Author Archives: Nick DelBaggio

Goodbye Montana

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After 6 months here at the HLC NF, it’s all finally coming to an end. It still doesn’t feel real to me as I’m typing this, but in just a few days I’ll be heading back to Pennsylvania to prepare for my next big move. This all a bit bittersweet for me. I’m overall excited to bring the skills I have gained through this program into whatever endeavor I decide to pursue next, but there are a few things that I am really going to miss about this place.

For starters: the view. It is unlike anything else I have seen before and it has been an absolute privilege to call this forest my home. I mean just look at this! It’s absolutely breathtaking!

I’m also going to miss the people that I have spent so much time with over the summer. A part of not living near a lot of people is naturally getting closer to the people who are near you. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the people I met through this internship.

I’m not sure if anyone considering this position will read this, but in the slight chance that someone in that exact position comes across I will offer up a bit of advice:

Don’t pass this up. There is so much that you will learn from a season in the program and you’ll be able to see different parts of the country that you haven’t been to yet.

Signing off one last time,

Nick

Bears at Belt Creek!

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If there was one word to describe this month, it would probably be rainy. September has been full of grey skies, heavy rain, and thick mud. Honestly, the forest has needed this for a long time, so I’m happy that it’s finally come around and the fire risk isn’t high anymore. That does mean, however, that a lot of our time has been spent at the ranger station either getting our collections ready for Coeur d’Alene or helping our wildlife crew paint stakes for next season’s restoration efforts. Although this might seem like a real bummer compared to the rest of the season, it was nice to have a change of pace and not be running around frantically like we usually do. Besides, if we didn’t stay in the office for most of the time, I wouldn’t have been able to witness THIS:

That’s right! Belt Creek has their very own black bear resident! The crew has lovingly named her Beverly, and even though she is very timid, her presence is very much appreciated.

In other news, we went to Coeur d’Alene last week! It was really cool to see the other side of the seed collection and be able to help with some work in the field. We spent most of our time helping with the surveys they were doing for their penstemons where I was able to spend some time with one of the cats that lived there.

Afterwards, we were given a tour of the nursery and shown all of the different things they do to prepare the seeds to be used in restoration work. The first room they showed us was the cone preparation room where they set boxes full of pine cones over heaters in order to open them up so they could collect the seeds.

Then they brought us to the seed cleaning room, where they use a variety of different machines in order to separate the seed from any other debris that might be mixed in. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get a picture of this room since there was another tour being given right behind us.

Afterwards, we were shown all of the green houses that the nursery uses to grow out the plants that they have been given so they can be fully ready for the sites they will be sent to. Nate, who is one of the managers at Coeur d’Alene, said that they grow the most White Bark Pine saplings in the country and supply them for most of the restoration projects that need them.

Once again it has been another great month in Montana! I’m hoping to finish the season strong and collect a bunch of new seeds from the plants that haven’t been ready yet!

Outstanding Orchids! (and some other plants too!)

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The Rocky Mountain Front

This month has been filled to the brim with new plants and new places. Since the last blog post Sky and I have kinda settled into the position and have been getting into a groove. Most days we end up going to the Helena side of the forest so we can get plants in a large area which means we’ve been doing A LOT of driving, but hey I get to listen to my music more, so that’s a plus!

Our month started with us going to the Rocky Mountain Front to meet up with the head botanist in the Helena office to help look for a rare orchid that should be in the area. However, in order to get to the right spot we had to go off-trail and really get into the thicker parts of the forest. It was some of the most fun I had on the job! It felt like I was really exploring the forest that I’m stationed in and it made every plant that we found even more exciting than usual. In the end we were able to find the orchid we were looking for along with some other ones!

Galiarus rotundfolia (Small Round-Leaved Orchid) was the orchid we were looking for. It likes to grow in damp areas and can be easily confused with Twinflower when they aren’t in bloom.
Cypripedium montanum (Mountain Lady’s Slipper) was also growing near the Small Round-Leaved Orchid! This was the first time I’ve seen this one!
And my personal favorite: Corallorhiza striata (Striped Coralroot). This orchid gets it’s sugars from the mycelium in the ground through mycoheterotrophy! I hope that I get to see more of this one in the future.

The week after our trip with Nate we spent some time helping out the trails crew and sprayed some weeds around some campgrounds. Wasn’t my favorite work to do (especially since we ended up spraying a lot of Ox-eyed Daisies, which I didn’t know were invasive until then), but we had a cookout for lunch so it wasn’t all too bad!

The rest of the month was spent doing our usual survey work and seed collections. It’s been interesting seeing how our populations change throughout the season and then seeing how these plants spread their seeds. This job has made me so much more conscious of the different stages of a plants life and how differences in climate can affect the timing of when it’s seeds are released. The higher temperatures in Helena along with the forest fires in the area has made it so many of the plants in that part of the forest are much farther along than the ones that we see closer to the ranger station. This has sometimes been a source of some frustrations since it narrows down the already short window for collecting from some species, but it has also allowed us to collect from some species sooner than we would be able to if we just stayed close to the ranger station.

Overall it has been another good month of my time in Montana, and I’m excited to see what this next month brings!

Grasses and Goshawks!

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This first month in Montana has been eventful since the moment I arrived. On my way into the ranger station I ran into a dog that was walking around in the middle of the highway near Monarch and my co-worker Ana and I brought it back so we could call the number on his collar and get him out of harms way. His name was Homie and he was such a lovely dog! He was nothing but sweet the entire time, and even hopped into the truck without any problems! Some other people at the ranger station were heading towards the address on Homie’s collar, so they took him back to his owners.

My first few weeks here was spent doing restoration work in several different locations. It was my first time in Montana so I wasn’t fully prepared for how beautiful the landscape was! Every site had a great view of the mountains, which just seemed to go on and on and it was nice to be able to relax during our lunch breaks and enjoy the view.

Morning in the Castle Mountains

On the third week Sky and I spent a lot of time going over the plant list that we were given and finding the flowering times so we could build a rough plan for how we will be collecting the seeds. We also spent a lot of time going through training, which was a bit of a drag, but meant that we were able to go out on or own and practice our keying to see if there were any target species some areas suggested by our boss Victor.

Penstemon albertinus

Finally, we were able to meet with the Forest Botanist Nate and he helped us with keying out grasses and learning all of the specific terminology that comes with it. We made sure to go out to different sites to gain more experience and I feel much more confident now in my plant id skills than I did before. We were also able to join him and another botany tech searching for some rare orchids in the Rocky Mountain Front!

Amerorchis rotundifolia

So far this season has been filled with many different experiences that I didn’t expect going into it, and I only hope that this season continues to surpass my expectations.