As Hannah just mentioned in her blog post, the BLM Buffalo Field Office is one of the largest field offices in the country employee-wise—so big that we can’t even fit in one building! So I live in a cozy little cube in the Annex, a short walk from the happenin’ main building of the BFO. My position as a hydrology intern here has introduced me to a side of the BLM that most CLM interns don’t get to delve too deeply into: the energy development side. In my case, coalbed methane (CBM) development is what I’ve gotten very, very familiar with, since that’s what the Hydro crew spends all its time on.

The Powder River Basin (PRB), which comprises most of the Buffalo Field Office, produces a large percentage of the country’s natural gas. In the PRB, methane is relatively easy to extract because it is adsorbed in coal formations near the surface. To access this gas, operators must dig wells and pump out very large quantities of water, which releases the gas from the coal. The methane can then be extracted. Most of the gas in the PRB is found in federal mineral deposits that underlie privately (or, in some cases, federally) owned land. The BLM is thus in charge of permitting and monitoring this development. The Buffalo Field Office was given a mandate by President Bush to—dare I say—drill baby drill, so that is what we facilitate.

A CBM water reservoir

There are a lot of issues with CBM development water-wise because of the huge quantities of water that must be pumped out to access the methane. Some of this water is high-quality and could be used, with no or minimal treatment, for irrigation, livestock, or drinking water. A small percentage of the produced water is used in these beneficial ways. However, much of the produced water is saline, alkaline, or has other characteristics that make it less suitable for beneficial use. While a lot of this water could be treated and used, or re-injected into the ground, such methods would be more expensive for the operators, so the vast majority of produced water gets stored in small reservoirs, where it is supposed to infiltrate or evaporate as much as possible. Basically the water is thought of as a waste product. Ultimately, the operators try to get permits from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to discharge the water into streams. The DEQ monitors the quality of this discharged water with an eye towards human health and agriculture, not so much towards aquatic or riparian ecology. The timing and magnitude of the discharges also cause worries about effects on fluvial morphology (basically, the shape of the river).

CBM water being disharged down a drainage and into a reservoir. The rocks are supposed to collect iron from the water.

The BLM doesn’t deal with discharge issues much. We monitor water levels in deep aquifers that are affected by methane production (these aquifers have been drawn down to various extents), and water quality in shallow aquifers that are recharged by water from CBM reservoirs. My job for the last 4 months has been to organize and analyze the latter dataset (water quality) which, despite having been added to quarterly for the last 8 years, has never been looked at or filed in any coherent way. This internship has made me alternately frustrated with and sympathetic towards the BLM—they are just so short-staffed! Hopefully I’ll get to detect some trends before I leave, so we can see what’s going on in the groundwater around the CBM reservoirs. Right now I’m still sorting and graphing. I’ve gotten to be a whiz at Excel!

Some lovely halophytic (salt-tolerant) weeds downstream of a CBM reservoir. This site is designated as a secondary reservoir, so this water is allowed to be here.

I have no field work assigned to me, but occasionally I get to tag along on adventures doing well maintenance or reservoir inspections. Once or twice I’ve even snuck off to help with some sage-grouse business. (Ssshh! One very interesting thing I’ve learned during this internship is how divided a single BLM office can be over certain conservation issues. In the Annex I’ve heard the sage-grouse referred to as “that stupid chicken”). That being said, and despite all of the issues I’ve mentioned, and lots more chicken-related ones that I haven’t, methane has its pluses as an energy source. It is much lower carbon-emission-wise than oil and coal. So there are definitely two sides of the CBM coin. I’ve been lucky to see both of them during my internship, as well as some beautiful parts of Wyoming. Everyone in Buffalo is incredibly nice, and the town is great. I’ll miss it when I leave!

– Ariel Patashnik, BLM, Buffalo, WY field office

I remember the very first time I came to Eastern Washington; I was only 10 en rout to a soccer camp in Moscow, ID.  I had planned on sleeping on the long 3 hour shuttle ride to the pseudo-Russian city just across the border of Washington, but after we left the city and my body was ready to relax, my eyes were widened by the site of endless rolling hills with lush emerald waves.  I was mesmerized by the continuity of the grass, growing and swaying in sync.  The consistency of the land was nothing like I had ever seen before.  Growing up in the sagebrush and short grass prairies of Wyoming made me accustomed to seeing a variety of textures and colors in the landscape.   Not until thirteen years later did I realize that this beauty that had once enthralled my tired ten-year-old eyes was wheat; rolling gold, and again my eyes where opened, but in a different way.  I learned that wheat fields make the earth “sterile”.  The land and its inhabitants become displaced and the continuous plowing, that makes those fields so beautiful and regular, dissipates the survival of even a rodent.

Works well in fragmenting habitat...

I have watched the progression of the wheat fields over their growing season traveling to and from what called the “channeled scablands”.  The names “Channeled” because of the massive Missoula flood that swept across all of eastern Washington and “scab” because of the little tufts of rock left from the raging waters that rushed through the land after a considerable ice dam broke in Montana.  (I got the story from at least five different people of different disciplines in the office).  Thanks to the interdisciplinary BLM office, I have been lucky enough to work with and hear the views of a variety of people, thus allowing me to learn, not only about the history of the land, but the different ways that it can be used, maintained, and monitored.

The majority of my time has been spent on north-facing slopes looking for likely the best camouflaged plant of all time, the infamous Silene Spaldingii.  This sticky little forb is so well hidden that even my mentor, a well seasoned “SISP” locator, may step on it in mid search from time to time.  (This makes me wonder if our monitoring causes more detriment to the plant and its surrounding veg than the grazing cows themselves—also a hot topic discussed regularly between Range and Botany) 

Massive Silene plant -- 7 stems!

I became so able to locate the Silene I was literally doing it in my sleep.  Many people I have met wonder what the significance of this “random” plant is in the whole scheme of things, my response… “everything is connected”, which often leaves them with an A-ha moment and me with great satisfaction knowing that I am making an itty bitty difference.

Checking out our National bird while putting up duck boxes

I have found that I like it best when I get to experience the serenity of the land and monitor on my own, at my own pace.  Although, being able to pair up with a few coworkers to go play in a stream, er… monitor stream health, couldn’t get much better.

100% PHAR3 "Same as above"

Also, catching bats in the middle of the night, or riding my mountain bike across the Scablands in search of Silene, flying gracefully over the bikes handlebars and face planting into the sage, discovering old mines in moss covered forests, seeing roving painted turtles, praying mantis, hummingbirds, dragonflies that too closely resemble helicopters, snakes, frogs, deer, coyotes, elk, flushing grouse, comparing enclosures with pastures that have been too heavily grazed, and observing the unexpected changes in the land.

"It's a Female!"

I think the most challenging part of this internship, besides picking cheat grass out of my boots, is life outside the office and field.  This is my first time living without a built-in community or classes with people my age who have similar interests.  This has made me realize how easily one can get lost in a big city and how important it is for me to interact.  I am lucky because there is so much to do here as far as arts, music, culture, plays, etc. but I have yet to find someone to do it with.  I have volunteered as a U-14 Boys soccer coach, a trail builder, taken dance classes, gone to bands and bars and even Portland, striving to live up the city life all by my lonesome.  I am finally feeling more at home and am beginning to spend quality time with my coworkers.  I am looking forward to a Frisbee golf t-time of 11am Monday, where the likely topic of conversation will be conservation.

Aliina Lahti, BLM Field Office, Spokane, WA

Buffalo is situated at the base of the Big Horn Mountains in Northeast Wyoming, at the point where the Northern Great Plains rise into the Northern Rockies.   Compared to the vast land area loads of other field offices, the Buffalo Field Office (BFO) manages what is comparably a small land area (780,291 acres) but is the largest office in Wyoming (personnel- wise) due to development of Coal Bed Methane (CBM) in the Powder River Basin, where the BLM manages almost 7 times as much mineral real estate as the surface acreage mentioned.  As such, the primary and overwhelming focus of the BFO is related to approving and regulating development of CBM.   As a Range and Wildlife Intern at the BFO, my work has inherently been linked into the very controversial issues surrounding the effects of energy development on sensitive wildlife.  It has been fascinating to observe (and avoid getting involved in, as much as possible) the tension created between the realistic  need to decrease our foreign energy dependence (through extracting more fossil fuels, in this case, and thus trying to responsibly approve development of these resources) and simultaneously protect wildlife, especially sensitive wildlife.  Trying to strike this balance, at least from my sidelines observation point, is always controversial, nearly impossible, and keeps all 100+ employees of this office neck deep in work!

Biologist Bill Ostheimer perched in the back of the pickup with the sage-grouse net gun.

One major upcoming news item that will truly affect the BFO is the potential that the greater sage grouse will get listed by US Fish and Wildlife (as an endangered species) within the next few months.  Sage grouse populations in the Powder River Basin are struggling, at best, and a listing is likely to create massive chaos for the BFO in their energy development balancing act.  Thinking towards the necessary conservation of the Greater Sage Grouse, BFO Biologist Bill Ostheimer (with his trusty intern and seasonal sidekicks) has launched a one year study to investigate whether the two declining Sage Grouse populations in the Powder River and Big Horn Basins (on either side of the Big Horn Mountains) are actually connected by a more robust population that summers in the Southern Big Horns.  We have spent a significant part of our time here helping to trap and collar 17 additional Sage Grouse, and locating the birds with radio telemetry to learn where they overwinter, and eventually, where they lek in the spring.  In addition to becoming pretty attached to a bunch of birds we hardly ever see, we’ve had great wildlife sightings (Badger Badger), enjoyed some spectacular scenery, succeeded and failed at finding dead/stationary collars, met some local characters, avoided running into top-10 most wanted One-Eyed Ed, run up behind sheep on trail (see photo) and listened to a lot of low-quality radio. 

Fitting a radio collar to an adult male sage grouse

In all, this has been a great opportunity to learn the challenges of public land management, see a spectacular part of the country, gain some valuable field and office skillz, inform my “life-direction” ponderings and add to my already-very-long personal list of things I care strongly about (which can be overwhelming).  But as my co-intern would say, “Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

Hello there Badger!

To leave you with one factoid- Buffalo, WY:  NOT named after Bison bison as might make sense, but, rather, the town is named after Buffalo, NY- and the name was drawn out of a hat.

-Hannah Specht, BLM Field Office, Buffalo, WY

Driving hazard! Photo courtesy of former CBG Intern Charlotte Darling