“Wait a minute…Stop! There’s one right here!” We loosen up the knots on our strings and extend the reach of our golf ball retriever pole. We step quietly through the shinnnery oak and surround the golden beast. We have it cornered, trapped on all sides when…poof! It’s gone! Did it go right through my legs? Did it run under the shinnery litter? How about that miniscule hole in the side of the dune? No, it went under the exposed shinnery roots, right? No…its gone… along with the hopes of saving this creature and its habitat…But wait! It runs past us again and all is not lost! We corner it again, extend the pole and noose within an inch of its face with its ever smug and menacing expression….now around its neck…and “You got it!!” The ecstasy that ensures is nothing short of Christmas morning.

This is description of the hunt and chase of by far the most elusive creature in the West, the sand dune lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus). This kind of event is what we dream of every day when searching the sand dunes. And yes, you read right, we have to surround them and snatch them with a tiny noose tied to the end of an extendable pole a normal person would use to get their golf ball out of a water hazard (sometimes we use our hands too). Our internship here in Carlsbad, New Mexico mainly consists of searching for these lizards which live only in a very specific habitat found here in southeast NM and a small portion of Texas. This habitat consists of sand dunes of a specific soil type, covered mainly with a species of miniature oak trees called shinnery oak (Quercus havardii) along with some grasses, sage, and yucca. The surveys we do are presence/absence and expand or confirm the lizards established range. When we find a lizard we have to take a GPS point and take three photos (top, back, and between the legs) that are crucial for making sure we have in fact caught a sand dune lizard Finding a sand dune lizard can mean that a pipeline or oil well will have to be moved or won’t be put in at all. A lot of the time we don’t find any lizards, but when we do, it is a great feeling because you we know that we are protecting habitat for a highly specific species. Along with lizards, we have also got to observe lesser prairie chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) mating behavior, check wildlife waters (water put out in tanks or drinkers for the animals), look for least terns, cut cattails for a wetland restoration, and recently got to help the CLM interns from Las Cruces and Roswell NM on the restoration of a reclaimed well pad. Shinnery oak covers the landscape that we trek through every day.

Male lesser prairie chicken displaying

Thus far this internship has been a great learning experience. It’s funny how big of a leap this felt right after graduation to come all the way from Chicago to Carlsbad and have the chance to do things I had never done or really ever imagined doing. And now I am here and have been doing it for over three months and it just feels like the norm. I know it’s hard to see for me now, but I know when I get back home, I will look back and think “Wow, I can’t believe I just did that”.

Wes Glisson, BLM Field Office, Carlsbad, New Mexico