Every season in Big Bear seems more beautiful than the last. The autumn colors of Quercus, Symphoricarpus, and Populus have fallen away now and their bare branches are frosted white with snow. The town in bustling on weekends as “flatlanders” from Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino, and the larger area are flocking to Big Bear’s two ski resorts. The office, on the other hand, has become very quite since the seasonal employees were laid off and even more quite as the positions of many of the forest’s permanent employees are being eliminated due to severe budget cuts. The loss in man power, however, has not reduced the expected output and it has become obvious as to why my mentor was so pleased to extend my internship an additional eight months.
There are an extraordinary number of projects taking place outside of the field season. With the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) Conference being held in San Diego this year, the San Bernardino National Forest is taking the lead on producing a display board to represent the Region 5 (California) Celebrating Wildflowers program. Celebrating Wildflowers is an outreach and education program created to increase the public’s understanding and appreciation of wildflowers. The program has funded me to work on events and publications this year. In July, I worked with a CNPS coordinator to plan and carry out a rare plant treasure hunt. We gathered 13 volunteers to revisit historically low occurrences of rare, threatened, and endangered species at a wet meadow on the forest. A botanist on the district I work with is a wonderful artist. Together we have produced a “Passport to the Wildflowers” to be handed out at the conference; this booklet is a guide to the botanical interest areas of the five southern California National Forests, complete with illustrations of the plant species. I am also working furiously to complete a report on a study I performed back in May. My mentor allowed me to design and carry out a study to determine the sex ratios of our endangered dioecious bluegrass, Poa atropurpurea. With field surveys taking up all of the summer and early fall months, the data was pushed aside for some time. Fortunately we have some positive findings which I will be presenting at the conference in just over a month! Extremely exciting but severely nerve wracking!