Though the weather in Lander, Wyoming has remained warm and sunny, unusual for early November, many other aspects of life here have changed; Hunting season has mostly wrapped up, all of the leaves have fallen, Halloween costumes came and went, seasonal shops have closed their blinds. Though my internship won’t finish until the end of November, many of the other seasonal workers in the Lander Bureau of Land Management Field Office have packed up and left. While some nights are a little quiet, I’ve been able to spend time with friends from town, taking pottery classes, playing trivia, going hiking and whittling down my reading list. It was great to have out-of-town visitors as I showed them the life I’ve established here and educated them on the amazing system of public lands in this country.

My work life has also changed these past weeks. The amount of fieldwork necessary for my rangeland monitoring position diminished very quickly as the grazing period concluded. With our final stubble height measurements complete, we patrolled for lost or forgotten cows hiding in ravines or beyond nolls. With the cows deemed gone, I helped other range specialists cross off fieldwork on their to-do list. I went out in the field for two days to work with out-of-office remote sensing and rangeland specialists to assist on a long-term monitoring project of theirs. They have been collecting soil temperature and production data on six sites, each with a grazed and un-grazed treatment section, to assess the effects of grazing on water retention capabilities. The working hypothesis, in essence, is that an un-grazed area will remain frozen longer into the spring, thus melting and retaining moisture later into the spring. I helped by clipping vegetation within the grazed and un-grazed plots at each site, and drying and weighing the clippings. I visited, and helped restore, a site where a long-term experiment is being conducted; they are analyzing the effects of faux beaver damns on the water retention abilities on grazed and un-grazed areas. The scientists hypothesized that a faux beaver damn, in flooding the creek, would return the area to a bog, increasing the water retention capability of the area.

Frost on sage brush on a particularly cool morning

Three of the other projects I helped out with in the field were: fixing a fence around a pasture in order to ensure the removal of livestock and wild horses before a prescribed burn (which I’ll hopefully watch!), seeding native seeds as part of a post-burn rehabilitation project with the fire crew, and seeding native seeds and planting sagebrush seedlings to help the botanist and archeologists restore a petroglyph site. In the office I’ve been assisting the remote sensing specialist in the categorization of vegetation type in images along transects. I’ve assisted the GIS specialist with digitizing range improvement projects, and edited NEPA documents. I went to a local school to help present on the BLM to 4^th graders (4^th graders in the parks) and 8^th graders (a geological hazard presentation). Definitely one of the best parts of the internship has been working with, assisting, and learning from a large range of specialists!

At work planting sage brush seedlings at the Castle Gardens petroglyph site.

As my personal and work lives have shifted, and will continue to shift, so has the political environment. With every political transition in Washington D.C., though this one may be more significant than others, there is a transition in the BLM. While it is impossible to predict how these changes will be felt across the country and the DOI, we need to advocate for our public lands. Though I barely knew anything about the vast system six months ago, I now feel that they are one of the United States’ largest assets. In the wake of the Malheur trial and the election it is imperative to protect and work for our public lands!

Bureau of Land Management

Lander Field Office

Lander, Wyoming

The seasons are quickly changing in Lander, WY. It seems like yesterday I was in the hot summer sun IDing grasses and collecting production data in between gulps of water in a not-so-fruitful attempt to stay hydrated. The wildflowers that bloomed in the plains when I arrived in late spring have long seeded, and the lush grasses the cows desire have since dried out.

In early August, I went backpacking in the Alaska Basin (named for glaciers and grizzlies!) in the Tetons with friends. It was a spectacular trip! If you get to take a trip there, I highly recommend it. We came upon colorful meadows filled with wildflowers long after those in town had dulled.

Alaska Basin in the Tetons

Wildflowers in the Tetons

Then, at first slowly, fall came to Wyoming. Being from upstate New York, fall is one of my favorite seasons. On the first slightly chilly morning in Lander, I decided I needed to make banana bread, squash soup and tomato sauce. I went on another backpacking trip to the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range. Fall had definitely come to the Cirque! We got the first rain I’d seen in months, with a little hail mixed in. Despite the weather, it was a beautiful hike, impressive landscape and had great company. As a bonus, I saw my first aspens starting to turn to a bright yellow!

Fall at Cirque of the Towers

A glimpse of sun at Arrowhead Lake outside the Cirque

This week it seems fall is really coming. Though we started with some 80 degree days, our nights are getting colder as will the days. Driving to my monitoring sights yesterday I saw splotches of turning aspens, willows, and gooseberries intermixed with various coniferous trees. The monitoring work I have been doing will soon change with the weather. Hopefully, I’ll begin other types of monitoring that revolve less around livestock movement, and keep my office time to a minimum. I sure have gotten used to, and love, spending my days outdoors.

I’m hoping to continue hiking despite the weather getting colder. I’m planning to hike Wind River peak this weekend, though the forecast at 13,000 feet is predicting snow… Spring and summer have been great in Wyoming and I’m excited to see what the fall and early winter will bring!

July has been a busy month in Lander, WY, on a personal and professional level. Starting off with an awesome Fourth of July weekend (think rodeos, parades, live music, friends, grilling, fireworks beyond belief), and ending with hikes through Sinks Canyon – an awesome geologic and recreational spot right outside of Lander city limits – with a dog I was dog sitting named Bean, July has been great. The 23^rd International Rock Climbers Festival happened in Lander, which provided many opportunities to win free goodies and dance to some awesome bands –The Whiskey Shivers were a crowd favorite! Though I’m barely a beginner boulder-er, I still had a lot of fun watching the bouldering competitions and being around incredibly buff and tan men and women. I’ve had many nice times with friends in town, playing pool, swimming in a local swimming hole, helping garden, and listening to live music. I’ve also been reading a lot of books from the library, playing Frisbee and tennis, and writing to friends.

Working as a rangeland monitoring technician at the Lander Field Office (BLM) continues to be fulfilling and satisfying. My work partner and I have fallen into a routine with the original monitoring work we learned; we’ve gotten much faster running transects and spying on cows.  These past two weeks we helped out a different rangeland specialist with long-term monitoring efforts. We learned new types of monitoring and saw new country. New grasses to learn, rocks to find and nuances to appreciate.

Left to right: replaced stromatolite mounds, replaced ooids and mossy agate.

A lovely outhouse and coyote skull found exploring new BLM land.

Since we’ve gotten faster at most of our daily work, we have a bit more time in the office in the afternoon. We’ve picked up some office projects – filing things, calling companies that need to renew permits etc. – to help out those around us. While being in the office pales next to working in the field, everyone is extremely friendly and makes the work enjoyable.

Can’t wait to see what August brings!

Abby

Lander Field Office, Wyoming, Bureau of Land Management

The day-to-day of my job monitoring riparian areas to analyze the effects of grazing for the rangelands section of the BLM in Lander, WY has been great thus far. I get to spend every day outside, learning a new landscape and wildlife. As summer sets in, I’m enjoying watching the changes within our study sites – less rain, less wildflowers, seeding grasses, more grazing, slightly older sage grouse and antelope fawns. I’m excited to see how the landscape changes as summer and fall progress. Despite the great day-to-day, my favorite part of the job thus far has been all of the opportunities to learn from other BLM employees.

A few weeks ago I went on a tour of the allotments I’ve been monitoring with the Cooperative Rangeland Management group – a team of people involving BLM and State lands employees, conservationists, ranching permitees, emeritus professors, and me. I learned about the land I’ve been working on from the experts – one of the rancher’s grandad moved there in 1919. For some perspective, that’s before the BLM even existed! It was so great to hear the open communication between those with such differing perspectives. The day truly drove home the idea of multi-use multi-value land. It is extremely difficult to have all of the values represented in each parcel of land, and often the values are competing, but I think the aim is admirable and it is possible.

Two weeks ago I got to go on a plant ID refresher field trip with our new field botanist (also a CLM graduate!) and a collection of others from the office. There were a few rangeland people, two fire guys, and some oil and gas folk. It was fascinating to hear the conversations between the different experts, and to see where their own experience lies. The rangeland people helped ID a lot of grasses and they all had different tips for recognizing them.  The fire guys were talking about the transitioning ecological systems post burn and what plants to look for there. The plant ID refresher was very helpful, but, even better, was getting to spend time with and being in the field with the pros.

The learning curve my first month here has been immense. It’s been full of learning many acronyms – HMA, CRM, NCS; driving on muddy two-tracks, remembering names and positions of those in the office, knowing which rock to turn left at, learning grass names. I’ve enjoyed learning the field office and getting better and faster at monitoring and my day-to-day work. It’s been such a privilege to work in an office where I can stray from my normal work and learn from the experts around me.

Abby

Bureau of Land Management

Lander Field Office

Lander, WY

I arrived in Lander, Wyoming a little less than two weeks ago to work for the Rangeland section of the Bureau of Land Management. I was hired to monitor the effects of grazing animals on grasslands in south-central Wyoming. With an interest in grasslands and wildfire, a love of being outside, and training in geology, I was extremely excited to begin work! These first two weeks have definitely been busy and interesting and full of adjusting to a new place, job and people.

Driving into Lander, the first thing I noticed was the vastness of the landscape and the beauty of the rocks. Huge uplifted red, orange and yellow layered sand and mudstone lined the highways; the perfect frame for a town, the perfect home for a Mesozoic fossil. The sense of space is a lot different from the crowded city corridor of the East Coast, where I grew up and went to college. Driving through the country to Lander was like driving through above an ocean; awe-inspiring, immense, and of-another-world. The landscape and altitude were two of the first things I adjusted to, or, am adjusting to, since coming to Wyoming.

During the first two weeks of work I’ve been learning more about the areas we’re working in, the animals we’re working with, and the people we’re working with. The work is very interesting; we’re monitoring grazed and non-grazed grasslands in order to study the effect of cattle, antelope, sheep and wild horses on the important sagebrush-steppe ecosystem. One of the perks of the job is getting to be outside all day in an incredibly beautiful landscape; there’s no shortage of sagebrush, antelope, or mountains. Another perk is that I’ve gotten to meet people who are doing very interesting work at the BLM, those working on everything from wildfire fighting to wild horse management, archeology to recreation planning! Everyone has been very friendly and excited to talk about their work.

Grazing cows with the Wind River Mountains in the background

Noting illegal cows on a Trimble

Examining brands on calves to determine their owners

There was a huge learning curve the first week, but I’m starting to feel more and more comfortable. I can now tell the difference between several allotments and cattle pastures, a handful of cow brands, and various western flora and grasses. I’m excited to see how much more I’ll know, and how much more adjusted I’ll be, in the next two weeks!

Indian Paintbrush!

We found a field of Shooting Star flowers

–Bureau of Land Management, Lander Field Office, Wyoming–