Hi Fellow Interns!

I have now spent almost a month here in the little town of Newcastle Wyoming where I have been working under the BLM State Forester.  Newcastle is a small, industrial town up against the beautiful ponderosa pine forests of the black hills (they offer a much better view than the oil refinery!) with a BLM field office, a ‘pizza barn’ and not much else.  It is easy to escape civilization entirely and I have been able to explore the Bighorn mountains, the black hills and I am planning my first trip to yellowstone in the near future.

I have been laying out and marking timber sale boundaries for forest restoration and habitat improvement projects in the scattered BLM forest parcels.  It’s nice that these areas are small, so each silvicultural treatment can be personalized to that area.  Most of our treatments focus on meadow restoration for raptor and ungulate habitat.  Meadow habitat has been replaced by pine forest in many areas since wildland fire suppression began, so removing this timber allows grasses and forbs to thrive.  We’ve come across several forest friends that I’m sure will love our new meadows like bobcats, owls, deer (and fawns!) and hawks.

I’m very happy to be able to implement my academic knowledge on the ground here in the black hills, and I’m lucky enough to be doing a variety of tasks such as marking boundaries and designing a management plan independently.