The Rock, known commonly as Rock Springs, Wyoming, has been an interesting place to live for the last four months.  I have been here since early June working on a fish passage inventory project with the Rock Springs Bureau of Land Management.  I have learned quite a bit about all sorts of new things, had many memorable experiences, and abrubtly began my transition to post college life…

At work, I am responsible for checking stream/creek crossings for passability by fish.  Basicly I need to visit all locations where a road crosses a stream,perform a survey, and document the visit with photos.  If you have ever spent time in South Central Wyoming, you will understand just HOW MANY roads there really are. 

Aiko Weverka poses for a photo on the Little Sweetwater

 There are BLM roads that go everywhere and anywhere you want, most of which seem like they haven’t been traversed for hundreds of years.  Nonetheless, I am responsible for checking each crossing.  Each site is one of three crossing types; a culvert (big metal pipe that funnels stream under road), a low water crossing (the stream just runs across the road), or a bridge (you know what that is).  The survey I perform is very basic, taking measurements of stream width, culvert diameter, width of crossing, etc.  The hardest part of my job has proven to be actually FINDING where it is I need to go.  Quite a few locations are 20+ miles from the nearest paved road, and I rely on my trusty BLM maps to get me there.  Each day in the field is an adventure, and on rare occasions a misadventure (I have only got stuck and had to call in for help once…knock on wood).

I’m interested to see what becomes of my work, as Im told that my inventory will be the basis for deciding which sites need funding for repairs or replacement. 

Apart from work, living here has been both extraordinarily exciting, while sometimes exceptionally boring.  Being an avid fly fisherman, I have taken every opportunity possible to get out on the water.  Fly fishing here is incredible, to say the least.  I have also been introduced to hunting, which has become an exciting new hobby for me.  I got an antelope tag and went out with a few guys from work for my first big game hunt.  Since then I definately caught the hunting itch and have been out hunting for cottontail rabbits and grouse up in the mountains.  Bunnies taste good fried.

On the other hand, It has been a big shock to leave a life of familiarity to one of complete uncertainty.  Coming from college, a fantasy land of friendly people your own age, I am adjusting to life in the real world.  I suppose this transition occurs anywhere one goes after college, but for me,I made my transition in Rock Springs.  

Este es pancho

It has certainly been a period of growth for me as an individual.  Thus far, living in a mecca of great trout fishing and hunting has kept me busy enough to stay sane.

Greetings from northeastern Wyoming! Most of you have likely never heard of Newcastle, much like myself when I accepted my internship to work at the Bureau of Land Management for a wildlife biologist. Newcastle lies on an ecotone between sagebrush grassland and the westernmost fringes of the Black Hills. It is a tiny town about 12 miles west of the Wyoming/South Dakota state line, populated largely by coal miners, oil field roustabouts, and oil and gas refinery workers. I never once imagined myself working in a place like this.

Our field office is miniscule. There are a whopping fourteen employees, two of which are currently on detail assignments to other field offices. But don’t take the small stature as an indication of a small amount of land. On the contrary, the twelve people here at the Newcastle BLM are responsible for managing 260,000 acres of public land, spread out across almost 3,125 square miles. Additionally, most of the public land in this part of WY is in tiny parcels, usually only 40 to 200 acres in size, which are typically surrounded by private land with few access roads. Imagine my surprise when I found that I’d often be driving into South Dakota and Montana in order to get onto BLM land in Wyoming!

Devil's Tower- one of the more scenic locations in northeastern Wyoming

As you can imagine, resources here are spread thin, so I am on my own in the field. I unfortunately haven’t had the opportunity during my internship to work with others during fieldwork. To say that I am not occasionally terribly lonely would be untruthful, but I’m naturally independent and often find the solitude enjoyable.

I’ve been tasked with a variety of things over the course of my internship. I started off by surveying for northern goshawk in the Black Hills, traversing surprisingly steep hillsides and gorgeous canyons, then followed that up by checking on known raptor nests in cottonwoods growing along drainages to see if they were utilized this season. At various times I’ve deployed a nifty system called Anabat, which records bat echolocative calls. The patterns of the calls can be used to determine the species in an area.

I’ve surveyed prairie dog colonies for burrowing owl and mountain plover (dismayed to find many colonies nearly devoid of dogs… mostly due to

THIS little guy, however, seemed to be doing pretty well for himself.

poisoning and hunting, although somewhat as a result of sylvatic plague). And for the past few weeks, I’ve been completing sage-grouse habitat vegetation surveys, much like Nelson and Michelle in Cedar City, UT.

In July, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to participate in an environmental education program held by the Newcastle BLM for local middle school students. For three weeks, small groups of students were hosted at a campsite in the Black Hills in South Dakota, and I was in charge of teaching the kids about various wildlife species in the Hills, their habitats, and pertinent conservation issues, all of which mandated hikes in the forest and evening sessions watching bats feed over a pond.

By far, however, my favorite experience has been tracking radio-collared sage-grouse in Thunder Basin National Grassland. We have only four collared grouse, three females and a male, but I go out and find them all at least once a week, every week, and over the last four months they’ve grown to seem like close, familiar friends. (As a tragic side-note, I used to have five collared grouse, with a fourth female, but she was killed last week by a hunter : (  What are the odds, really?)

Radio telemetry isn’t for everyone, as it requires a special brand of patience, but I find it extremely rewarding. It’s always comforting to me to visit one of my bird’s favorite haunts, tune the receiver to the indented frequency, and her the soft, steady pulsing beeps indicating that the grouse is nearby. Even though a couple have frustrated me to no end by taking off at random intervals, travelling miles, and then moving around sporadically week to week (e.g. I “lost” them), I’ve always had the pleasure of sleuthing out where they ended up, triumphantly finding them again, reassured that at least a few members of this potentially-endangered species are still living the way they should be, wild, in the seemingly endless seas of sage in northeastern Wyoming.

Rachel Wheat, BLM, Newcastle, WY

Completely unrelated to my post, Badlands National Park, in South Dakota, is only about three hours from Newcastle. Absolutely gorgeous.

      I didn’t quite know what to expect when I found out that I was heading to Grand Junction, Colorado for my CLM internship, but I was excited because I had heard so many fantastic things about Colorado. My visions of Colorado mainly included mainly mountains, forests, and snow, but then I found out that Grand Junction is in the desert. The city itself lies in a valley between the Grand Mesa and the Bookcliffs and it is absolutely beautiful! It’s perfectly situated between so many recreational opportunities in the desert to the west and in the mountains to the east, and I have certainly taken advantage of the opportunities in my free time. But back to my work… which to be honest, often does not feel all that different from activities I enjoy on my own time.

     I have spent the majority of my CLM internship working on a Land Health Assessment project to determine whether land health standards in soil/site stability, hydrologic function and biotic integrity are being achieved on BLM grazing allotments. Essentially, we had to determine whether the land is “meeting,” “not meeting,” or “meeting with problems” for each of the land health standards and then overall. We set up a transect at each site and did a line-point intercept analysis to determine species composition as well as a gap intercept analysis to determine sizes and overall percentages of canopy gaps. We then did a soil stability test and looked at indicators like rills, water-flow patterns, gullies, litter movement, soil compaction, invasive plants, plant mortality, and annual production of plants.

     We spent the first half of the summer in the desert and the second half up in the Bookcliffs, working in and out of the canyons and higher country. We got to hike in some beautiful areas and because we had to assess all of the land within each grazing allotment, we had the opportunity to travel to areas that most people never get to see. We also saw some wildlife while we were out working: antelope, deer, coyote, and even several bears. We have completed the field work portion of the project. In total, we assessed approximately 223,000 acres. I am now working on GIS maps of the areas we assessed and entering the data we collected at each point. It has been very interesting to be involved in every stage of the project thus far. My final step will be to total up the percentages of acres for each assessment category and provide explanations for these assessments to my mentor who will write the final report.

     Another cool part of my internship is that I have also had many opportunities to go out in the field with other people in the office. In fact, just today I visited a site with some of the office staff to look at some dinosaur and other vertebrate tracks that have been recently discovered. Earlier in the summer I spent a day on the Colorado River with the weeds specialist looking at the invasive Tamarisk and visiting some of the release sites for the beetle that is being used to control the Tamarisk. Other interesting projects that I have had the opportunity to assist with are a rare plant survey for the Sclerocactus glaucus –a federally listed threatened cactus, an archaeological survey along a proposed fence line, water flow monitoring with the hydrologist, ecological site inventory to determine forage available in grazing allotments, and oil and gas well compliance inspections, among others.

     Overall, I have had a fantastic experience during my CLM internship. I have learned so much about the ecosystems and plant species in this area. It is all so different from where I grew up in Maine! I have also learned a lot about how the Bureau of Land Management operates and what goes into managing all of the public land out here in the west, which again, is so different from back east where there is not much public land at all.

–Nina Pinette, BLM Field Office, Grand Junction, Colorado

this is a brushy loam field site--it is meeting the standards

this is a loamy saltdesert site--it is not meeting the standards

It seems difficult to remember now, but only a scant four months ago I had no idea what to expect from my time as an intern with the BLM in Richfield, Utah. No anticipations for this diminutive, predominantly Mormon town of approximately 10,000 residents – nor any for its surrounding natural environment, which I must have flown over dozens of times on my way to or from college, but never gave much thought to. Now that I’m more than halfway through this experience, I feel almost as if I own the place, or at least feel that my share in collecting seeds for restoration and research entitles me to throwing up a defiant fist at the ever-rampant All Terrain Vehicle riders tearing through local meadows of sagebrush and bee plant, and stirring up the pollen of that awful rabbitbrush which has been assaulting my nose, eyes, and throat for several weeks now.

I could not ask for a more beautiful natural setting in which to be exposed to the absolute horrors of post-college life: paying rent, buying groceries, the laundromat, and OxiClean. That’s part of the reason this internship has been a real godsend; getting away each work day from the apartment, the town, the claustrophobic cubicles that define so many others’ internship experiences – and getting to work among the splendors of the Intermountain West, with all its endless expanses and pristine air, has been a form of daily therapy. Making some dough while doing it has on occasion felt nothing short of criminal.

I am blessed to work with a team of other field botanists that includes two other CBG interns and a former CBG intern from last year. Last year’s intern, a 60-year-old woman whom we have lovingly titled Mormon Mama Melinda, is one of the most amazing taxonomy whizzes the world – or Sevier County, Utah, at the very least – has ever known. She keeps us more than entertained on our often-treacherously long hauls to collection sites (I reckon we are averaging about 3 hours of driving a day), plus keeps our stomachs fat and happy with home-baked wonders. And, perhaps most fortunately for us new interns, Mormon Mama Melinda is capable of keying out species we encounter in about ten seconds flat.

I have to admit, I had a reservation or two when I learned that the majority of my internship would be spent collecting seeds. Surely, it is not as glamorous a job as monitoring the mating habits of gopher tortoises (sadly, not an option for CBG interns in 2009), nor does it elicit many jaw-dropping reactions from family and friends back home, who generally can’t come to grips with the importance of such employment. But the benefits of this internship have been nothing short of extraordinary – and it will be with a very heavy heart that I leave this surrogate home of mine: the incomparable state of Utah.

-Evan Poirson, BLM Field Office, Richfield, Utah