Well the day has finally come! All my duties are complete: the last data points for my LPC (lesser prairie chicken) and DSL (dunes sagebrush lizard) surveys have been entered into GIS; the last wildlife camera has been collected and viewed; and all the field data sheets have been scanned and filed accordingly. My last week at the Carlsbad Field Office has been actually really amazing. I expected myself and the other interns to be stressed with all these last minute responsibilities, but perhaps we overestimated how much we had to do, or maybe we are just that efficient! Also, it helps that we all had a bit of last minute fun.

On Thursday, two of the office’s cave specialists took the last of the interns caving in Dry cave, a BLM managed site. Actually, probably the two most distinguished cavers in the region. They took us on a 5 hour journey about 100 (plus) ft subsurface, through a maze of low lying tunnels, passing by mounds of century old bat guano, down 40 ft deeps cracks in the earth, and through the teeniest hole I’ve ever squeezed myself through in my life.

We went into the cave with a grin on our faces, and we came out, albeit a bit more bruised, grinning even more and laughing on the windy slopes where the cave is nested into the mountain.

Prior to the caving extravaganza, I was coming off an epic backpacking trip in the country’s world’s first designated wilderness area, the Gila Wilderness, Northwest of Silver City, NM. I transversed the Gila river a few times and up several canyons, exploring yet another one of New Mexico’s beautiful scenery.

Throughout the last 5 months, I was fortunate enough to have an internship with a diverse spread of experiences. From wildlife to botanical work, my internship has been riddled with long hours in the summer heat of the Chihuahuan desert, to the chill, informational environment provided in the office. So many experts to learn from and talk with about their job priorities and life experiences. The advice they’ve shared with me will travel with me to my next endeavor, whatever that is. Being near all these hard working persons has given me a deep sense of what the passion of others entails, and it has strengthened my own.

I wanted to give a big thank you to the CFO wildlife staff that have been a constant source of information in regards to the management and conservation of resources in a highly controversial environment, as well as a stable and unique source of entertainment. I have never worked with such a friendly group of professionals that have made me laugh as much as I have this field season. Of course, I also want to thank my dedicated mentor for being the most helpful resource of them all. He has been the keystone to all the interns’ success. He helped us get started, provided the right tools, and let us do our own thing whilst in conjunction providing the best experiences as possible, all while working his own difficult job on top of that. He has been an inspiration, and I would be extremely happy to reach his level of work ethic in the future!

I’m not sure of my future plans as of the moment, but I’m looking at graduate programs very intensely, and I hope to be able to start school again next fall. However, whether I go back to school again or not, I have the CLM internship to thank for all the experiences and opportunities that have been provided and presented to me.

Krissa, thank you for organizing this amazing internship, I hope that the next generation of interns have just as an amazing time as I know I did and several members of my cohorts. Conservation Land Management rules!!

Good luck to all those finishing up!

Thanks again,

Armand Cann

Hello!

The past month here at the Carlsbad, NM field office has kept me very busy. Most of my recent task has been focused on birds, which I have absolutely no complaints about! As I believe I mentioned in my post from last month, I developed and was preparing to implement a protocol for surveying scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) for future management of the species. As it is a game species, it is important for this field office to keep tabs on the populations so the natural resource can be shared with public land users under the paradigm of sustainability. What I didn’t say before but what I’ll admit now, is that I first thought of this task as a cinch, but I quickly discoverd how difficult it was to create your own protocol that will be unique to the environment, culture, and condition of the land you’re working with. I couldn’t just translate one protocol from one region to the next, and I also didn’t have the same resources to work with. Needless to say, after some discussions and adaptations I accomplished the task, and over the past few weeks I have been putting it in practice successfully.

Two weeks ago I was able to participate in the celebration that is Public Lands Day. I was fortunate enough to help out at the BLM’s booth at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park. It was my first time getting to explore the facility in full. Overall, I found it to be one of those gems you stumble upon while living out your busy life. I had no idea they had so much biodiversity there, so although all of the displays and exhibits were exemplary, they don’t get enough attention… Anyway, I helped out at the booth by explaining the SOS program and melding that with the idea of successful restoration and wildlife management to fit the culture of the local community.

This week the wildlife crew took a nice little mid-week field trip to the Milnesand Prairie Preserve near the border of Texas and eastern New Mexico. Oh, and by “nice” I mean early, and by “early” I mean waking up at 3:00am to drive 2 hours to our work site. Only joking, or at least… it was a very enjoyable trip despite the extremely early morning. Our goal for this trip was to shadow a biologist who performs regular roadside surveys for the Lesser Prairie Chicken [(Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) for now on LPC]. The LPC is a federally threatened species of grouse that inhabits the arid and shortgrass grasslands in the west. Its habitat over the past century has been extremely reduced, unfortunately, and the species population has suffered. After solidifying our understanding of the surveying methods, the biologist took us on a tour of the prairie preserve where we scouted out old lekking grounds for LPCs as well as observing the different management practices seen throughout the property. The biologist we worked with was so informational, too! I loved every minute of listening to her talk. She was a local of the area, and has been working there for the past decade, so no wonder she served as such an amazing encyclopedia.

Interesting fact: I recently learned that a month ago a federal judge vacated the federal protection of the species temporarily from its listing in 2014. For reasons that are far too complicated for myself to explain, let alone understand completely, this action was taken. I’m not going to muddle your mind with my biased opinions, aside from the openingly admitted fact that this news initially frustrated me deeply for understandable reasons. However, I think this is only a temporary halt in the species’ protection.

Aside from work, here are a few representative pictures of my recent adventures!

That’s all for now! I only have one more month left, so be prepared for my concluding post of my experience in November!

P.S. October has thus far been an incredibly wet month here in Carlsbad. Is it “normal”? Can’t say, but it’s keeping the desert flora pretty rich in greenery.

Armand Cann
Carlsbad NM Field Office, Bureau of Land Management

I suppose it won’t surprise you that there was no reprieve from the summer heat of August as opposed to the inferno that was July? Yeah, I wasn’t very surprised either… It’s OK, my body handled the intensity much better this go around.

This past month my tasks fell very heavily towards seed collection. We had a lot of our local flora ready to drop their seeds, and had to take the opportunity while it was there to collect as much as we could. I think we completed at least 6 seed collections during that month, on top of other wildlife duties all the interns and myself had. There are several species, such as an Andropogon spp. and other sand-dune country grasses, that have continually held onto their seeds despite how hot it’s been. Fortunately for the region, we’ve been receiving quite a bit of rain, but unfortunately that has delayed the maturing of some of the species that should have already been ready. We’ll continue checking up on them as the season winds down. Since this is the first year for SOS in the Carlsbad field office district, we don’t have reliable data to go on for when seed maturity is generally reached for most species here. We’re doing it as we go, which can be challenging but rewarding since we are the forerunners of the program for this office: writing protocols and recording collection schedules for future interns.

As September has come and Fall quickly approaching, I’ve written a surveying protocol for Scaled Quail (Callipepla squamata), which is a common game species in states such as Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and of course, New Mexico. We just want to get a good idea of how their populations are so we can make appropriate management decisions regarding quail harvesting. As I’ve said, it’s been a “wet-ish” year, so we suspect their populations to not be of concern as there should be more resources for the quails to take advantage of. I’ve also written the protocol setup in the form a pilot study for a potentially longer observational study. My mentor and I want to look at the effects of sprayed areas on quail populations. Will there be a significant difference in the number of quail observed along roads that have been sprayed with herbicide versus non-sprayed? Simple, but hasn’t been looked at too much. I should say–the herbicide is used to reduce the cover impact of shrubs such as mesquite (Prosopis spp.) and shinnery oak (Quercus havardii) as they compete with grasses and other forbs that cattle eat. We’ll see how it all goes. I run my first test run next week!

These next several weeks are also going to be focused on the goal of bat monitoring within our field office. We want to conduct a few bat counts of some local roosts we know of that contain colonies of Mexican free-tailed (Tadarida brasiliensis) and the cave myotis (Myotis velifer) bats. We also had the idea to take a video of the exodus of these bats for future reference and for the potential ability to get a more accurate estimate of their population’s numbers. I’ve read papers on the estimation of some bat colonies varying from millions of individuals to only a few hundred thousand. A big difference, and from what I’ve read, it’s mostly due to the complications of quantifying a (sometimes) blur of objects circling yet gradually leaving their caves in large numbers. If time allows and if we are able to capture a good video of an exodus, I may try looking up some strategies for estimating myself.

As for recreation, I’ve been busy (perhaps a bit lazy as well). The busiest was when I drove the 9 and half hours up to Leadville, CO to visit a couple friends. We camped out and successfully summited the second tallest peak in the contiguous, Mt. Elbert – a devious one. It had a deceptive peak that tricked pretty much all of the hikers we saw that day, though, we all endured. Very worthwhile and beautiful vistas! On another solo trip I went up to Ruidoso, NM to hike a trail in the Sacramento mountains – lots of burned trees, but, yet again, all so beautiful nonetheless…

Until next time!

Armand Cann
Carlsbad Field Office, Bureau of Land Management

Greetings!

July passed by quite fast and I am so happy it did because it was really hot. It’s definitely the warmest summer I’ve experience thus far in life. Unfortunately, curiosity got the best of me and I found myself looking up the individual daily peak temperatures for July. I calculated the average temperature for the month down here at ≈100°F!! Woah! It’s alright, it was overall a fantastic month.

Finally, after two months of trapping for the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus) we hit the jackpot for four out of seven our sites. Don’t worry I have pictures!

We changed our strategy a bit with the placement for our most recent traps. Instead of placing our traps in completely new areas, we decided to just fill in the gaps around areas where there was a positive presence for the lizard in the past.

I found it to be pretty awesome to experience handling this species as they were previously up for being listed as an endangered species.

Anyway, for the most part our lizard-trapping season is done with. We’re moving on to bigger and better things – OK, not “better” just different. Last week we got up early (4 something o’clock) to visit a few heronry (heron nests) sites off in the distant corners of the Carlsbad Field Office. My mentor just wanted to check out how a few of the reported Great Blue Heron (Ardea Herodias) nests were doing. Our first site was seemingly pretty deserted but after a long look up into the canopy of the soapberry trees we spotted one juvenile GBH. We checked on the site a few days afterwards and were able to spot the juvenile again with its parents from a distant. They seem to be doing well overall but they are the only GBH nest at the site where previously, years before, there has been a colony of the species. We scouted out a few more active nests at another location where a colony did persist, despite there being a fairly large dieback of trees due to an industrial spill last year.

My most recent project focuses on monitoring some old Yellow-Billed Cuckoo (Cooccyzus americanus) sites along the Delaware River near the New Mexico-Texas boarder. I’ve yet to find any, but it has only been one day. I’ll update you all on how that goes in the future.

Outside of work I ventured into the Carlsbad Caverns again for an extended scheduled tour of the Lower Caves. It was pretty amazing! Saw a bat encased in a stalagmite and even got to crawl through a few small tunnels throughout the tour. Definitely worth the month wait. I have no pictures unfortunately as I lack the equipment to take pictures in low light areas. Also went to visit the White Sands National Monument up and over the western side of the Sacramento mountain range. I never knew that such a place existed until recently, but it had a very “spacey” feeling to it along with being a unique and beautiful landmark – another recommendation.

Take care for now!

Armand Cann
Carlsbad Field Office, Bureau of Land Management

The many hours I’ve spent over the last month have been well worth my endurance. I’m finally off the road–so to speak, at least in the sense of my travels coming to a temporary end in the result of my arrival to Carlsbad, NM. I’m here to stay for a while and learn and experience as much as I can for the duration of my internship with the Carlsbad BLM office… I’m not going to lie to you and say I didn’t do one of the tourist-y things I could do in Carlsbad by visiting the Carlsbad Caverns National Park as soon as I got settled! I’m not going to dwell on how amazing that place is, and how I’m going to be visiting that place more than a few times in my off time, and even possibly working there during the day down the road!

Besides that, my internship has been going strong for a little more than 3 weeks now. After getting most of my paperwork and training out of the way I was finally able to venture outside and experience the southeast New Mexico landscape. For my first excursion my mentor took me out into the field to shadow him on how the BLM wildlife biologist handle dealing with the oil & gas industry in proposing pipelines, drilling wells/islands and such. It was not so much biologically entertaining as I saw a good glimpse into what Southeast NM industry was really all about. OK, not all about, but probably the most “socially” relevant. I wish I could provide an accurate picture of what this landscape looks like for those that are as unaware as I was before coming here, but I’ve yet to find [produce] a satisfying photo for our pleasure. It was definitely an eye opening experience.

Outside those instances where the BLM staff met industry, I have started my wildlife work out in the field and my first project/task is to survey areas of the Carlsbad managed public lands for the presence of Sceloporus arenicolus (Dunes Sagebrush Lizard) – a New Mexico designated sensitive status species. This species is also listed as “vulnerable” under the IUCN red list. So far we’ve only used pit traps in three locations for five trapping days. Unfortunately, that has yielded us with no detection of S. arenicolus in those areas thus far, but I have been fortunate to at least get some first hand experience in handle some local lizards, one of comparable size.

One of the species we have found is Uta stansburiana (Common side-blotched lizard), a small dune-dwelling lizard in comparable size to S. arenicolus. A lot of the males of this species are showing off some pretty brilliant colors as it is mating season. Uta stansburiana has actually been shown to have an inverse relationship with our target species S. arenicolus; it is thought that U. stansburiana acts as a competitor for the resources within dune habitats that our target species prefers.

Another of the species we’ve encountered have been members of a whiptail species found in this region – genus: Cnemidophorus. I’ve yet to identify the exact species, but it’s most likely C. dixoni, C. tigiris, or C. tesselataus. It’s pretty cool I got to handle a few of these creatures, as a lot of whiptails in genus Cnemidophorus are parthenogenetic. This means they produce offspring by asexual reproduction, and coming from one vertebrate [myself] to another, I think that’s really awesome. I’ve learned about this type of reproduction as a kid specifically from the example of whiptail lizards, and for me to now handle one of those species that uses this strategy of reproduction really means a lot to me. It makes me excited, and it cements the fact that I’m definitely in the right field! Oh, nostalgia!

I’ve also been fortunate enough to be accompanied by two other interns Jeanette and Jodie from the Great Basin Institute. Trained in the magic arts of plant taxonomy and ecology they know significantly more about the flora in this region (and outside) than I do. Slowly they are helping me refresh and fortify my plant identification skills. Soon we’ll be off to collect our first batch of seeds for the SOS program and, although it was not in my job description, I’m really happy to be partaking in such an endeavor outside of my wildlife focus. The CBG training workshop has left me with a germinating seed of botanical curiosity that I was not expecting! My knowledge is blossoming. I CANNOT wait!

Oh, and I’ll keep up those bad puns, you just sit there and watch… or read.

Armand Cann

Carlsbad Field Office, Bureau of Land Management