Today is the last day of my internship at the Lander Field Office. The last 7 months have gone by way too fast. I will definitely miss Wyoming and the LFO, but I am also excited to be home with my family for thanksgiving. This last month has gone by in a blur, but we have accomplished quite a bit.

Early this month we finished up our last seed collection. We collected winterfat (Krascheninnikovia lanata) and finally got enough seed to become a collection. The winterfat seed took a very long time to ripen, so we had to go and collect on three separate occasions.

Winterfat, a fluffy shrub. The seeds are furry!

Our Winterfat collection site near the Owl Creek Mountains

This month we worked on editing our Seeds of Success data in ArcMap. I took a class on ArcGIS in college, so this was a good refresher for me. The data editing took a lot longer than we anticipated, but it was very satisfying when we were done. We packaged up all of our seed and sent it off to the Bend, Oregon seed cleaning facility. In total we had 14 collections, which was over our target goal of 10 collections for this season. 10,000 seeds from each collection will stay in a seed holding facility until it is requested for reclamation efforts. Any extra seed will be sent to the Meeker facility in Colorado for evaluation trials. We also created herbarium vouchers for many of the plants we found this season. Herbarium vouchers for our SOS collections were sent to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC to be part of their permanent collection, and were also sent to the Rocky Mountain Herbarium in Laramie. Other plants we vouchered ended up in the LFO’s personal herbarium.

Emma and I packaging up our seed collections to send to Bend.

This month we also did more horse monitoring in the Green Mountain HMA. There are a huge number of horse in this HMA, and it is easy to find them. I think horse monitoring has definitely been my favorite project this season. Wild horses are incredibly beautiful to observe in their natural habitat. I really enjoyed watching their behavior and how they interacted with one another. The last couple weeks of horse monitoring there was snow, which made everything seem more beautiful.

Horses in the Green Mountain HMA

Field work in the snow!

Horse monitoring at Green Mountain

This month we also did one last round of riparian area monitoring. The cows are all out of the pastures we monitor, but riparian area monitoring still needs to be done to see how the horses and antelope affect the riparian areas. Most of the areas we monitored were very short, which may mean the cows will get a limited grazing season next year.

Riparian area monitoring at Sulphur Bar Spring.

Overall, this internship with the BLM and Chicago Botanic Garden has been wonderful. Many of the employees here went out of their way to make sure we got to work on a variety of projects. I really enjoyed being able to work on so many different things. Over the season we worked on seed collecting, vouchering plants, horse monitoring, plant monitoring, riparian area monitoring, sage grouse collaring, aspen stand delineation, compliance monitoring, fence projects, reclamation projects, and creating literature for the public. I learned many new skills that I believe will be helpful to me in the future. This internship was an experience that I will never forget and that I am so thankful for. I feel very lucky to have been able to work and live in such a beautiful place. Until next time, Wyoming. I will definitely come back and visit.

Erin, Lander Field Office, BLM- Wyoming

The Wind River Mountains

Cooler weather has finally arrived in Lander, WY. Many of our coworkers have been commenting on how unusual this fall weather has been. Apparently, by this time of the year there usually is 2-4 feet of snow! However, I am glad the snow has held off. This means we have the opportunity to do more field work and less office work. I enjoy field work very much, but with all of the field projects we are working on, our Seeds of Success data processing is getting put on the back burner. Emma and I have been antsy all of October to start getting SOS data processed and seeds sent out to the seed cleaning facility. Our Seeds of Success program has been a little hectic because our mentor took a job in Cheyenne earlier this month. She was promoted to the position of Wyoming state botanist, and we are very happy for her! So Emma and I are figuring things out on our own, with the help of our mentor’s very detailed instructions. We just started data processing this week, and we are realizing that it will be much more time consuming than we originally thought. Nevertheless, we are up for the challenge and enjoy being busy.

This month we completed three SOS collections. Fringed sage (Artemisia frigida), Wyoming Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp.wyomingensis), and Mountain Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp.vaseyana). The seeds from each of these three species were tiny, which made our seed counts a little time consuming. We were excited to find that we collected about 400,000 seeds from Wyoming Big Sagebrush, which far exceeds our minimum goal of 20,000.

Enjoying the view on the way out to collect Mountain Big Sagebrush. It’s amazing to see how fast the landscape changes

We are still working on wild horse monitoring in the field office. This month we finished the entire north complex, which consists of four HMAs (horse monitoring areas). In November we will start on the south complex and monitor there until we get snowed out. Horse monitoring has been one of my favorite activities. This month we stumbled upon a herd of more than 100 wild horses while monitoring, it was incredibly cool to see. We also got snowed on for the first time while we were horse monitoring at some higher elevations. The snow covered horses were really beautiful.

Scanning for horses with my binoculars

Horses in the snow in the Crooks Mountain HMA

We always make sure to wear our orange for safety during hunting season!

GPS mapping the aspen stands.

Another project we are still working on is aspen stand delineation near South Pass. This is another project that needs to be finished before the snow flies, especially because this project area is at a higher elevation. So Emma and I continue to flag aspen stands and record the area and locations with our GPS. The work up here is pretty cold, but there are amazing views.

We are also working a little bit with the archeologists at Castle Gardens petroglyph site. Castle Gardens is an area in our field office where ancient native people etched petroglyph drawings into the soft rock. The BLM wants people to respect and understand this ancient site. To help with this, the BLM is installing gravel walking paths and interpretive signs. The hope is that once people can see and understand the importance and history of sites like these, there will not be as much vandalism. The Castle Gardens site previously had been vandalized in many places, but the BLM hired a rock art expert to fix much of the vandalism.  Emma and I are helping write some of the interpretive signs dealing with botany. We will have a sign identifying common plants in the area depending on season, and a sign explaining how native people used the plants in the past.

Castle Gardens Site

Petroglyph at Castle Gardens. This one is called “The Lightning Man”.

Only one more month to go in the Lander Field Office! We still have 2 seed collections left to make, and many other projects to finish up. November is going to be a busy month, but I’m excited. We’ll see how much we can get done before the snow.

Until next time,

Erin, Lander Field Office, BLM- Wyoming

September has gone by quickly in the Lander Field Office! Today is officially the first day of fall, but it does not feel like it. The entire month of September has been in the 75-85 degree range. I am ready for a cool down. Despite the warm weather, the aspen leaves have started to change color in the mountains. They are a fiery mix of oranges and golds that stand out impressively among the conifer stands.

A golden sea of aspen

An aspen leaf

Fall also means that hunting season has started on antelope, grouse, and deer. Seasons on elk and moose start in early October. This means that Emma and I have to take extra precautions while out in the field, since we are often far away from our vehicle in remote areas. We have bright orange hunting vests that we wear into the field to keep us safe.

This month, Emma and I took over the responsibility of wild horse monitoring. We were given maps and assigned Horse Monitoring Areas, or HMAs, to look for horses in.  We started out with two HMAs to explore. While monitoring we try to cover as much ground as we can inside the HMA to find as many horses as possible. Some days we only find a few, which can be frustrating. However, on a few occasions we have encountered more than 100 wild horses in a day. One of the wild horse specialists taught us about wild horse behavior and how we could use our body language to get closer to the horses. One of the most important things we learned is to never face a wild horse head on, either with a car, or with your person. It is seen as a threatening and aggressive behavior. Instead we were told to always face sideways, or show the horse the back of your shoulder. This movement shows trust and helps the horse understand that you are not a threat. I was very impressed by how knowledgeable our horse specialist was and how he could very accurately predict and understand the horse’s behavior.

A wild horse we found while monitoring.

A group of wild horses. These ones were curious about us.

Although we currently work on horse monitoring most days, we still manage to slip in a few other projects. We have done our last round of riparian area monitoring for the rangeland staff. We also have been vouchering a few sagebrush species that we will use as Seeds of Success collections. We have four sagebrush species that we are waiting to collect, as well as a shrub called Winterfat. All of these species need cold weather for the seeds to ripen, so we are waiting for a cold front.

A flowering Wyoming Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis).

Winterfat is one of my favorite shurbs, it’s fluffy!

This month we also got to work on a multi-agency project between the BLM, the Forest Service, and Wyoming Game and Fish. The project was to delineate aspen stands containing conifers. The goal is to mark the stands that contain conifers, and then have a crew come in to remove the conifers. It is important for the conifers to be removed because they will out-compete the aspen, and aspen are a better species for wildlife. Aspen also do not burn as easily as conifers, which helps with fire suppression. They also are very quick to regrow after a fire, if a fire does occur.

During my free time I hiked up to Louise Lake with some friends, got my first peek at snow this season!

Visited the Tetons for my birthday

Overall the month of September has been busy and exciting. I am grateful that this internship allows us to work on such a wide variety of projects. We are never bored and we are learning so many new skills. I can’t wait to see what other projects are in store for us. Two more months to go!

Until next time,

Erin, BLM- Wyoming, Lander Field Office

It is August in Lander, and the west is on fire. Heavy spring rainfall resulted in high grass production, but the summer months have been very dry – causing all that grass to dry up and become great fuel for fires. The Lander Field Office area has seen 68 smaller wildfires this season, but nothing too major. However, huge wildfires have been burning in Washington, Oregon, and Southern California and sending their smoke here. For the past week Lander has been in a smokey haze. The smoke is so thick it is hard to even see the mountains we live right next to. I drove through Grand Teton National Park last weekend and wasn’t even able to see the Teton’s at all. The smoke burns your eyes and has been making my throat sore. The amount of smoke in the air has helped me visualize the enormity of the wildfires currently burning in the western states.

At work, we have been doing a little bit of seed collection here and there. Most of the forbs are done blooming for the season, and we are currently waiting on some of the shrubs to go into seed this fall.

We have been working on more rangeland monitoring work, and we have also been doing some utilization studies. This involves us measuring grazed vs. ungrazed plants in an area to see how much of the plant is being utilized on average in a pasture. We also have been helping a bit with compliance monitoring, which pretty much means “make sure the cows are in the right pastures”. As part of compliance monitoring, we got to hike through the Sweetwater Canyon to check for cows. The canyon walls are too steep for a car to get down, so you have to hike the canyon. The whole canyon is about eight miles long, so it took us a full day to hike. The canyon was beautiful, and we saw many deer, elk, and a coyote. We thankfully didn’t see any cows or overgrazed areas in the canyon.

Sweetwater canyon hike to check for cows

One of the most exciting things we have done this month was collaring sage grouse. Emma and I went out with our wildlife specialist and a couple of grad students to help them with their Ph.D project. The students were tracking the nesting success and survival rates of the sage grouse. To be able to track these things, the birds are fitted with VHS collars. I got to help with the collaring stage. To catch the sage grouse we went out in the middle of the night, because the birds are roosting and it is easier to catch them that way. We used spotlights from the truck to locate the sage grouse. When some were spotted, we would grab long nets and run through the sagebrush at them, while keeping the spotlight on them to cause confusion. Once netted, we would grab them out of the net and fit them with a collar. We stayed out until 2 AM, but unfortunately didn’t catch as many as we were hoping for. The experience was still a lot of fun, and we may help out again in the fall.

Caught a sage grouse!

This month some of my college friends took a road trip out to Wyoming to come to visit me. We went to Yellowstone and had a great time, even though it was freezing! It got down into the 30’s overnight, which made for some cold nights in the tent. I love the fact that I live so close to Yellowstone National Park, I have already been there twice- and I have plans to go again soon!

Yellowstone National Park – Hot spring

Yellowstone National Park- Porcelain Basin

Yellowstone National Park- Mammoth Hot Springs

Yellowstone National Park- Mammoth Hot Springs

Since the seed collecting season is winding down, Emma and I are going to be starting wild horse monitoring. I am very excited about this next project!

Until next time,

Erin, Lander Field Office, BLM- Wyoming

July in the Lander Field Office has been the busiest month so far, but also the most fun. Our time has been split between two very time consuming projects, production clipping and seed collection. Production clipping involves us going out to an ex-closure (a fenced off area that cows can’t get into) in the field and clipping plants from both inside and outside the ex-closure to compare them. This helps us see the effect that grazing has on the production levels of different plants. At each site we set up two transects, one inside and one outside the ex-closure. We then throw hoops to randomly select 20 plots along the transect. Whatever is inside the hoop becomes our sampling plot, we cut down everything inside the plot and bag them by species. We weigh each bag at the site to get a green weight, then at the office we put the bags in plant dryers and get a dry weight in 24 hours. This process takes a couple days for each ex-closure and we have 10 sites to visit.

One of the production ex-closures we did production clipping at. This ex-closure was covered in tumbleweeds!

Here is an example of the hoops we use. Whatever is inside the hoop after we throw it gets clipped and weighed.

While not doing production clipping, we have been working on seed collections. We have four collections that we’ve done in July. We have collected Antelope Bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata), Basin Daisy (Platyschkurhia integrifolia), Desert Yellow Fleabane (Erigeron linearis), and Tansyleaf Tansyaster (Macaeranthera tanacetifolia). The seed collection has been a little challenging, sometimes seeds that we’ve scouted have disappeared before we could get to them. It seems like many of the seeds were ready at the same time and we couldn’t get to all of them at once.

Two days this month we had a Montana Conservation Corps crew come out and help us with seed collection. There were 12 kids (ages 14-22) on the crew and it was very helpful to have all of the extra hands. It was a little difficult to keep their attention at times, but they helped us collect 14,000 seeds of antelope bitterbrush and 15,000 seeds of desert yellow fleabane.  It was also nice to be able to teach others about seed collection and why it is important. I liked being able to be in charge and have my own crew.

Some of the antelope bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) seed that the Montana Conservation Corps crew helped us collect.

Antelope bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) seeds

One of the most tedious things about seed collecting is doing the seed count. We have a formula we use that uses the weight of the collection to figure out how many seeds we have. However, it requires us to take a handful of seeds as a sample and sort through and count how many viable seeds there are. This process can take about an hour. Although seed collecting can sometimes be monotonous, it is also very rewarding and is definitely my favorite part of my job.

In my free time I have been exploring the history of this area more in depth. One weekend I drove out to visit independence rock, which was much more interesting than I expected it to be! I learned that independence rock was considered the halfway point on the Oregon trail. Travelers were supposed to reach the rock by July 4th in order to ensure safe passage over the mountains before winter. Many people who stopped here carved their names into the rock, creating a sort of registry of travelers on the Oregon trail.

Signatures on top of Independence Rock

The view from standing on top of Independence Rock

The month of July started out very hot, we have been going up the road into the mountains more often to jump in the cold mountain lakes. There also has been no rain! Everyday is hot and sunny, which has caused many wildfires in the last couple of weeks. I’m starting to hope for a few rainy days.

I have also been out hiking in Sinks Canyon State Park a few times this month. Sinks Canyon is by far my favorite place in Wyoming.

A suspension bridge on one of the hikes in Sinks Canyon State Park.

Month three working with the BLM has gone well, I have really been enjoying my time here. However, I have to say that I am looking forward to the fall and cooler temperatures. Until next time!

Erin, Lander Field Office, BLM- Wyoming

The field season is getting rolling! Our schedule has Emma and I doing roughly three days a week doing vegetation monitoring and two days doing Seeds of Success seed collection work. The vegetation monitoring involves identifying key species and evaluating how grazing is affecting them. This is done by taking stubble height readings across a specific area and taking an average. From this information, we can decide how much grazing can continue in a certain area and when the cows need to be moved. We have a handful of sites that we visit in rotation every couple weeks. I enjoy visiting these sites because we travel on the ACTUAL Oregon trail to get to some of them. I think this is incredibly cool because the landscape in this area is unaltered and would have been exactly what the pioneers would have seen on their journey.

Our Seeds of Success work has just gotten off the ground. We are learning the target species list, and trying to find big enough populations of each plant in the field. For each seed collection we make we need at least 20,000 seeds, so we need to find fairly large populations. We also are only allowed to take 20% of the available seed so we don’t decimate the population. This week we found a large population of a Cryptantha species while monitoring, I think it will be perfect for a Seeds of Success collection!

We also went into the field one day to help our botanist search for a rare species, Dubois milkvetch (Astragalus giviflorus var. purpureus). It is a species that is endemic to Dubois, Wyoming and grows on steep hillsides. We actually found the plant without much trouble, and found a good sized healthy population.

The rare Dubois milkvetch!

We have seen much more wildlife in the field. I have seen many sage grouse, which are much bigger than I expected them to be! We have also started to see many baby pronghorn. My favorite, though, has been the wild horses. One day we saw a herd of about 100 horses, it was a very cool thing to see.

A few of the wild horses we saw in the field

This month also included our week long workshop week in Chicago. The workshop was held at Chicago Botanic Garden, which is absolutely beautiful. We attended classes such as botany of the west, inventory and monitoring methods, and S.O.S. instruction. We received career and graduate school advice, and attended a symposium on large scale restoration efforts. When not in session, we explored the 385 acre botanical garden and visited downtown Chicago. Overall it was a wonderful week, it got me really excited to be a part of the natural resource field.

The beautiful Chicago Botanic Garden

I have also been exploring the Lander area more extensively. The road into the mountains was just opened last week, and luckily my family was visiting this weekend. I took them up to the alpine lakes in the mountains, which were stunning.  It is very nice that we are able to escape the heat by going up in elevation! I can’t wait to explore the mountains more.

One of the lakes we visited up in the mountains

A field of wildflowers in the mountains

Lander is a beautiful place to live, and it is pretty wonderful to be able to work amidst all this beauty. I feel pretty lucky to be able to call this place my office. Until next time!

– Erin   Lander Field Office, BLM – Wyoming

Hello all. I have been in Lander, Wyoming for about two weeks now. I moved here from Minnesota, which is a very different place than Wyoming. One of my first thoughts after moving here was that I had never seen so much open space in my life. There are very few trees, making it easy to see for miles in every direction.  The habitat here is considered sagebrush steppe, a landscape dominated by sagebrush (Artemisia) species and short bunchgrasses. This area of the country has a semi-arid climate and there is much less water here than I am accustomed to.  Lander is located at the base of the Wind River Mountains. From many places in the field office you can see snow capped mountains in the distance.

The sagebrush steppe habitat in the Lander Feild Office.

My first couple weeks at work has consisted mainly of introductions and training. Various employees have been taking my fellow intern and I out for tours of the field office. The Lander Field Office manages 2.2 million acres, so there is a lot to see. We are just starting to get oriented so we can eventually head out to the field by ourselves. Much of the land is only accessible on two-track dirt roads, so we have been doing quite a bit of off road driving. We have also started talking about some of the projects we will be working on over the course of our internship. We will be doing quite a bit of rangeland monitoring, which involves monitoring key species to measure both the intensity and the impact of grazing in different grazing allotments. We will also be doing some experimental repair of wetlands in areas where livestock have caused “hummocking” of the wetland. We will also be doing some seed collection of native species with the Seeds Of Success program.

One of the prettier areas in the field office

I have started learning some of the native species in the field office. One of the rangeland specialists helped us with some identification tips in the field and we have also been studying from the herbarium. Many of the plants are species I have never seen before, which I find exciting. Out in the field last week I got to see Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja linariaefolia) for the first time.

Wyoming Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja linariaefolia)

We have also seen a lot of wildlife in the field. I’ve seen hundreds of Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), they seem to be everywhere. Also many mule deer (Odocoileus heminous), rabbits, horned toads (Phrynosoma douglasi brevirostre), and a few elk (Cervus canadensis).

Pronghorn are generally very skittish. However, we got pretty close to this one in the truck.

It looks like it will be a great season, I can’t wait to see what it will bring. Until next time!

Erin, Lander Field Office, Bureau of Land Management- Wyoming