How long is my life
for that I don’t know
It may be a year
before I will grow
The winter may prove to be harsh
Prove to bring much snow
but spring will surely come
But when will I grow?

The start of my life
Will I become a tree
Or possibly a flower
such quaint friends with a bee
Perhaps a mangrove
with such great views of the sea
Whatever the outcome
I hope I have some company

Some more of my kind
or some others for that
I would be quite happy
to be friends with a gnat
the stories we’d share
about this thing or that
The age we would gain
and grow comfortably fat

But these are just dreams
I just thought you should know
They are just hope
Just thoughts about life
Just hopes ’till I sew
pehaps a large field
But when will I grow?

What an adventure this internship has been! I have worked at the BLM Field Office in Bishop for two summers now – 9 months in total, and it has been quite a journey.  I have learned so much – about driving a huge pickup truck and changing flat tires,  to how to identify what seems like a huge number of plants, to using GIS.  I have been able to work with wildlife, going on early morning sage grouse counting trips, and late night bat counting trips  – where I got to use night vision goggles!  I’ve learned a ton of different monitoring techniques and what the advantages (and disadvantages) are of each one.  From stream monitoring, to sage grouse vegetation monitoring, to burn monitoring.  I’ve collected seeds, so many seeds, despite the lack of precipitation this year.

And I have met some truly amazing people who work so hard to protect the land they love. It has been an honor and a pleasure.

– Elizabeth

Idaho is very dry. By now, you’ve probably heard that a couple of Idaho cities, including Featherville, are being evacuated. The fire is so large and its so dry that the fire may continue to burn until a large rainfall or snowfall. It seems all of Idaho is dealing with the lack of precipitation, and the plants are no exception. They produce flowers, and then decide that it would take too much energy to produce seeds. Plants are smarter than people realize. Unfortunately, there is a paltry amount of seeding plants this year, so I have been working in the office.

I spent most of the last month working on a article of new and interesting lichens to Florida. Roger Rosentreter, my supervisor and coauthor, has been working with me through numerous drafts to perfect the paper. This paper will hopefully help in my applications to graduate school later this fall.

The digitization of the lichen collection has continued. The three students are making good progress and are about 1/4th of the way through. Its incredible how many mixed collections there. I have been separating many collections into “A” and “B” catergories. This will help generate more knowledge of lichen ecology and historical records.

Last week, I attended the ESA conference in Portland, Oregon. It was incredible how many scientists were there and how much knowledge was being disseminated and networking was going on. It was a bit overwhelming as my first ESA meeting, but I met many interested researchers and made new friends. It was especially nice to meet graduate students in lichenology.

Barry Kaminsky

BLM, Idaho State Office

Wow, time is absolutely flying by here in Missoula, MT.  Since my last blog post, I have been busy finishing up our last Daubenmire and Pace transects for the season as pictured below. In the first photo we are trying to identify a grass in a Pace survey and in the second photo we are conducting a Daubenmire survey.

We have also been busy monitoring seed maturity and collecting mature seeds (for the following species Camassisa quamash, Lesquerella carintata, Purshia tridentata and Ceanothus velutinus), surveying for sensitive plants (Pyrola picta, White-veined Wintergreen, and Botrychium paradoxum, Peculiar Moonwort) and attending two different trainings in Montana. The first training was a one day wetland plant identification training just south of Missoula at a wildlife refuge. The training was so informative and it was great to meet other botanists who work in the Missoula area for other organizations besides the BLM. The other training took place in Butte and focused on Multiple Indicator Monitoring (MIM) which is a monitoring system for riparian areas. At the MIM training I learned so much about riparian plant communities and how to quantitatively evaluate the health of a stream. The training also covered what to do with data once you have collected it and how it can best be used to affect management decisions, specifically relating to range management strategies. Attending both of these trainings made me think a lot about pursuing riparian ecology after this internship, but who knows! There are just too many fields that interest me right now.

 
Besides attending the MIM training, the other highlight of the past several weeks would have to be discovering a couple rare orchids! The Mountain Lady Slipper (Cypripedium montanum) is found in dry to moist forests in mountain to foothill zones. It has maroon colored tepals and a white lower lip, that slightly resembles a slipper, giving it its common name. The Hooded Lady’s Tresses (Spiranthes romanzoffiana) has a beautiful spiral of white flowers and is found in moist meadows (see picture below).

It’s hard to believe I am already halfway through my internship. I have learned so much already and I can’t wait to learn more. In the next few weeks we will be conducting more surveys for rare plants and I will be helping out the fisheries team with their MIM monitoring. More on that in my next post! Thanks for reading :).

Challenges are such disguised blessings. Aside from all of the field skills that I am learning, I am learning a great deal of personal skills; tonight I focus on the great mastery of leadership. My pattern in life has been to step up to the leadership role when no one else in the group will. It seems to happen by default and yet, it is where I learn the most. My internship has guided me down that same, familiar route, only this time I am learning to own it before it owns me. Earlier in the season I felt discouraged by the additional responsibilities I had taken on by ‘default’; I realized that I was lacking the sub-conscious encouragement that comes with being ‘appointed’ into the position. Instead of hosting some lame pity-party of, “why am I not more passive? My job would be so much easier!”, I decided to appoint myself into the position. Because, after all, I know what I am doing and I know how to do it well! So I organize, I delegate, I take a lot of notes, and through this, I know most about each detail of the project and that offers me a sense of appointed empowerment. One of the most important things I have learned about leadership, at this point, is that when things get frustrating, or slow, confusing or complicated, the leader should not take everything upon herself; the best thing to do is to keep all team members active in the solution. After all, we have teams to help fill in all the gaps.