Nine months after arriving in Klamath Falls, OR, having watched leaves emerge on trees, turn brown and dry in the late summer heat, and fall off as the first snow blanketed the valley, it’s time to say goodbye and begin my next adventure. Working as an intern at the USFWS in Klamath Falls has been an incredible opportunity to work in a wide range of geographies with a variety of species and projects. I have gained experience in conducting research and writing scientific reports and manuscripts. The note that I was a lead author on that discussed rearing distribution of endangered Klamath basin sucker using identification based on x-ray imaging, has been accepted for publication in the journal, ‘Western North American Naturalist’, and I am currently in the process of submitting a review paper on reintroductions of bull trout to another journal. This internship has been a great opportunity to get a wide range of experience while learning about the realities of working for the federal government in the rural west. This fall I applied for a variety of graduate programs focused on wild bee ecology and am looking forward to doing some traveling and adventuring before beginning graduate school this coming fall.

Below are a variety of photos from my time in Klamath Falls.

An Oregon spotted frog captured during an egg mass survey.

A panorama at Klamath Marsh, where we conducted Oregon spotted frog surveys.

A great egret at Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge

Inserting a PIT tag into an adult sucker.

Josh and Shilah attempting to catch suckers while snorkeling in the Link River.

Releasing a monarch butterfly after raising it from an egg.

The muddy crew after a day of fish salvage at Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge.

Our fake coyotes waiting for their opportunity to scare birds away from our fish rearing ponds.

Kayaking on Waldo Lake on a still morning.

A sunset over the Sprague River while catching larval sucker.

Wrangling Canada geese while banding at the refuge.

A fan boat prepares to herd Canada geese for banding.

Banding a Canada goose.

Electrofishing with Nolan and Shilah on Demming Creek.

Electrofishing on Three-mile Creek, where we captured one bull trout in a reach where brook trout were recently eradicated.

A panorama of Crater Lake.

A red band trout caught near where the Wood River flows into Agency Lake.

Looking out over the Klamath basin from the top of Mt. Mcloughlin.

Holding a fisher while it begins to come to after being sampled as part of a BLM study.

We pulled out of the parking lot at dawn after one of the first nights of frost, raw chicken drumsticks and a can of synthetic stink bouncing around in a cooler in the bed of the truck. From town we drove west into the hills between Upper Klamath Lake and the Rogue Valley to check our first trap.

The BLM was in the midst of a fisher study, and I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to tag along with one of the lead biologists for a day. Fisher are small carnivorous mammals in the weasel family and the marten genus. They are primarily solitary animals, with the females occupying relatively large home ranges and the males moving between female ranges to mate. (Fun fact about fisher reproduction, while fisher mate in the early spring, they have delayed implantation so gestation doesn’t begin until the following fall!) While fisher were once relatively common in the western United States, heavy trapping for their pelts led to their extirpation in a large part of their historic range.  A population remained in south western Oregon and another population was established through reintroduction west of Crater Lake, Oregon. It is believed that these two populations may have merged to create the population that now occupies the area west of Upper Klamath Lake. The BLM is currently conducting a multi-year study to learn more about this population of fisher.

On the morning I checked traps with the BLM biologist, approximately 20 traps had been set and 5 separate groups were out checking traps. The traps consist of a have-a-heart trap connected to a wooden box. Traps are set against logs that are generally located on ridges or in narrow swaths of forest between open areas. To avoid predation, fisher prefer to travel in higher areas with adequate cover. Traps are camouflaged with bark, monitored with a motion sensor camera strapped to a nearby tree. A very strongly scented lure that smells like sweet skunk is spread around the area to attract animals, and a piece of raw chicken is hung inside the trap. Once an animal enters the trap to grab the chicken, the door springs shut behind it. When fisher find themselves trapped, they generally take the chicken, go hide in the wooden box behind the trap, and enjoy their meal. Traps are checked each morning to see whether a fisher (or other critter) has been caught and to refresh the lure and chicken if needed.

A set trap, waiting for a fisher to wander by.

Arriving at our first spot, we hopped out of the truck, grabbed our supplies, and followed the candy stripe flagging tape and increasingly strong smell of what the biologist I was with affectionately referred to as ‘pepe’ to the trap. While we did find a trap with the door closed, it was clear this was not the doing of a hungry fisher, but rather a curious bear. We set the trap back in place, covered it with bark, and propped the door open. I tried to hide my disappointment when three traps later all we had found were open doors or bear tossed traps. Just as I was resigning myself to a fisher-free day, we received a text from another biologist who had caught what she believed to be a juvenile female fisher in a nearby trap.

After all traps had been checked, we convened at the location with the fisher to process the animal. It took about 10 minutes to coax the fisher out of the wooden box, through a canvas tube that resembled a very large frosting bag, and into a fisher-sized wire cage. My job was to wait until the fisher scurried out and found itself stuck face first in the wire cage and then jam wooden dowels in behind it to ensure it didn’t retreat into the bag. Once in place, one of the biologist gave the fisher a general anesthetic.

The trap attached to a canvas tube and metal cage.

Various measurements and samples were taken including weight, length, girth, hair samples, blood samples, fir samples, tick samples, a tissue sample, ocular, nasal, and rectal swabs, and a tooth. The animal was monitored throughout the process to ensure an appropriate body temperature was maintained. While the BLM often puts radio collars on fisher to track their movement, this fisher did not receive a collar because it was likely not fully grown and a collar could lead to problems if the animal continued growing. A passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag was injected so the individual could be identified if recaptured. Poking and prodding complete, the fisher was returned to the wooden box to recover for a few hours before being released in the same area where it was captured. After two unsuccessful attempts to climb a nearby tree, which involved the fisher losing grip, flying through the air, and miraculously landing on all fours, the fisher finally wobbled its way up the trunk and clung to a branch, watching us until we drove away.

BLM biologists weigh the fisher. This was either a large juvenile female or a small adult female.

Taking samples from the fisher.

Although the day probably left the fisher feeling a little sore and woozy, the capture allowed the BLM to add to its data set and knowledge about fisher in the area, and gave me the incredible opportunity to be involved in capturing, processing, and releasing an animal that few people are lucky enough to ever see.

I got to hold the fisher as it began to wake up and return it to the trap for recovery.

After six months working with USFWS in Klamath Falls, OR largely focused on captive rearing programs for endangered sucker as well as some brief forays into work with spotted frogs, bald eagles, apple-gate’s milkvetch, vernal pool plants, monarch butterflies, and Canadian geese, I have transitioned into three months entirely focused on bull trout. Bull trout were once relatively common in the Klamath Basin, however in the late 1900s and early 2000s were extirpated from much of their historical range. In 1998 bull trout were listed as threatened under the endangered species act as a result of the species’ declining numbers.

Bull trout have been significantly impacted by habitat loss and the presence of non-native brook trout. Because bull trout require very cold and clean water, road building, logging, and agriculture have impacted Bull trout habitat. Brook trout compete with bull trout for resources and also interbreed with bull trout, resulting in sterile hybrids. While bull trout are still present in a few streams in the basin, bull trout reintroduction is being considered for a variety of historical habitats in the Klamath Basin.

A variety of other bull trout reintroductions have been completed (both successfully and unsuccessfully), so my role in this effort is to help write a review of past bull trout reintroductions so we can learn from these past projects. One of the most notable bull trout reintroduction projects has taken place recently on the Clackamas River in Northwestern Oregon. A short video (below) gives a brief overview of the project and its outcomes. The video does a great job of sharing the amazing work being done on the Clackamas through really impressive film making.

A video about the successful reintroduction of bull trout to the Clackamas River in Northwestern Oregon. Worth a watch just for the incredible underwater filming!

One of the recent projects I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in is raising Monarch butterflies. Monarchs are under a variety of threats including loss of habitat, particularly milkweed. Although there are a variety of types of milkweed, this is the only group of plants that monarchs lay their eggs on and monarch caterpillars eat. Monarchs also have a variety of predators and parasites, including the tachnid fly, a parasite that lays eggs inside monarch caterpillars and kills them.

In order to avoid parasitism and enable tagging, one of the biologists in the Klamath Falls USFWS office collected monarch eggs and caterpillars from patches of milkweed in the area to rear in captivity. Within 1-5 days of being laid eggs hatch into caterpillars which spend the next 10-14 days eating milkweed and becoming exponentially larger before forming chrysalises. The monarchs then develop inside the chrysalis for 9-14 days before emerging as adult butterflies.

The monarchs I raised are the fourth generation of the season meaning they will migrate to Southern California and Mexico. Once the monarchs became adult butterflies I placed very small polypropylene tags with unique letter and number combinations on each butterflies wing before releasing them. These tags are linked back to a researcher at Washington State University. If these tags are sighted as the monarchs make their journey Southward researchers will be able to determine where that monarch came from and learn more about monarch migration.

Below are some photos of the developing monarchs:

Monarch caterpillars munching away on milkweed.

A translucent chrysalis just before the butterfly emerged.

A monarch dries its wings having just emerged from its chrysalis.

Tagging a monarch before releasing it into the wild.

A polypropylene tag on a monarch’s wing.

I often find myself telling people how exciting it is to have a job where my days hold such variety and often entirely unexpected excitement. Perhaps I’ll find a new population of an endangered plant, shock a giant bull frog while electro fishing, or watch F-15 fighter jets dog fight over the vast expanse of sage brush and scab land. This week the variation in my days came with a day spent at Oregon Institute of Technology’s mammography lab.

At this point it is believed that the Lost River Sucker, an endangered species of fish native to the Klamath area, is not found in the Sprague River. Two other species of sucker, the Short Nose Sucker and Klamath Large Scale Sucker, are found in both the Sprague River  and in Upper Klamath Lake however despite the fact that the Sprague and Upper Klamath Lake are connected and open to fish passage the Lost River Sucker is only known to exist in the lake.

About 10 years ago close to 800 juvenile suckers were collected from the Sprague for a research project of some sort and eventually ended up preserved in alcohol in the flammables closet at the US Fish and Wildlife office in Klamath Falls, OR. Jump ahead 10 years and these samples presented the perfect opportunity to look further into the question of whether Lost River Suckers are reproducing in the Sprague River.

The crux of answering this question, and the reason I recently spent my day in a mammography lab, is that distinguishing between juvenile Lost River Suckers and other species of suckers is extremely difficult. With such small fish the only real way to identify species is by the number of vertebrae. Lost River Suckers have 45 or more vertebrae and the other species have 45 or fewer. So with the help of the interns from last year having sorted the fish by size and attached museum tags with distinct numbers to each fish, the other intern in the office and I set off to get the fish x-rayed.

With the help of a number of students and a professor at Oregon Institute of Technology we carefully laid out our samples, placed metal numbers and letters on each sheet, snapped a picture to be able to later align the x-rays with museum tags, pushed Bertha the prosthetic breast out of the way, and scanned 41 slides holding a total of 794 fish.

While we have the pictures and x-rays we have yet to spend the hours it will take to count the 45+ or 45- vertebrae on each fish (don’t worry, we do have a computer program that will make this process slightly easier) so unfortunately this blog post has a slightly anti-climactic conclusion. But stay tuned! The question of whether there are Lost River Suckers in the Sprague River will have an updated, data-supported answer shortly.

I’m guessing since this internship is through the Chicago Botanical Gardens not many of you are avid OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting, Oregon’s NPR station) listeners. If I’m correct this is very unfortunate for you 1. because OPB is great and 2. because you missed the recent segment on planting wocus – a segment that not only included bright orange sunglasses but also the carefully prepared and executed wocus dance.

The wocus, otherwise known as the Rocky Mountain Pond Lily, is a water plant that was once extremely prevalent in the Klamath Basin but is now much less common. ‘Wocus’ as the Native Americans called the plant has been used by the tribes in the area for many generations. A group of employees from US Fish and Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, and the Klamath Tribes have been working to re-introduce wocus to a property owned by the Nature Conservancy that has recently been returned to its historical state as a marsh (another cool story that involves lots of explosives).

I have to admit that I was not part of this re-introduction effort nor was able to wear orange sunglasses or do the wocus dance, so you may wonder why I just told you all of this. After the wocus re-introduction project was complete there were still 9 plants remaining, so the other intern in the office and I took the opportunity to commandeer the seedlings and use them in one of our fish rearing projects. We are raising suckers in two ponds that are essentially like giant bath tubs – relatively shallow and extremely exposed with no vegetation.

While we could have used the method of stapling the wocus to the bottom of the pond, we decided to instead experiment with growing wocus in water that is too deep to plant them. In order to provide cover for the juvenile fish to escape predation and also as an experiment in transplanting wocus, we designed a system to hang wocus from buoys anchored in the middle of the ponds. The idea of growing wocus in coconut fiber baskets came from work on wocus by Dr. Jherime Kellermann, a professor at Oregon Institute of Technology.

We moved the wocus seedlings from their pots to 10 inch coconut fiber baskets and used hemp twine to tie the bundles like small packages. 

These wocus bundles were then suspended by hemp twine from the chain just below each buoy. Each plant hangs between 1 and 2 feet under water and there are three plants per buoy. Another intern in our office, Shilah, bravely donned a dry suit and entered the ponds teaming with algae and zoo plankton to place the anchored buoys and wocus.

In the coming weeks we hope to start seeing wocus leaves reaching the surface and growing larger.

A few side notes:

• If you’re disappointed about missing the OPB story on wocus (why wouldn’t you be?!), don’t fear! You can read about the wocus project and listen to the radio piece here: http://www.opb.org/news/article/bringing-back-klamath-wetlands-one-wocus-at-a-time/
• One day while on the way to the ponds on the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge we were lucky enough to see an adult and juvenile borrowing owl. The juvenile retreated into its hole, but the adult allowed us to drive within about 10 feet of it and get some very close pictures.
• 

While my work with US Fish and Wildlife has so far been primarily focused on fish and other animals, these past few weeks have involved plant surveys for a species called Applegate’s milkvetch (Astragalus applegatei). Applegate’s milkvetch is a small perennial plant in the pea family that grows close to the ground and has delicate pinkish-white flowers.

Applegate’s milkvetch

Applegate’s milkvetch is only found in the Klamath basin and due to development and other disturbance of its habitat, it only exists in small populations around the basin. The plant was federally listed as endangered in 1993. Until this last week, only four populations of Applegate’s milkvetch were known around Klamath Falls. Last week we surveyed one of these populations, which happens to be at the airport. The parade of fighter jets taking off and landing made for an exciting day of surveying.

A field we surveyed for Applegate’s milkvetch at the Klamath Falls airport.

Based on a reported sighting of Applegate’s milkvetch by some local botanists, we ventured to a nearby state park to look for the reported plants. Having expected at most a few hundred individuals, we were surprised when hours of crawling on all fours later we had found upwards of a thousand individual plants. Between our survey efforts last week and today (which exclude one of the largest areas of the park), we have found over 4,000 plants. This is likely one of the largest remaining populations of Applegate’s milkvetch, far exceeding the recovery plan’s call for 1,500 individuals. While continued monitoring will be required, the discovery of this population may assist in down-listing and potentially de-listing of Applegate’s milkvetch.

A small area at the state park where we surveyed for Applegate’s milkvetch. Each colored flag indicates an individual plant.

The last month has brought with it a wide variety of projects, all sharing the common goal of raising short-nose and lost river suckers, two species of fish native to the Klamath basin and listed as endangered. Here’s the overview of our main projects:

A Crisafulli pump being used to drain the pond.

As the water level lowered we used seine nets to catch fish. We caught suckers, which we put in buckets with bubblers to relocate, and also sacramento perch and fat head minnows, which we released. Once the water levels got low enough we waded through the muck to catch the remaining suckers with small dip nets.

Covered in mud after catching suckers.

By the end of the day we caught between 50 and 60 suckers ranging in size from around 3 to 14 inches. These fish were transported to another facility where they will be raised and kept as part of a refugial population.

The pond with only a little water left in the main channel.

Larval release:

A few weeks ago a biologist from the Coleman fish hatchery in California came to the Klamath basin and collected eggs and milt from lost river suckers. Around 1087 larva hatched from these eggs and were held for about a week at the fish hatchery before we picked them up and released them into a small pond on the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. We will raise these fish over the summer to add to the refugial population of lost river suckers.

Larval lost river suckers in a bag filled with water and oxygen for transport.

The small pond where we released the 1087 larval lost river suckers.

Dock in Upper Klamath Lake:

As another element of our fish rearing efforts we will be collecting larval suckers from a river that flows into Upper Klamath Lake and raising them in net pens in the lake. Over the past few weeks we have assembled plastic blocks into a large dock with four bays where we will hang nets and raise fish. Earlier this week we dragged the dock into the lake and anchored it in an area known to have good water quality. In the next few weeks we will collect larval fish and release them in these nets.

Dragging the dock out into Upper Klamath Lake.

The dock anchored in Upper Klamath Lake.

In late March I uprooted from my soggy and abundantly verdant home in Portland, OR and headed south to Klamath Falls, a place where snow still clung to northeaster slopes and buds were still small and closed. Not only was I headed toward a new experience, but I was going to get an opportunity to experience spring a second time. Klamath Falls, a town small in population but large in commerce as it supplies the large rural area around it, is nestled between the expansive upper Klamath Lake and the much smaller lake Ewauna to the south. The Link River, the United States’ shortest river, cascades past town and bridges the one mile between lakes.

On a weekend trip to the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge I saw my first Avocet! I have also added the white faced ibis, black-necked stilt, and a variety of duck species to my life list.

As an intern with the US Fish and Wildlife Service I get the opportunity to immerse myself in this ecologically, politically, and culturally complicated basin. Our work will mainly focus on species listed as threatened or endangered: the lost river and short nose suckers and Oregon spotted frog so far. Over the past two weeks we have surveyed for Oregon spotted frog egg masses at the Klamath Marsh Wildlife Refuge and property owned by the Nature Conservancy.

A congregation of three egg masses. The Oregon spotted frog generally lays eggs in shallow marsh where the water is warm enough that the eggs will hatch within a few weeks.

Oregon spotted frog tadpoles in a cluster after hatching.

The Klamath Marsh Wildlife Refuge is a great place for bird watching during frog surveys.

We are also helping with the recovery of two species of endangered sucker. This has involved using trammel nets to catch suckers with the Bureau of Reclamation in lake Ewauna. Once we catch fish we process them (insert a PIT tag if they don’t already have one, measure the fish, and inspect for damage or parasites) before they are transported to a river at the north end of Upper Klamath lake to be released. We will likely use eggs and sperm from some of these fish to start a reservoir population in ponds south of the lakes.

Inserting a PIT tag into a short-nose sucker.

Preparing to release a female ruddy duck that got tangled in our net.

Each day has been full of unexpected experiences and opportunities to expand my knowledge and perspective. I look forward to the months ahead full of fish, frogs, feathers, and more!

Molly Hayes, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Klamath Falls, OR