My second month at the Surprise Field Office has been busy. Fellow CLM intern Amy and I have been working hard to meet our goal of 16 collections. We’ve got 10 so far, and are currently working on 2 species of grasses. The main challenge has been finding riparian areas with sufficient populations to collect. It’s also been raining here on and off for the past 2 weeks, so a lot of our riparian areas are totally flooded. The rain is definitely a good thing, but we’re not able to collect anything when it’s so wet.

The rest of the time I’ve been working on an Environmental Assessment of a juniper reduction project we’re proposing. It’s still in its early stages, so writing it is a fairly dull task, but we’re grinding along. Learning how to write NEPA documents is something I’m really glad to be learning. I’m not sure where else I would be able to get this experience without any prior knowledge of the NEPA process. I’ve been taking some time to do online GIS courses through ESRI as well. I had almost no GIS experience coming into CLM but I now feel comfortable navigating the program and using its basic functions. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to integrate my new GIS knowledge into my NEPA report.

Here’s to another month of new experiences.

Matt Phillips
BLM Surprise Field Office

Hello from the Surprise Valley Field Office!

I arrived in Cedarville, CA on Tuesday June 3rd after two days of travel from my home in New York. I flew across the country on Monday to LA, then got another flight on Tuesday morning from LA to Reno, and then drove north 3 hours up to Cedarville. By the time I arrived, I was exhausted. Cedarville is very remote, so it was definitely an adjustment waking up in LA and going to bed in Cedarville. On the drive up from Reno, I was amazed at the landscape. Most of my ecology experience comes from the neotropics and the Midwest, which are both heavily forested. “Where are all the trees?” I thought.  As I approached Cedarville from Alturas, I drove through a beautiful swath of Modoc National Forest. It made me realize how diverse this area truly is.

My first full day in Cedarville was a training day. My mentor was in the process of training some of the BLM Fire people about vegetation monitoring, so I got a refresher. We saw some wild horses, and talked a bit about the Surprise Valley Office’s range management program. The next two days were dedicated to monitoring sites and Seeds of Success collection. My co-CLM intern, Amy, and I went out with a botanist from the Alturas field office and learned a bunch of new plants. Since it was only my third day, I had a lot of catching up to do. It was exciting to walk alongside with a professional botanist who knows almost every plant species around here.

I spent my second week as a CLM intern at the Chicago Botanic Garden for the CLM Training Workshop. I met a lot of great, motivated people who are interested in similar career paths. We shared experiences, stories, and advice. I got a lot out of the workshop, as it provided some context to the techniques I had been learning in my first three days in Cedarville. The Seeds of Success session taught my why what we’re doing is important. It provided the big picture, which can sometimes be forgotten in the field. It’s good not to be a fieldwork robot all the time. I also thought the conservation genetics lecture was particularly interesting.

I still have a lot to learn about the natural history and ecology of this region, and I’m just now feeling comfortable identifying a few of the common plants in the area. It’s very different from any ecosystem I’ve been in or studied before, so sometimes it feels like I’m starting from scratch. It’s a really cool experience, though, to learn something all over again in a different place. The people in the office have been great teachers so far, and I already know so much more than when I first got here. I’m excited to get a chance to explore the surrounding area a bit this weekend.

Best,

Matt Phillips

BLM Surprise Valley Field Office

Cedarville, CA

This is what a lot of the landscape where we work looks like.

CLM interns from Alturas, Cedarville, and a botanist.