I spent an entire day a few weeks ago re-learning GIS so I could make a map of the San Joaquin River Gorge. We were getting ready for a bioblitz, specifically a plant- and bug-blitz, a three-day long marathon of biological surveying combining the skills of our mentor, a photographer, a coleopterist from Berkeley, and a member of the Southern Sierra Foothill Conservancy, who provided the initial inspiration for the event.

The SJRG is a gem of a parcel just outside of Yosemite, featuring its own interpretive center with outdoor education programming, something of a rarity among BLM land. It is best known for its stunning views from the large footbridge which crosses the San Joaquin River.

Anyway, while mapping I noticed a layer called “cave.shp” describing the length of Millerton Cave, a pile of granite boulders. For some reason, I thought this map had been made with a GPS unit, but after a few failed attempts at getting satellites inside buildings and cars, I realized that cave mapping has to be done the old-fashioned way, using radar and tape, a compass and clinometer.  Cave maps are also three-dimensional, and Millerton cave has a 40-foot drop and descending back passageways.

I had forgotten about the cave until returning to the Gorge this past weekend for the second time with Eric, an ACE intern in our office who also happens to be an awesome local botanist. He agreed to come out and collect seeds with me and chop down some nasty scotch broom that has been residing in the gorge for at least 15 years (we counted the rings!) We also wanted to say goodbye to Andrew, another ACE intern working strictly in Squaw Leap (SJRG’s nom de plume) whose internship ended on Memorial Day.

One of my favorite California flowers is in the genus Clarkia, and goes by two names, harbinger-of-summer and farewell-to-spring, a cool name describing its phenology. It puts out a good number of seeds so we should be able to collect an abundance for the Seeds of Success program. We have at least four species in the gorge!

Farewell, spring!

While Eric and I were walking down the trail surveying the castilleja and clarkia, we suddenly heard running water, and I remembered the cave.

After searching around and following our ears, we found the cave entrance. To the west were what looked like a spilled handful of boulders, where the sound was loudest and a small waterfall ran through several pools, eventually descending into an insurmountable darkness. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen so far in California. Another person with a waterproof camera took some pictures here.

Hello all. This is my first time posting a blog, so bare with me (if you are even reading this ha). My CLM internship has brought me to the beautiful town of Lander, Wyoming working for the BLM as a botany intern. My passion and interests lies with wildlife, but there wouldn’t be any wildlife without plant life so I am still enjoying my research and work. Plus, anything that gets me out of the office and in the backcountry dealing with nature is a good job in my book!

I have been working for three weeks now and I am already learning so much. My partner and I, who has her M.S. in Botany, have been given the duty to create an herbarium for the Lander BLM office along with carrying out the SOS program. It has been a lot. There is no botanist in the office so we are doing all of the planning and research. This has made it hard for us to make it out in the field, but I have been gaining crucial planning and management skills. I am also learning my way around the ArcGIS system, which is suuuch a good skill to have. By the end of this summer, I will be a gps/gis, map reading pro! We do a lot of map studying, map plotting, and map creating on ArcMap. We also heavily use the topographic maps given to us from the office. They are really awesome maps.

Our work is not limited to maps,  however haha…  we also have been doing research on the local flora, figuring out what species are important to collect, when they are in flower/fruit/seed, and where we can locate a healthy population. When we are confident we have gathered this important information we head out into the field and that’s where the real fun begins! Wyoming has so much public land, and it is jaw dropping. I am lucky to be working in the Northwest area because I am close to the National Forests (Tetons and Yellowstone anyone? Yuup). There are canyons, rivers, rolling green hills and barren lands that hold their own type of empty beauty. It is an amazing feeling to be on top of a butte with a 360 degree view of just nothing but sky, sage brush, and the occasional pronghorn or wild horse herd.

The herbarium is going to include mainly the species of concern in our area. This is a list of 12 plants that have different flowering periods. So we focus on the group that is in flower and try to find a healthy population to collect, map and collect data on the GPS. Then we take the collections back to the office to press and mount and upload the data onto ArcGIS. I am very lucky to be working with a botanist who has herbarium experience. She is teaching me a lot.

We had to come up with our own list of plants to collect seed from, figure out when they seed (as there is no good source on the local forbs of Wyoming), and find where their ranges are. My partner and I are not from Wyoming, so we are shooting in the dark here. We have just been picking brains around the office and researching in different books and online sources to find our information. It has been a process for sure. We are still not sure if our list is right and it consists of 100 plants that I know we will not be able to collect from. But we are meeting with Adrienne next week and I am sure she will clear things up for us. I am excited to meet with her.

I have only been in Lander for a month, but I have already fallen in love. I hope to get connected with the Fish and Game and the University of Wyoming and figure out my next step after this because I do not want to go back east!

Peace and Love,

Rebecca Stern

Hi all!!

I just finished month two of my internship with the Chicago Botanic Garden at the  BLM at the Bakersfield Field Office in California. This month has been crazy-great! At then end of April, I went to my Seeds of Success (SOS) training in Red Rock Canyon, Nevada. Here, I learned a great deal of information from the instructors and met some great people from offices all over the west! I even got to go out with some interns from the Great Basin Institute and collect some Astragalus seeds with them for their SOS collections! Our field day got rained out (in the desert!!) during training, so I was so happy to have been offered such a great hands-on opportunity! And being in that gorgeously breathtaking canyon didn’t hurt the situation! 🙂

Red Rock Canyon from the Visitors Center

Astragalus seed pods

I got to partake in my first ever Bioblitz a few weekends ago and that was such a great learning experience!!! This blitz was a little smaller than usual, with only 6 of us. This was the third time we had rescheduled due to inclement weather so we just decided to go for it this time and the small group of us focused on pollinators and beetles as well as updating the plant list for our chosen site, the San Joaquin (pronounced ‘wa-keen’) River Gorge Recreation Management Area.  We spent three days collecting specimens, setting pit-fall traps and keying out plants.  We had a beetle specialist on hand, as well as a photonaturalist, who took some fantastic photos of the bugs and insects that we collected.  He has helped out at other bioblitzs as well; you can see some of his work here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvdhntr It was absolutely amazing and the river was so, so, SO very gorgeous; it made me think I was back in Oregon for a second..

Clarkia dudleyana

Several bugs, drawn to our light and white sheet set-up at night

Asclepias californica (milkweed)

My co-intern and I have also been able to start collecting seeds for SOS and for local restoration use. This year has been especially dry in our area, so there has been less to collect than in other years, but we have managed to collect some grasses, my lovely thistle sage and Ericameria (interior-leaf golden bush), and it looks like there are still some species higher up in elevation that we can come back to collect at a later time.

And what is possibly the best moment of my life so far, happened out on this seed collecting trip.. I SAW A BOBCAT!!!!  I was out at Carrizo, at Painted Rock and I came around the corner to this cool, shaded ledge and went to take a picture of it, and there was a bobcat sleeping on it!!!  I freaked OUT!!! lol  I was watching this guy(?) for about a minute before he stirred and saw me, and then he just laid there and watched me photographing him, without a care in the world!  Didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t seem agitated or scared or really caring at all.. it was literally breathtaking.  I could not breathe and had no idea what to do with myself, so I basically did silent screams of excitement until I calmed down somewhat enough to keep wandering on and let him get back to his nap.  Oh my gosh, best thing ever!!!

Thanks for reading; hope everyone is enjoying their internship and their summer!!  Talk to you next month 🙂

Rachel S

Bakersfield, CA

Bureau of Land Management

In addition to the valuable career experience gained through the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Conservation and Land Management (CLM) Internship program, there are plenty of good times to be had as a CLM intern! It’s important for people who work together to also…celebrate festive occassions together!

BIRTHDAYS. To celebrate the birthdays of those with whom we work on a regular basis, we go out for lunch together. (No photo available.)

PUMPKIN-CARVING CONTEST. For Halloween, our office promoted a pumpkin-carving contest for staff participation and a pizza party. I work with another CLM intern; our mentor supplied the pumpkin, and we took care of the rest, utilizing our carving skills and incorporating our botanical work into our jack-o-lantern creation.

Carving out the mouth of our botanical jack-o-lantern

That's a BIG mouth!

"Botany Jack" on display--notice the buck-"eyes" and the sharp, pointy teeth (yellow star thistle!)

The decorated Christmas tree

The theme of this Christmas tree: the BLM Mother Lode Field Office

Hey all! My name is Becky and this is my very first post for CLM. I am intern for the Chicago Botanic Garden working at the Bureau of Land Management State Office in Billings, MT. So far this has been an incredible opportunity for me. I have been doing some exciting work with this office. One of the programs I am lucky enough to work on is the Native Plant Materials Program. What that involves is an agreement with the Special K Ranch, in Columbus MT,  in which we  have an existing grow out program for sagebrush and other native forbs and grasses within their greenhouses. This year we will be adding seed production acreage to those existing grow out programs.  The main focus of the program  is to develop sage-grouse forbs for restoration of habitat. This is a unique program in that the Special K Ranch is home to about 32 special needs adults who work and run the ranch. These are amazing individuals that I have grown very close to.

Here are some bitter-brush babies that made it through the winter and are getting ready to be shipped out to there new home!

Here we are removing the sagebrush that didn’t survive the winter.

Also I have been out surveying different SOS collection sites to get an idea of what is currently blooming and seeding out already.  There is a lot to learn, but I am excited and ready. I haven’t been working very long, but I am enjoying every minute of this internship and my mentor is amazing. Here are some pictures that I have taken while out in the field.

Steamboat Butte

The prairie in Montana is so beautiful. It is only a section of the diversity that this state has to offer.

I almost stepped on this hidden treasure!

Bobcat Pass near the Pryor Mountains

Greater Short-Horned Lizard Phrynosoma hernandesi

This will wake you up in the morning!

 Here is a small fraction of the plant life I have encountered.

I walked over the hill and wow a field of purple, pure luck!

Of my first week in the field I have learned an incredible amount. For the first time in my short field career, I am experiencing a project where the field dictates the work to be done. In my past, although the plants may be unpredictable, the methods that I experienced were mostly predicable. Currently, however, I go out to a location that threatened plants occupy to map how the landscape has changed and how it may affect these sensitive species. Most of my work concerns the species commonly known as the bladder pod and the twin pod. These plants grow in areas that are  inflicted with cattle grazing and ferrel horses. When I wander across an area occupied by bladder pods, I may find horse “highways” that must be mapped, or I may find nothing at all, and the hiking continues!

With this, I have learned to be even more observant in the field. My observation skills must expand beyond what plants are growing below me,  and out into what is all around me. It is so easy to get lost in the search for tiny plants in broken shale, but it is so necessary to keep my awareness cycling all around me. I am certainly developing my abilites to focues while multi-tasking… a certain benefit for all areas of my life!

Hello!
My name is Catherine Reuter. I am here in Cedar City for a second round as a CLM intern. In 2010, the program provided me with an amazing experience working with the Bureau of Land Management in eastern Montana. Through this opportunity, I built confidence and skills and cemented my desire to participate professionally in conservation fieldwork. But more than anything, that summer showed me how much I have to learn about conservation and left me with innumerable questions.

So I am back this year working again at the BLM hoping to explore some of these questions and no doubt generate new ones! This field office deals with many of the same issues as Miles City Office. Sage grouse are a huge concern in Utah as they are in Montana, prairie dogs as well. However, while energy/mineral development was a huge factor in MT, here it is almost non-existent in the Cedar City Office. So I am excited to build on issues I already have some experience in. But southwestern Utah is NOT eastern Montana! On a basic level the habitats are much different, drier, less diverse plant makeup, the wind (avg. 37mph today!) comes tearing across the Great Basin Desert till it strikes the mountains that begin in earnest behind Cedar City. My nostrils suffered terribly the first week from the desiccated air, so many bloody boogers! But my body is adjusting. Coming from the east coast (my home is in NE Georgia, which is humid and really lush) I’ve do have a lot to adjusting to do. My eyes already ache for green.

But the landscape has so much to offer in its own unique way. In the evening, the low sun just glows on the area’s red rocks and cast deep shadows off the juniper trees and sagebrush. The coloration is more subtle, grey-blues and purple greens. And I’ve already found pockets of verdure. The other night for example we hiked up a small box canyon to survey for a Mexican spotted owl. We will be hiking up this canyon once a week to keep tabs on a male that has been living there for the past few years, sometimes with a mate. A stream runs through the canyon and it is alive with box elder trees, cottonwoods, willows, and horsetails. Apart from the owl (we got an amazing look at this rare species) we spotted a red, yellow, and black king snake, heard the cartoon call of a canyon wren (reminiscent of the sound of Mario falling off a cliff), and found some beautiful blooming penstemon. In fact the array of wild flowers everywhere have really stunned me, even though it has been an extremely hot and dry spring. All colors, purples, pinks, blues, orange, red, yellow, and many of them with a delicious scent. I can only imagine the glory of a wet spring!

Beyond wildflowers, the dry spring will also impact other field office activity: wildfire for example. Cedar City does a lot of fuels projects concerned with providing protection of local communities from the threat of fire. Often these projects (which frequently entail removing juniper and pinyon pine from areas to diminish the threat of fire) are coupled with goals for wildlife habitat improvement. This is a whole realm I’ve had little experience with and I look forward to learning more!

So far, the last couple weeks have been chock full of required training and reading to orient myself in the field office along with a couple of tantalizing days out in the field. On top of the owl survey, we’ve done some other surveying for another threatened bird species, the the southwestern willow flycatcher, along with some vegetation trend surveying for a fuels project. I’m just getting my feet wet and getting familiar with the plants and animals of the area. Can’t wait for the season to get into full swing! I am also excited because during this internship I will have the pleasure of working with another CLM intern on a day to day basis. It will liven up those long ten hour field days that I hammered out completely alone in Montana! So all in all its looking to be a good next few months; I am so thankful for the opportunity to explore new area and a new set of management paradigms and practices.

Hello, my name is Nathan Reese and I am interning for the Chicago Botanic Garden at the Bureau of Land Management, Coos Bay District. I was hired to conduct a survey of a number of different noxious weeds with the top priority being Scotch and French Broom. I have lived in central Illinois my entire life and this has been my first true experience with the Pacific Ocean except for a small trip to Seattle three years ago. Living on the coast has been amazing so far. On my last day driving out here, I started my day in Mountain Home, ID and drove the 600 miles thought the high desert of Eastern Oregon up to the Cascade Mountains and back down to finally meet the Pacific Ocean. It was an amazing sight to see the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  The second day was spent exploring the coast line and every stop we made left me in awestruck over the beauty of the west coast.

In the four weeks I have been here I have had several opportunities to experience many of the different career fields that are stationed in the Coos Bay office. One day we went out with one of the BLM wildlife biologists to replace deteriorating bat boxes with new Purple Martin boxes and went to Dean Creek Elk Viewing Area and got to get up close to Roosevelt Elk.  One day we made it out in the field with a botanist to help with identifying many native species as well as the noxious weeds.  We also drove out to the to the sight of the Doerner fir which is the world’s largest Douglas Fir at 329 feet tall (I am 6’2” with an equal wingspan). I had never been next to a tree that large before and I still can’t believe how amazing it was to walk through such a large old growth forest. Just this last week, I went out with The Snowy Plover Crew to put up 3 miles of rope fencing and got to see nearly 30 birds. After talking with the biologist, he indicated that the populations have been getting larger over the last 10 years.

My best experience I have had so far was to go out with the Spotted Owl surveys. We went out on a daytime calling to see if we could locate any individuals in a potential area. The very first sight we went to, we immediately picked up one calling about 150 m away. We quickly followed him to a tree where he met up with a female. We were able to call them down from the top of the trees to the branches just 12 feet above me. We had brought along mice to bait them down and observe how they went about feeding which indicates there reproductive status. By holding a stick with a mouse three feet away from me, the male owl flew down and grabbed the mouse. It was amazing to have such an endangered bird fly so close to me. We fed them 6 mice in all and I was able to lie down and have them fly above my head to retrieve the mice. This is quite possibly the only chance I will ever get to see these birds in my life.

After 6 weeks of adult sucker work for USGS we have made the move back to FWS.  Getting to work for two different government agencies within the same internship has been an awesome learning experience in and of itself.  In this area USGS serves almost as an private contractor that helps to fulfill the research needs of FWS and BLM in this area.  BLM and FWS both have a special interest in many of the local large management decisions (in a simplified way, water for farmers and endangered fish respectively), so USGS helps to provide unbiased data.

We’ve said goodbye for now to adult suckers and are moving on to some lost river and short nose juvenile work, plus prep for other upcoming projects.  Currently we are working on a man-made pond created in the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge where suckers have been stocked to gain a better understanding of their response to an artificial environment.  We set fyke nets over night and then collect length data and PIT tag numbers to measure their growth since being moved to the pond.  Hopefully the data we collect will begin to shed some light on whether an artificial stocking program is a viable option for these endangered suckers.

Pulling the fyke net

Juvenile sucker

Collecting juvenile data

Two weeks in and I am settling in nicely here at the Cosumnes River Preserve working at the Bureau of Land Management for the Chicago Botanic Garden.  The weather has been all sun thus far, the fresh produce is ripe and readily available, and the wildlife is abundant and diverse.  I have spent my first two weeks doing a variety of things, including many hours of certifications and training (ATV safety course, UTV safety course, defensive driving course, etc).  I have also been training on some of the heavy equipment operation here (tractors, backhoe, brush mowers, and the preserve’s boat).  This organization seems to have all the right equipment to accomplish the tasks faced by any conservation land manager which is a nice change for me after having worked for a small county conservation organization prior to attending graduate school.

I have greatly enjoyed networking with all of the other staff at the preserve.  This preserve works in connection with The Nature Conservancy, The US Fish and Wildlife Service,  private landowners, as well as many other organizations and partners.  Needless to say, there are always new people to meet.  Interestingly, by the end of June there will be three interns with the same name as myself, Patrick, so things may get a bit confusing.  I have been coordinating schedules with as many other people as possible to get out to other preserves, get involved with seed collections, and accompany other “plant nerds” like myself on surveys for rare plants.  A great deal of my time at this preserve will be spent monitoring and collecting seed from three species, Grindelia camporum, Agrostis exarata, and Eryngium articulatum.  This seed will then be used for restoration projects on the preserve.

In my free time  I have been viewing the wildlife of the preserve.  I am particularly interested in snakes and other herpetofauna, and have thoroughly enjoyed identifying as many California species as possible which are all new to me having moved here from Iowa.  Snakes are very common on the preserve.  Since arriving I have identified Pacific Gofer Snakes, Red-bellied Garter Snakes, and Western Yellow-bellied Racers.  Allegedly, there are Giant Garter Snakes present at this preserve as well which are endangered and as I’m told, very hard to find.  I may have an opportunity to view one if I can link up with researchers at a later date.  In general, I have really been enjoying this experience.  I am greatly anticipating the events that have been arranged over the next several months; what a great opportunity!!  I’m including some of the pictures of the snakes I have seen while out exploring and a picture I snapped while camping at Englebright Lake.