I am now in the middle of my fourth month at the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, NV and things are starting to really pick up! For months my coworker and I have quietly witnessed the desert come to life.  The flowers, though they were sometimes few and far between, have come and gone.  Normally I would say that the best part is over, but not this season!  For me, a participant in the Seeds of Success program, spent flowers are an exciting sign.   It’s seed time here in the Mojave and I have been having a great time collecting native seed over the past couple weeks.  Most recently we made a collection of Fallugia paradoxa, the Apache Plume.  One of the most satisfying things is getting to pluck seed heads from a plant and say “Twenty! Forty! Sixty!…One Hundred!”  Some collections are slower than others and at times the work can seem tedious, but collections like the Fallugia help keep the work balanced.  I am looking forward to a little bit of scrambling over the next few weeks as we jump from one collection to another.  After a long, patient wait, it’s go time.

Allison Clark

Springs Preserve, Las Vegas, NV

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! Most everyone is familiar with technological tools such as GPSs (Global Positioning Systems) including Garmins and Tom-toms; and anyone who has ever used a map online such as Google maps or MapQuest has used GIS (Geographic Information System). These devices and programs which most people use for navigating while traveling or, for the adventurers, geocaching, have become essential tools for conservation and land management.

GIS (GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM). GIS is useful in many ways: producing maps that give directions to our destinations, tell distances from here to there,  show particular features of interest, document and re-locate particular features and sites (i.e., rare plant populations, trails, boundaries, etc.), just to name a few. But more and more, land managers are utilizing the spatial analysis capabilities of GIS to guide their management practices. As with all technology, it is only as useful as the user’s ability to use it. 🙂 And I’m definitely still learning (and re-learning when I haven’t performed a particular function for a while). It’s one thing to read a map, quite another to create it and to manipulate the tools of the software program to do what one needs it to do, and yet a different task to combine multiple layers providing spatial information relevant to a conservation or land management issue in a way that analyzes the data and informs management decisions.

Through trial and error, finding a way to accomplish what I need to do on ArcGIS

GPS (GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM). GPS has fast become a daily encounter as this technology is now built into the design of cars and into the programming of cell phones. What the average person may not know is that GPS has become to land managers what American Express has been for its cardholders: Don’t leave home (the office) without it. As long as it can receive a sufficient number of satellite signals and the batteries don’t go dead (a reason to always have a compass as well), GPS units are crucial for navigating in the field; I have found this to be especially true in the chaparral where the vegetation is too dense to walk through and too tall to see over…it’s very easy to get disoriented. I have used GPS to map populations of rare plants and invasives, sites of SOS seed collections, locations of potential variance projects, incidents of tresspasses, and a trail and its features (i.e., bridges, large Pacific madrone tree, restrooms, etc.). Within our BLM field office, GPS units are utilized by various employees for other map features according to their specialty: archeology, geology, engineering, recreation, wildlife biology, fuels management/firefighting, and land realty.

Searching for a signal...

Over the past few weeks we have completed a wide array of tasks including fire monitoring, learning how to use pesticide pumps, scouting and collecting seeds for the Seeds of Success program, monitoring sensitive plants, and mapping the intensity of the 7,500 acre topaz ranch estates fire right near the border of California and Nevada. The field season has started picking up and it is exciting to have more opportunities to explore the different facets of work at BLM. I’m also proud that my knowledge of Nevada’s flora is really starting to improve. I’m learning more and more about policies surrounding listed species. This has helped me to explore and learn more about the politics surrounding these listings. I’m looking forward to more field work and more camping, more animal sightings, listing to coyotes howl from my tent, perfecting my knowledge of the great basin plants, and more scenic views from sandy mountaintops.

The BLM Needles Field Office is know as the “Heart of the Mojave Desert”.  While my main project is associated with Mojave Fringe-toed Lizards I have had the opportunity to visit quite a few interesting places within the Field Office, and see a lot of the biological diversity that the Mojave Desert has to offer.  This blog post is going to be purely a photo-essay of some of my experiences during my internship so far:

I am definitely looking forward to the CLM Workshop out in Chicago next week, it will be a great opportunity to network and meet all of the other interns with CBG this year.

Jeff

BLM Needles Field Office

Our experience at the Klamath Falls FWS office is coming up on the one month mark following the transition from adult sucker sampling with GS, and a surprising amount has been packed into a relatively short time. As the last post (A Sucker for Suckers, cont.) mentioned, a lot of our effort has gone into sampling at a pond where about 200 juvenile shortnose and Lost River suckers were released a year ago after getting trapped in the canals that divert water from Upper Klamath Lake. Recapture rates with the fyke (hoop) nets set overnight have been slow so far, but we’re still testing different net placement strategies and detection techniques, including cast nets and a portable scanner. We have also dealt with an experiment in the lake to examine the effects of gravel substrate size on sucker egg development, and meanwhile at the office I have just begun working on a project to take detailed photos of juvenile sucker specimens that will later be analyzed along with x-rays to identify distinguishing body shape and skeletal characteristics for more accurate species differentiation.

At the Lower Klamath NWR sucker pond. We went beyond the sign.

Cast netting at the sucker pond. Didn't catch anything, but it looks nice.

Our main focus now is on the Modoc sucker, a smaller species that, while restricted to a fairly limited range of streams in southern Oregon and northern California, appears to have improved considerably since its listing with the ESA. Visual surveys are performed by spotlight late at night when the fish tend to be more out in the open and stationary. We found them in substantial numbers throughout the stream reaches that we have surveyed so far, and if this trend continues, a recommendation may be put forth to have the species downlisted to threatened.

In addition to the sucker work, we have performed egg-mass surveys for the Oregon spotted frog (a candidate species for listing that has been severely impacted by hydrologic changes and bullfrog invasions), and nest surveys for bald eagle chicks (as part of a five-year monitoring program required after its 2007 delisting).

Oregon spotted frog

Bald eagle nest (lower right) and parents (side by side at top).

With bull trout electrofishing, vernal pool plant surveys, river delta habitat mapping and bat detection equipment testing (among others) still ahead, this internship is turning out to be an incredible opportunity for sampling a wide array of projects, species, study areas and field methods – not to mention an exercise in organization and time-management.

Oh, and I have to include a compliment to the location:

Tommy Esson

USFWS, Klamath Falls, OR

This last week marked my fourth week as a botany intern in the small town of Lakeview, OR.  In that month I have experienced many new things. This is my first adventure out west to the mountains and sagebrush.  Coming from Iowa, the mountainous horizon is a welcomed change from the flat farmland that is present back home.  Learning about this new ecosystem has been very interesting but also challenging.

Conducting a botany clearance at Silver Lake

Already my crew has performed a botany clearance where junipers will be cleared in the future.  Now we have moved on to rare plant monitoring of all of the sites in the Lakeview Resource Area. We have seen many beautiful sights and I enjoy traveling to many different areas each week.

View from Table Rock while surveying rare plants

Most of the interns live in the BLM trailers which are located near the office, allowing us to ride our bikes to work.  With 10 interns here in various positions, there is always someone to hang out with and so many things to do!  I feel very lucky to have so many great people to work with.

A colorful Castilleja found hiding in the sagebrush

The next four months will certainly be an adventure and if the first month is any indication, it’s going to be a great summer!

Life is not always as it seems. However, if it seems like being a Wilderness Monitor in the Heart of the Mojave Desert would lead me to some awesome places, in this case life is exactly how it seems. The last comprehensive inventory for lands with wilderness characteristics in the Needles BLM office was 1979. I am providing an update to that inventory. Most recently I have been checking then-decided non-wilderness areas to determine if they have reverted to “wilderness”. On my travels I consider if an area is shaped primarily by the forces of nature, offers opportunities for solitude, and has potential for unconfined recreation.

My searches for wilderness have reinforced the fact that the Mojave is not as it seems to culture’s mind’s eye. Even in the hottest and sunniest hours of one of U.S.A.’s hottest and driest ecosystems the air is full of birdsong, bugsong, bees, nonchalance, and spiderwebs. The air is less full of pollen these days, but even cursory glances across the rocky ground reveal tiny Fabacea flowering (with no help from recent airborne water; it has been over a month since a sporadic rain fell over this vast landscape). As I nibble sweet Palo Verde seeds, I reason that some important lesson should be learned from this repeatedly demonstrated dedicated desert patience. The desert chooses life.

Hello All! I have now traveled from Indiana and been staying here in Buffalo, WY for the past 2 weeks. I can tell you already, I would not mind staying here for quite some time.  The town here is wonderful, full of extremely welcoming people and the area is great. Directly to the east are the high plains, vast sagebrush lands where most of my work is. Not 20 minutes to the west is the Bighorn National Forest, mountains that we have already explored a few times. I have never been in such a small town where there is also so much to do.  We enjoyed our first bluegrass jam session just the other night, and plan on many many more.

I’m working as a range intern for the Buffalo Field Office.  I’ve already started learning to identify all the many grasses here, often without seed heads which is something I have never done before.  We’ve been monitoring grazing allotments in high priority areas, particularly sage grouse primary habitat.  I admit, I hadn’t expected to be sniffing bird scat; however, I was pleasantly surprised as sage grouse scat has the same aroma as sagebrush.  We were able to get a close sighting of a sharp-tailed grouse today, so hopefully a great visual of a sage grouse will be next!

At the Lockeford Plant Material Center we have a unique situation; most interns at BLM field sites have areas to collect from right at their facilities, whereas the PMC is 100 acres of farmland used for propagating those initial native plant seeds. That said, it makes it slightly more difficult to collect seeds of target species, so we have to travel to other field sites in the surrounding areas.

These last couple weeks took me to both the Cougar Wetlands area of the Cosumnes River Preserve outside of Sacramento, and the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern, just east of Yosemite. It’s astonishing to see how quickly climes change here in California, and likewise, how diverse the plant populations are. Cosumnes was chalk-full of grasses, sedges, and bulrushes all populating the flood plains and riparian areas. Red Hills, on the other hand, had large areas of serpentine deposits that limited the hillsides to stands of Ceanothus cuneatus, Pinus sabiniata, Elymus elymoides, and a few other smaller wildflowers like Castilleja.

I’ve only been in this state for about a month, but I’ve already travelled to the Bay Area, the Sierra Nevadas, and Monterey, and the more I see of California the more I understand why it’s such a biodiverse area and why it’s so important to have the BLM present here.

Castilleja associated wtih Buckbrush at Red Hills

Exploring Northern New Mexico BLM Land -Sheila directing us from beside the truck (what a surprise there isn't an oil or gas well in this photo)

Opuntia polyacantha

My name is Deidre Conocchioli, and I started working at the lovely BLM field office in Farmington, New Mexico this past Monday. Farmington is about 40 miles southeast of the Four Corners and is on the Colorado Plateau. I just graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and stopped at home in the Twin Cities, Minnesota before coming to Farmington.  I had previously never been to New Mexico and while I was excited about the new flora, I was greatly anticipating what the landscape in Farmington would be like.  Colorado Plateau kept giving me the  imagery of a city on a high, dry, flat top without trees to shelter from the sun’s ever-watching gaze. I found myself thinking along the drive, “please don’t let Farmington be as flat as the plains I am coming from.” Even one mountain range within sight from the town would be a mental oasis.  Driving past the plains, the earth erupted into majestic uprisings of forested slopes and snow- capped peaks west of Denver. Pressing through southern Colorado, the mountains held out as I looked for indication of the distinctive plateau I had in mind. There was none, the land never flattened. Even rolling in at 9 pm, we could tell that this plateau had big rolling hills around the town, as I especially discovered on my 4 mile uphill bike ride to the BLM office.

I will be primarily working on the Seeds of Success program with another CLM intern, Henry. Our mentor, Sheila, is a sharp botanist and she has been acquainting us with Four Corners specimen she collected for us. Or rather, A Utah Flora, Flora of Arizona, New Mexico Flora, and Colorado Flora keys have been divulging the intimate details of a plant’s private areas (gynobase positioning) and more provocative features of the leaves, spines, and pubescence. It was a good change of pace when we were able to learn flora in the field. The prickly pears in bloom were absolutely gorgeous.

Looking forward to meeting everyone at the training in Chicago!