of plants anywhere I plop down, which is a spectacular feeling. I’ve also had a nice peek into what working for the BLM might be like, and actually know some of the acronyms! During my time here I was also junior ranger deputized and titled “budding botanist” by my mentor, got to help with National public Lands Day dressed as Seymour Antelope, and was a real member of an ID (interdisciplinary) Team for a ecological assessment.

I liked the SOS work; the mission is admirable and makes for a job you can feel good about. I love the physicality of collecting the seed in the field; this kind of work has always been meditative in a way for me. I felt like a proud seed mama every time we sent a shipment of seed to Bend. “Go, my dear little seeds, for within you lies the promise of a shining future”… I know, I’ m a little nutty but that is how it feels. I would like to see more of what is being done on the ground with some of these native plant materials in terms of grow out and restoration in the future. I also feel that I have a better grasp on the realm of landscape ecology, and looking the environment as more a whole than individual parts. Even though my time was focused on SOS, I am thankful to my mentor, Sheila for encouraging us to get to know other people in our office and experience some of the other fieldwork that the BLM conducts. I’ve enjoyed learning about well pad reclamation and range/riparian monitoring in addition to our botany work. I also feel accomplished in that I wasn’t just a needy intern; I actually helped my mentor get important things done and was able to make some portions of her workload more manageable.

A typical collection site

It’s been eye opening to work in Farmington because of the booming oil and gas industry here. Everything else comes second, and all summer I have seen the people that work here struggle and fight to get other causes recognized as important, from archaeologists to recreation and wildlife specialists and of course, botanists. It’s got to be hard to work in an environment like that and I’m not sure if I could do it, but I am glad to know that there are people who do in spite of all the challenges that the oil and gas machine presents.

I will be applying for the CLM internship again in November. There’s a lot more to see and do, and I’m not ready to apply for a permanent position somewhere. I just want to keep gaining a variety of experience. Doing this internship has made me think that academia and returning to grad school may not be for me, but that is still to be seen. I still don’t have a clear path, but I think CLM has helped send me in the right direction, and I’m happy with that. This season proved to me that is truly is important to enjoy and be fascinated by your work, so that is what I intend to do. I really appreciate what Krissa Skogen, Rebecca Johnson, Peggy Olwell, and others have done to make the CLM program possible. I would recommend this internship to anyone interested in land/natural resources management and ecology. Thanks also to Sheila, the “coolest boss ever!”, my coworkers here at FFO BLM, and of course my CLM intern partner in grime (we like to get our hands dirty) Sarah. I’m looking forward to next season! Keep up the good work fellow interns, and love all that you do.
Hannah Goodmuth, Farmington NM.

Seymour Antelope!

It’s now September in New Mexico, the days are pleasant, topping out around just 85 degrees. On our last SOS collectors call, many teams elsewhere are winding down, gathering the seeds of sagebrush and winterfat as their final haul. Here however, we are nowhere near the end of our season. We’re in the middle of several multi-visit collections with so many more on the horizon that we are busting booty to fit them in to the puny 40 hour week! Some of the latest collections have been a little frustrating, only because they require several seed-snatching passes and mature unevenly over a period of a few weeks. We claimed one collection on the Colorado Plateau target list, a grass named Sporobolus airoides. That was a fun break because each seed head can contain up to 10,000 seeds, making for a refreshingly simple one day deal!

Keeping track of collections

Stealing seeds from a pretty little native sunflower

September in New Mexico doesn’t just mean lots of seeds to collect, it’s also the time of the chile. People here just LOVE green chile, and red chile, and both colors together, referred to as “Christmas” if you are ordering it somewhere. New Mexico is the only state to have adopted an official state question: Red or Green? Chile is found in various forms and in any place you can imagine; green chile gravy on your mashers, green chile baked into bagels, green chile blended into milkshakes, and so on. As a newcomer in a foreign land, I intend to try to appreciate this part of the food culture. I am embracing the chile. I try it on/in anything I can. My fellow intern and I will be buying and sharing a 25 lb box of chile, which the supermarkets here roast in giant cages out front. You can smell it everywhere. When they first started roasting this year, you could feel the excitement in the air. Get to NM and try some yourself!

With the weather cooling down a little it is time to squeeze in the last of the warm season Colorado mountain visits on weekends – which will soon be impassable with snow. The conditions are also less hostile for enjoying the desert, so there’s been plenty to do. My trusty companion, Sunny the dog, and I hiked up to Ice Lakes near Silverton, CO recently, and I have to say that was the most beautiful hike I’ve ever been on. We were also happy to find out that dogs are allowed at Monument Valley Tribal Park in AZ, so we took a little weekend jaunt there. Monument Valley is spectacular. I’m struck by the expansiveness of the skies out west, making every rainbow, thunderstorm, sunset, and brilliant milky way more amazing than ever before. I feel soothed by the desolation and harsh beauty of the desert. I’m considering hiking part of the Arizona National Scenic Trail at the end of my internship so that I might soak in and explore some more of the unique southwest. With cooling temperatures it’s time to start thinking about my next move, next job or adventure. I hope that all of us interns find the right thing for us in the future, winding as some of our paths might be, just enjoy the trip! The other day I was out collecting seeds and a coyote ran out in front of me, just 10 feet away, a rabbit gripped still kicking in its mouth. THAT was cool. Coyote medicine is all about not taking things too seriously, letting go of certainties, and enjoying the unexpected. So I hope we can all embrace a little coyote this summer’s end.

Sunny and I at Ice Lakes

Hello there! The monsoons seem to be finally kicking in here in the Four Corners region, a bit behind schedule. My fellow intern Sarah and I had been scrapping and scrounging for SOS collections up until about a week ago because of the drought. Now we are knee deep in species to collect from and part of the job is to keep everything straight – what IS ready, what COULD be ready, what we need to check on, arranging priorities and organizing our weeks to squeeze it all in. Because of the scarcity of good collection material prior to rainfall in our immediate area, we began looking further afield (far out, man!) and this has resulted in potential collections for the coming weeks in some really amazing landscapes. We’ve been able to explore San Juan and Carson National Forests and lots of new BLM land. I’ve seen many blog entries about the deteriorating road conditions in the field and (fingers crossed) we’ve been ok so far, but the roads are getting slick as the plants are making seed!

I’m thrilled to be so busy and we’ve had many learning opportunities beyond our SOS collecting lately as well. We joined other members of our office on a noxious weeds field trip to learn more about the identification and management of these nasty plants and as a bonus took part in the delicious barbeque afterwards! Another day we went out with our threatened and endangered species specialist to assist him with the transplanting of the adorable and state endangered Brack’s Cactus, Sclerocactus cloverae var.brackii. This was a lot of fun and there is always some special ambience felt in the presence of such a thing, but part of it was also saddening. I was dismayed that we had to transplant the little cactus to begin with, because its survival rates may prove to be poor and I wish it could stay where it happily grew originally. This brings me to a topic which I have avoided touching on so far, which is the oil and gas industry and its death grip on the Farmington area, the reason we had to transplant the cactus and make way for the things our society deems more important. However, I will save the in depth discussion for another blog entry.

On a lighter note, Sarah, Sheila, and I will keep working hard to make as many wonderful seed collections as we possibly can and learning from our coworkers and filling our heads with images of the beauty of the southwest. Last weekend I hiked 8 miles and camped out in Colorado’s gorgeous Echo Basin, didn’t see another soul besides my dog and a mule deer the whole time, and I relished the solitude. I also was lucky to have a friend visit from back east and we got out to Utah to check out Canyonlands and Natural Bridges and Manti-La-Sal National Forest, (all of which I highly recommend). The outdoor experiences here are supreme and I’m loving it! I hope all of you throughout the west are finding the CLM program as fulfilling and amazing as we are!

hoodoos and badlands in Lybrook, NM

Transplanting cactus

After a hard day of collection – our booty!

I get paid to collect seeds here? Wow! Echo Basin, San Juan National Forest