In the summer of 1956, my grandfather, Art Humble, moved to Cody, WY to start his first job out of college in the coal industry. In the summer of 2017, I collected plant fossils for a research project in Hanna Basin, WY among the layers of coal, carbonaceous shales, and sandstone. On my last day that summer, the coincidence struck me as interesting. Art and I have always understood each other well. Even in my early years, I was very bookish, and I loved history, and we always bonded over that because he is also bookish and loves history. It was funny to me that we would spend time in the same places when we were around the same age.

Art Humble and me

I never thought I would go back to southern Wyoming so soon.

This past spring (2018), when I found out I had gotten into the CLM program and would be working in Rawlins, WY (just 40 miles from Hanna), it was my grandfather who was the only one in my family who had been to Rawlins before.

“It’s not much”, he said. And he showed me a photo of the simple, brick storefronts of downtown Rawlins from when he visited there. Rawlins has grown considerably in the past 60 years, but it is still small, with a population just under 10,000. I moved here 3 days after graduating college with no sense of what to expect out of my first real job using my real degree. I quickly found that, while Rawlins itself does not have a ton going on, the BLMers in our field office are incredibly kind and interesting people.

Once I started working, the weeks started to fly by incredibly quickly. I climbed sand dunes to survey Penstemon haydenii, an endangered plant that only grows in constantly disturbed sand dune environments. I tried to cut through thick reeds and willows to search for Wyoming Toad, the rarest amphibian in North America. I built a snow fence to protect sagebrush seedlings. I spotlight searched all night long for the ever charismatic black footed ferret. I ground checked for historic raptor nests. I surveyed Bennett Peak for invasive weeds. I visited Cody, WY with my boyfriend. I collected SO MANY SEEDS for Seed of Success. I even returned to Hanna Basin for one of our seed collections.

The CLM internship was a very good decision for me. I learned a lot at work, I went to 3 national parks, and I met some nice people. That’s all I can really ask for. I hope to find a more research-focused position for my next job, and eventually apply to graduate school. I love plants; I love natural history; I love ecology. I am really just following that bliss.

Now, I am looking at the clock on my last day of work, mentally preparing for the drive home ahead. I don’t know what’s next for me. I can’t even be sure where I will be 2 weeks from now, but today, I am starting the journey home to my family, and I am set to start substitute teaching until I figure things out. I will see my grandfather, and celebrate my mom’s birthday, and keep applying for botany-related jobs, and feel anxious about the future.

The only certainty in life in uncertainty, especially when you are 22. In the summer 1956, Art Humble did not know what the future would hold for him in Cody, and in the summer of 2018, I felt the same way about Rawlins. This week, on the phone, my grandfather put these feelings into words. They seem very profound for me right now, as I move on with no real plans for the near future. I can’t say that I won’t end up back in Wyoming for work for third time.

“You never know what to expect until you are there.”

I love you, Wyoming

July 2018

Nuttall’s Sunflower and I: Best Friends! So Happy!

Day of Antelope Bitterbrush collection– so sad

On days when we collect for Seeds of Success, the day could go a variety of ways depending on the plant we are working with, how hot it is outside, the conditions of our field site. Some days are totally perfect. Helianthus nuttallii is a beautiful sunflower. Each head produces 60 seeds, which means to get to our goal of 20,000 seeds, we only need about 330 seed heads. The population we found sits in mountain foothills where the temperature usually sits around 70 degrees and it’s only about a 90 minute drive from our field office. The actual collection took 45 minutes, our field site was gorgeous, I wasn’t drenched in sweat the whole time, and afterwards we had time leftover in the day, so we got to scout for other possible collections afterwards and “had to” drive through Medicine Bow National Forest to get back. I love Helianthus nuttallii. That was a great day. An easy day of field work.

Some collections do not go as great. Purshia tridentata is a shrub in the Rose family. Each flower produces an achene with a single seed. You read that correctly, one seed. That means, in order to reach the goal of 20,000 seeds per population, one has to pick 20,000 individual achenes while also making sure you pick from enough individual bushes to get an acceptable amount of genetic variation within the population. The population we worked with was in the desert. We collected on two hot days (90 degrees), morale was pretty low during the collection, and there were known rattlesnake sighting in that area before (eek!). It took around 10 hours to complete the collection. My back was sore from squatting down to pick the fruits– the bush was just low enough to the ground to be out of reach from a standing position. I am not a big fan of this plant. My opinion of Antelope Bitterbrush will probably always be colored by this experience of collecting its seeds. Apparently antelope love to eat this plant and it’s super great for the local habitat, but it also is probably my least favorite plant in the state of Wyoming.

Standing at the top of Mt Evans (14,000 ft)  in Colorado thinking about Antelope Bitterbrush Photo by Ari Rosenblum

I am not usually the kind of person who hates any plant. In fact, I am very partial to organisms of the botanical persuasion. I have had some bad experiences with the Rose family (Rosa multiflora has destroyed one of my jackets and has poked holes in several of my pants… and it’s invasive), but I generally do not hold grudges. However, it is going to take a while for me to forgive Purshia tridentata.

This Wyoming Toad tadpole does not even know what Antelope Bitterbrush is and look how happy he is! Photo by Alexa Rojas

August 2018

It’s disappointing when the sun comes up after 12 hours of searching and you still haven’t captured a Black Footed Ferret. Not a lot of people can share that experience, so you might just have to trust me on that.

First, some background– just about 30 years ago, Black Footed Ferrets were in sharp decline due to shrinking prairie dog populations (their primary prey), disease, and habitat loss. In fact, they were declared “Extinct in the Wild” in 1987. The future did not look bright for these little guys until a captive breeding program helped to increase the population, and today we classify them as endangered rather than extinct. This is good news, and hopefully as these animals continue to breed in the wild, we will not have to worry about them at all. However, for now, we must keep track of these reintroduced populations, which has some peculiar challenges.

Many animals are nocturnal– owls, raccoons, foxes, bats, scorpions, the list is actually pretty long. Nocturnal behavior can be adaptive– either for hunting purposes, or for escaping hunters. Humans, however, did not develop this adaptation. Our brains have an intricate process for chemically maintaining circadian rhythms, so that we sleep at night and are awake during the day. Black Footed Ferrets, interestingly enough, are one of those nocturnal animals, though. They hunt prairie dogs at night, and sleep in burrows during the day. Our sleep schedules are incompatible to say the least. We can’t expect the ferrets to change their sleep schedule for us, so any humans who are interested in surveying their populations is going to have to go temporarily nocturnal.

Wyoming Fish and Game, being the agency responsible for these surveys, asked the BLM for volunteers to work from sunset to sunrise for 3 days. Unsurprisingly, us four plucky CLM interns working in the Rawlins Field Office jumped on the opportunity. We had no idea what we are in for, but after a fun week of Wyoming Toad surveys with the state Fish and Wildlife agency, we were excited for any opportunity to meet with other government agencies and learn more about how we can help endangered species. We showed up to Shirley Basin at 4pm, bright eyed and bushy tailed, to get trained for the night ahead. At sunset, we headed out to begin the search for our new BFF (Black Footed Ferret).

SOOOOOOOOOOOO Cuuuuuuuute!!!!! Black Footed Ferret

With spotlights in hand and traps in backpack, we searched and became familiar with the nighttime wildlife. Badgers are angry creatures, especially when we would follow them into their burrows, mistaking them for a ferret (it’s dark, okay?!). Foxes run away at first sight. Cows are just always awake, it seems. Pronghorn Antelopes look strangely like ferrets when their heads are low to the ground as they graze, but they often run in groups, so that’s a pretty useful diagnostic. We didn’t see any coyotes, but we definitely heard them as they announced their successful hunts throughout the night. Birds of prey look much larger when they are standing on the ground (and, as a dinosaur enthusiast, I was always happy to see them). Falling into a prairie dog burrow is embarrassing, and I was glad nobody could see me in the dark when it happened. Black Footed Ferret sightings were relatively rare in comparison to other animals, and they were often very hesitant to walk into the traps when found.

After 2 and a half nights of wandering around our assigned plot and capturing not a single ferret, my search partner and I were beginning to think it was all a prank. Maybe the ferrets in our plot were uncapturable. At around 3 in the morning on Thursday, we found out it wasn’t a prank at all. We captured our first ferret and I was so deliriously happy that I could barely talk into the radio to let the processing trailer know we were coming. The three year old female we found was very well behaved as the non-game biologist took her measurements. She had already received her vaccinations against plague and canine distemper when she had been captured in a previous year, but any other captured ferrets would have received those. We released her back to her burrow and set out to continue searching for more ferrets. While I had only caught the one, the overall project was pretty successful in capturing and releasing ferrets.

Anesthesia helps with allowing measurements to be taken

After returning to Rawlins at 9am on Thursday, I immediately fell asleep. The nocturnal lifestyle is probably not for me. Today, I very much enjoyed getting up in the morning for work and I look forward to going to sleep tonight knowing there are some cool BFFs hunting for prairie dogs.

Hitting the books– keying out species– pretending I know what I am doing Photo credit: Chloe Battista

June 2018

I graduated from my small liberal arts college in Ohio about a month ago and then almost immediately packed up and moved to Rawlins, WY to intern with the BLM for Seeds of Success. In my first few weeks here, I realized pretty quickly that I had a lot to learn. While I took plant taxonomy and botany classes as a part of my biology major at Oberlin College, I would not consider myself an expert in seed biology and plant identification. I guess in the next five months, I am going to become much more knowledgeable on those topics. Fortunately, my awesome mentor has been here to help, my amazing co-intern, Chloe, is incredibly  capable and knowledgeable, and my funny and sweet boyfriend, Miguel, is cheering me on from Miami.

I get to work in a pretty place!!!

So far, my time here has had me thinking a lot about conservation, natural resources, and local versus global spheres of each. My project– collecting seeds for restoration– is very focused on the local scale. When habitats within our field office are disturbed (by oil and gas, wind fields, fires, etc), the seeds we collect will be used to assist in the restoration of those habitats. Seeds could also be used for research on the flora that grow here, or may just be banked. All of this is focused on conservation within the High Desert District of Wyoming. Considering the importance of restoration with native plants and how different populations tend to support individuals that are most adapted to their specific environment, our project is crucial for local conservation.

Helping with that local conservation… Blowout Penstemon is an endangered species and we were assisting with surveys to assess its population in Wyoming. Photo Credit to Bonnie Heidel

The global sphere within conservation, however, is also extremely important. It is becoming increasingly laughable to deny that humans actions, specifically greenhouse gas emissions, have lead to a global change in climate. With more severe weather, higher average temperature, and increasing extinction rates, we are at the beginning of what looks like will be Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Marine organisms that are indicators of healthy oceans are now quickly falling in number, as are amphibians and other vulnerable groups of organisms. These major global patterns are a result of the enhanced Greenhouse Effect. Human use of fossil fuels for energy since the industrial revolution have a major hand in disrupting the balance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Restoration botany can, in some ways, work to mitigate climate effects because plants can act as carbon sinks, but it would take a lot of planting to solve our problems and local communities can only do so much when large corporations are to blame for the grand majority of emissions. This is why, as I work in the local conservation sphere, I cannot forget about the global scale as well.

Blowout Penstemon

Global issues like climate change are hard to combat as one person who just graduated from college. However, our planet is a global community. What we do can affect everyone, so while it is easy to feel helpless and ignore what is happening at a global scale, we are responsible for maintaining awareness. We can encourage greener energy sources over fossil fuels, call government officials, and inform friends and family. I am going to hold myself accountable in doing those things, while I collect seeds for local restoration projects.