…when I’m absolutely atwitter about being out here, and there are days when I want to scream.

In regards to the latter, I’m sure that many of you out there are going through the Seeds of Success program. I’m going to posit that this thing is both one of the most enjoyable and most infuriating things I’m doing out here in Ridgecrest. I started back in March, so I had a long time to spend in the office before I was made aware of the SOS program, let alone that I was essentially in charge of it. Now, I deeply enjoy the actual process of going out to collect. What I don’t enjoy is trying to pound the square peg of harsh biological reality into the star shaped hole of the protocol. Out here, a lot of our species are either very

One stage of the climb up Surprise Canyon

widely dispersed over vast areas, or form little island pockets. In the latter case, getting the prescribed 10,000+ seeds from a single population of over 50 plants can be nearly impossible. I’ve had days where I’ve been out all day long, and scoured the population of over 100 individuals for barely more than 1,000 seeds. Thats the harsh truth about the Mojave. When it blooms, it blooms like crazy, but for the most part, things are not doing a whole heck of a lot. Often, your timing has to be just right to get anything out of these plants.

Case and point. One of my favorite places to collect is one of our canyons known as Surprise canyon, in Panamint Valley.Its one of our few perennially wet canyons, and it boasts a glorious plant assemblage, including some very spectacular special status species, and some endemics to the Death Valley region, to  which Panamint Valley is adjacent. From cliff growing cacti and phacelias to the gigantic Panamint daisies (the flower heads are about 5-7 inches

My mentor next to a Panamint daisy. She's about 5'6".

across), Surprise is one of my favorite locals. And you never know what you’ll find. Case and point, when I was out in lower Surprise, collecting capsules from Eucnide urens, (my gloves did nothing to stop the sting) I found a plant that completely baffled me. It took me a few days to figure it out, and what it turned out to be was Anulocaulis annulatus, an endemic to the area. As I was observing the plant, I saw something on the flowers that I thought was so interesting that I needed to photograph it.

Guess what's happening.

Instead of trying to explain what I saw, I’ll show you (left), and see if you can tell what’s going on. If you can, I’ll be very impressed, because thus far, nobody I’ve shown this to (including several biologists at the office) have figured it out without me giving hints. Let’s see what those young brains’ve got!

Now, I’d love to collect this plant, but seeing as the only population I’ve found has only 10 plants, and they aren’t pumping out seeds like an orchid, its just not going to happen. Its the conundrum of this place. Can’t collect many of the species, because the populations are just not big enough, or they’re special status. We’ve got over 700 species of plant out here, including 32 special status ones, but most of them can’t be collected, because they’re so spread out that they don’t fit the criteria for a continuous population, or they just don’t make enough seeds. But, what’cha `gona do?

Forrest Fruend, BLM Ridgecrest, CA

Here in the dusty sagebrush  of southern Wyoming, my co-intern Brandon Fessler and I have become just what the title of this post suggests. It took some time to accept that we would find any amphibians in this unkind environment, but once the snows of spring had melted our spirits had begun to improve.

Catch of the day - tiger salamander larvae, yum!

menace

The bulk of our time has been spent driving for hours around the Rawlins BLM field district in search of amphibians wherever they may reside. During these expeditions, ever under the relentless and menacing stare of antelope, we have witnessed the miraculously swift metamorphosis of great basin spadefoot toads in tiny puddles of water and we’ve found tiger salamanders flourishing in the most isolated high desert springs.

A puddle of spadefoot toad tadpoles - hope they live!

Throughout the summer we have had the pleasure of assisting the Fish and Wildlife Service with Endangered Species Act related research. Foremost of these is the wyoming toad (Anaxyrus baxteri) reintroduction program. The endangered Wyoming toad is a close relative of the more common woodhouse’s toad, but is isolated to only a handful of plains lakes just west of Laramie.

Toad surgery (PIT tag being inserted subcutaneous)

Our work with the Wyoming toads involved helping conduct surveys for individuals around these lakes. They were quite scarce, but we managed to come upon a few, including an adult male that Brandon had the privilege of PIT tagging for future identification. Wyoming toads have been thought to abstain from breeding in the wild, but one our co-surveyors did happen to find a young of the year toadlet during our last effort. Perhaps there is still hope for the toads.

Timothy C. R. Barwise
Amphibian Monitoring Intern
BLM – Rawlins Field Office
Rawlins, Wyoming

swabbing for fungus, more fun than it sounds.

This week Tim and I had the pleasure of being part of an inter-agency toad force, searching in the Snowy Mountains for the declining Boreal Toad (Anaxryus [Bufo] boreas boreas). Joined by our boss, Fisheries Biologist Shawn Anderson, we went out with Wyoming Game and Fish State Herpetologist Zack Walker and his Herp Tech John. Being in the pine forest was a nice change of pace from our usual surveys in the sagebrush flats that make up the majority of the Rawlins field office (even though most of the forest is dead, as a result of a pine beetle infestation, so we just pretend it’s autumn and conifers turn colors… ). To our surprise we found some toads, they were little ones, young of the year, which indicates that at that location the toads are breeding.

Boreal Toad - Surprise, I'm not extirpated!

The boreal toad (also know as the western toad) was formally a common amphibian in the west, frequently seen in mountain lakes and wet meadows. Due to a skin fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatitis) and habitat degradation, the toads have been experiencing a severe decline across their range, especially in the Southern Rocky Mountains. In addition to the toads we also found a number of wood frogs, another high elevation amphibian which has been declining in this area, though not nearly as drastically as the boreal toad.

Northern leopard frog

We also spent time this week in the office aggregating our survey data to send to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The leopard frog (Lithobates [Rana] pipiens) is being considered by the USFW for listing as a threatened species in the western part of its range.

Big ol' tiger salamander - tried to bite Tim, but soon gave up

During our general amphibian surveys this season we came across a number of leopard frog sites and so we took these occurrences from our database, mapped them in GIS, wrote a report and sent it all off. It’s very cool helping with this sort of process, it would be nice knowing our efforts contributed, if only in a minor way, to the protection of these beautiful frogs. This internship has been such an amazing experience, I hope to continue working with wildlife and habitat management in the future.

Brandon Fessler
Amphibian Monitoring Intern
BLM – Rawlins Field Office
Rawlins, Wyoming