When I first arrived at my CLM internship at the BLM in Grand Junction, CO – I knew very little about the BLM and how public land is managed for multi-use.  I came from the Blue Ridge Mountains, and was now surrounded by unfamiliar plants and a very different ecosystem.  However, I had the unique opportunity to work with two experienced professionals in the field each day, rather than fellow seasonals.  Harley Metz and John Toolen are very familiar with the western slope and were happy to answer the thousands of questions that I had.  I learned how GJFO manages its land to support so many uses and conservation initiatives, which seed species are planted following a fire, what the most palatable forage species for cattle are, and the mechanical techniques that were used to remove Pinyon-Juniper encroachment to improve Sage-Grouse habitat.  More importantly, I now understand that the field office is still learning how to combat certain issues, like how to eradicate Cheatgrass is such a dry environment.  While I would like to say that I left my internship with a sense of conclusion and understanding of land management in the desert, I am actually leaving with even more questions and a desire to return to Colorado to learn more.

Although the primary focus of my internship was conducting Land Health Assessments, I also participated in a variety of fieldwork.  I chased after a ridiculously-fast graduate student and learned to use radio-telemetry to track radio-collared desert bighorn sheep.  I hiked in the Piceance Basin, one of the largest natural gas reserves in the country, to search for rare Phacelia habitat.  I also accompanied the botanists and CLM interns from Colorado State Office to survey for Penstemon debilis and later to collect Artemesia frigada seeds.  But probably the most exciting for me was visiting a recent wildfire with the BAER team and monitoring the vegetation post-fire.

On that note, my next adventure leads me to the Sandhill Crane NWR on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi where I will work as a Fire Ecology Intern.  I will be monitoring fire-effects and conducting prescribed burns.  While I am sad to leave the western slope, I am really excited about this next adventure.  I have learned a lot about working for a federal agency, and by working with people in different stages of their careers, I have a new found sense of direction about my own.  Working as a CLM intern was an incredible experience, and I am so grateful that I had this opportunity.

-Ali

Grand Junction, CO

The beautiful western slope.

Canyonlands, UT:  It’s incredible!  Go there!

I’ve always had a fear of getting stuck in a permanent job, especially one I didn’t like. But since I’ve been working in Cody for just over a year and a half, I feel like I have been working a “real” job, not just an internship. I know the field office, I know the projects, the people, the wildlife, the plants, the tools, how to keep myself busy and prioritize tasks… In short, I know the job. I suppose this is what a “real” job feels like, and it’s not that scary. Granted, my internship has been extended in 5-month chunks, based on funding, which probably eased my phobia of permanency. Nevertheless, if I can approach a new grown-up job with the same confidence that I have when I sit down to my computer in the morning here, turn the key in the ignition of a government-owned vehicle, drive miles out to a remote work site, and accomplish the task I prioritized for myself for the day, I will have no problem taking on a “real” job. New jobs never start out that way, but I know I will get there. I know this because I’ve done it, piece by piece. I have acquired more skills and absorbed more knowledge than I probably even realize, and by putting it all into practice day by day at a job like this, knowing the work is valuable, I have finally acquired the confidence to go with it. I work hard. I am responsible. I can learn new things. I get stuff done. I am employable. These facts will not guarantee me a job, but knowing them does dispel the feelings of inadequacy that usually accompany the thought of getting one.

So now I am facing the last week left of my favorite job, in the coolest place I’ve lived, partaking in some of my favorite activities. It’s sad, but I feel accomplished all the same. It’s going to injure my pride a little if I cry when I leave, but I would bet my breakfast I’m going to do it anyway.

Some of the projects to be wrapped up in order to finish out my internship are: writing up the wildlife section of the Cody Field Office website, gluing and labeling herbarium vouchers, explaining all the GPS points I’ve been collecting and how they go together, and helping my mentor refine the first draft of a paper involving statistical analyses of sage-grouse lek attendance related to vegetation treatments. Guess this next week will be a busy one. I hope that will keep my mind off leaving.

I still remember my first real work day (the one after the introductory meet-the-office day), on May 13, 2011. We left the office sometime during the 4 o’clock hour in the morning to head out to Chapman Bench and count sage-grouse, right at the end of the lekking season. I had never used a spotting scope, seen sage-grouse or smelled sagebrush, and I couldn’t figure out why everything smelled minty when I rolled down the window until I asked my mentor about it. The alpine glow on the Beartooth Mountains was lovely, and I kept taking pictures. Then my mentor drove us up this rather steep, bumpy little two-track onto Polecat Bench, talking casually all the while as I glanced (with mild anxiety) out the back window of the truck. At the GROUND. I am from Nebraska, and had never been in any vehicle traversing this sort of topography. I believed he knew what he was doing, but Phew. This was new.

Sometimes when I encounter situations or environmental conditions that seem a little iffy I think to myself, “what would my mentor do?” Sometimes it’s not worth it to proceed. Sometimes it isn’t as bad as it looked initially, after some cautious evaluation. I appreciate my mentor, he’s a great boss and Wildlife Biologist. Good bosses always make jobs better, and I certainly can’t complain. I also appreciate my “alternate intern keeper,” one of the resident Geologists. And the other friends I’ve made… I will miss them, but I will be back. I couldn’t stay away now. But alas, just for now, it is time to do a little more life stretching. So here goes.

After a peculiarly hot and dry summer, rain has finally made an appearance in the Willamette Valley. And coinciding with the rain is an opportunity for a little bit of field work. For me, field season was officially over in August with the end of monitoring, and I have since then settled into the office working on reports. However, it’s restoration time in the wetlands, and prime time to reseed the bare ground left by ecological burns.

Seeding has been an entirely different creature than monitoring; there is quite a bit of preparation involved before actually spreading the seed. First, we picked up the seed from the City of Eugene, one of BLM’s partners in preserving and restoring the West Eugene Wetlands. The City of Eugene sorts and packages the native seed by site for us so that it’s almost all ready to go. We store the seed in our seed cooler until we are ready to begin, at which time we have to mix the different species of seed together. Finally, we are ready to start spreading the seed.

In addition to seeding, I also had the opportunity to attend a grantwriting training workshop at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. The workshop ran for three jam-packed days full of valuable information. It was completely awesome. The refuge itself was also beautiful. Our “classroom” had a huge window in the back that looked out over the refuge, through which we could view the local wildlife (mainly egrets, great blue herons, and even a few eagles).

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge–it poured the entire time I was there!

Signing off for now,

Mackenzie Cowan

I can honestly say that after reflecting on my time in Lakeview, OR, I feel very blessed to have been a part of the CLM Program and to have been placed with so many great people. I highly recommend the program to anyone interested in working for government.

View after an intense hike

This summer I was able to grow both professionally and personally. I had the privilege of working with a great group of interns through the CLM program. This internship has helped me to figure out which direction I would like to go in the future. Now that I have returned to the Midwest, I find myself citing skills and experiences from my time as an intern in CLM in interviews repeatedly.

Just a few quick tips for future CLM participants:

1. Go to the CLM Workshop if you can- there are great workshops and it’s always fun to hear about other interns and their experiences.

2. Travel on the weekends- Make the most of your time, wherever you are, and take advantage of all the opportunities available to you. You will be done before you know it!

3. Keep in contact with those you meet- both professionally and personally, I made some great contacts and I hope to stay in touch with them in the future.

4. Don’t be afraid to pursue/request specific skill sets- Your mentors are there to help you and take the time to discuss your interests with those you work with.

Those are just a few off the top of my head but just make sure you take advantage of your adventure! If any other future interns have any specific Lakeview questions, feel free to ask one of the many interns available.

I feel very lucky to have been placed in Lakeview, OR for 5 months in the West. Best of luck to all of the other CLMers in their future endeavors!

5 months flies by fast!  But, thankfully, I have 3 more months of extension!                                     

Since I’ve posted last, we have been settling into fall.  Being from Pennsylvania, I know fall.  And I know it well.  I also know that New Mexico does not have nearly as many deciduous trees.  So as fall was quickly approaching, I wasn’t expecting much.  I was in for a pleasant surprise.  In Fort Stanton, which is one of the recreation areas in our field office, there are a few different species of shrub-sized oaks.  Cruising through there one day for work, all the different oaks were wonderful bright reds, yellows and the occasional tan.  It was beautiful!  And not only were the shrubs vibrant, but also the cottonwoods along the rivers, and the grasses!  I’ve noticed the grasses shimmer in the right sunlight – especially Sideoats Grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) and Burrograss (Scleropogon brevifolius) both having exceptional fall tones.

Best of luck to the other interns who are all finished!

Jaci

Roswell, NM

The season is beginning to come to a close. Looking around the different field sites and local parks, I noticed that the aspen leaves are beginning to desiccate and produce the most brilliant, golden yellow and amazingly, beautiful orange hues.  Even though the season is almost over, we are still very busy with collecting seeds, such as Chrysothamnus sp. populations, Mentzelia nuda (bractless blazingstar), and many other plant species that we have been scouting and monitoring all season long.

This has been an absolutely amazing opportunity. There are some very beautiful things happening in Colorado this time of year, and I am very excited and looking forward to experiencing winter sports and fall festival events in downtown Denver. Here are a few  photos to show some of the events that have happened thus far.

One of our collections for the S.O.S. Program

During one of my favorite collections, Humulus lupulus. While out in the field collecting, we saw a garter snake  (quite harmless).

Can you find the snake hidden in the grass?

Last week Sama (another CLM intern at the BLM Colorado State Office) finished her CLM internship. It was very sad to see her leave and its very different to see people move on to their new adventures. Truly, I think that I have made some great friendships through the CLM program and I know that I will stay in contact and remain friends with them even after the CLM Internship Program.

At Pine Valley Ranch Open Space Park, Sama and I together on her last day of the CLM internship.

I was able to spend time with other interns from different field offices in Colorado. At Anvil Points, we monitored the Penstemon debilis rare plant population, which lives in areas high in shale deposits on about a 5 degree slope that suddenly drops down into a valley. Its great being able to see Alison Gabrenya (Ali) again, we met at the CLM Workshop in Chicago and we have been great friends ever since then. For the day, I was able to show her exactly what we do at the Colorado State Office to study, monitor, and assess rare plant populations. 

Spending the day with Ali Gabrenya and Christine Chung on a rare plant monitoring trip for Penstemon debilis at Anvil Points.

I’m looking forward to staying until the very end of this seed collection season and continuing to increase our numbers of plant species for the S.O.S. Program. I have learned so much from this wonderful opportunity and gained a large amount of confidence in identifying Colorado native plant species. Being a girl from Georgia, the flora and even fauna are vastly different in the south in comparison to the west. I’m excited to see what the month of November holds and the spectacular events happening throughout this beautiful state. I have fallen in love with Colorado and all of the friendly people here!

Happy Seed Collecting (because there are still thousands of seeds to continue to collect before the season is officially over).

Darnisha Coverson

BLM Colorado State Office

On February 1st, I began my journey as a CLM botany intern. I was all alone in a city I knew nothing about, surrounded by an ecosystem much different than my experiences in two biodiversity hotspots including the tropical, diverse ecosystems of Hawaii and the remarkable landscape of California. I landed in Carson City, Nevada and was surrounded by what seemed like nothing but sagebrush and rabbitbush. Despite my initial shock at the landscape around me, I grew to love the wide open spaces and expanses of mountains in Nevada, I found interesting plants that fascinated me and broadened my abilities as a cryptobotanist, and developed many skills in field biology.

My internship is just about the end, and I am moving onto my next opportunity. I landed a position with an environmental consulting firm in California and I am excited about the opportunities it will bring. This internship and the opportunities it gave me really helped to line me up for the career I’ve been dreaming about for years. Once you have the skills, it is just networking and persistence that gets you there. My experiences with this internship have taught me that if you make the best of your experiences, instead of focusing on the negative, and really put the effort out there to take advantage of every opportunity, you will find the career you want. Talk to everyone you can in the offices you work in. They have the job that you want or they may have held it before, and they will know the exact steps you need to take to get it. My experiences with this internship were definitely different than I expected, but despite some momentary frustrations, these experiences have given me the opportunities I need to start a career.

I’m excited to move back to California, but I will definitely miss the landscape of Nevada, the snow on the mountains, and the random oases of aspen groves and canyon creeks in the high desert. This internship has led me to a greater appreciation of the value of public land.

November has come, and it is time to end my internship here at the Alturas BLM Field Office. With an extension, I worked here as a botany intern for a total of seven months. The first snow has fallen, the trees are losing their leaves, and the landscape looks similar to when I first arrived in early April.

Arrival in Modoc County was nothing short of a shock for me. I am from the opposite end of California, the benign coastal town of Santa Barbara. Although located in the same state, Santa Barbara is extremely different from Alturas, in almost every sense. As I made my motorized transect across the state last April, I knew I was in for an interesting summer. Once I passed over the Sierras, I came upon the high desert scenery of Northeastern California, namely sagebrush, junipers, and volcanic rocks. I made it to the town of Likely, population 200, and waited across from the old fashioned general store and saloon for my mentor to show me to the BLM fire station where I would be staying. We drove past pastures and cows, up into the junipers, to the fire station. I was soon by myself. I felt like Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire, the lone steward of thousands of acres of desert. I found out that Modoc County’s motto of “Where the West still lives” could not be more accurate. I learned that the local Verizon wireless retailer also sells guns and ammo. Conversations in the office seemed to primarily be about hunting, and a local pastime is shooting squirrels. I was amazed by some of the towns in the area, for example Ravendale (population 26). I realized that Modoc County has a population of less than 10,000 and many of the towns are remnants of the homesteading era that have undoubtedly changed, but changed much less than anywhere I have ever seen. During my first week of work it was snowing and raining, and I spent some long days in the office going through the herbarium, and, to be completely honest, questioning what on Earth I was doing out here. But then my coworker Jaycee arrived, as well as other seasonals, and field season began.

As summer unfolded, I began to realize that despite the isolation and different culture here, I was in for a truly great experience. The uniqueness of working in this area was not lost on me. I would do things like startle coyotes, pronghorn antelope, and wild horses at a watering hole down the road from an old Basque sheepherder’s bunkhouse. Or drive for two hours down gravel and dirt roads to a dried up reservoir where a man driving an ATV and wearing a cowboy hat, boots with spurs, and an old fashioned six shooter holstered to his hip greeted us. I was also getting paid to do what I absolutely love. It was easy to forget that I was “working” when I was driving and hiking around all day collecting bouquets of wildflowers and scheming to collect their seeds. I don’t think I have ever been so excited during a job. I was rarely bored as the tasks were so varied, including rare plant surveys, seed collecting, transects, creating maps with ArcMAP, pressing and mounting herbarium specimens, and more. The locations were varied as well, and after driving down countless 4-wheel drive roads and looking at maps, I have come to know the land that this office manages far better than the natural areas surrounding my hometown.

Working for the BLM has given me valuable insight into what working for a multi-use government land management agency is like. I have learned about myriad facets of natural resource management such as rare plant clearances, juniper encroachment, wildfires, endangered species, rangeland management, etc. I have learned over and over that no issue is black and white. As my mentor put it, sciences like rangeland management are applied ecology, and every case is different, based on a multitude of factors. This dynamism is what makes these fields so interesting to me. I have also realized that being an intern is different than being an actual BLM employee. Although it concerns me that the ecosystemic processes that I find so fascinating are often bogged down in paperwork, I also know that this is how things are done in the world of land management in this day and age. Agencies like the BLM have incredible pressure from environmentalists, ranchers, politicians, and everyone in between. The BLM straddles a line between these groups, a line that I don’t always agree with, but also one that I have gained a lot more respect for. Perhaps most important of all I have seen is that there is a place in agencies like the BLM for those concerned with conservation, and that this seems to be a growing trend.

Well, I guess it’s time for the next adventure. In just over a month I will be traveling to New Zealand to work on farms, hike, and learn a completely new flora. After that, I imagine I will continue working for a land management agency and in the next few years I want to go to grad school, and this internship will be instrumental for these plans. I’ll miss the wide unobstructed views, the unpeopled landscapes, the stunning clouds, the smell of freshly crushed sagebrush, and never needing to worry about finding a parking place. Some pictures:

The Warner mountains after the first fall snow.

A finished herbarium specimen, one of several we were able to add to the office herbarium.

 11/1/12Joe Broberg Alturas BLM Field Office 

My last day of work in Lakeview, Oregon has arrived, or rather snuck up on me. Between work and exploring the area on the weekends with fellow interns, this field season has flown by!

I was fortunate to have been able to participate in a diverse array of assignments. Through my time spent surveying for federally listed species and seed collecting, I have learned much about local plants and their communities. I assisted with post-fire monitoring and learned how different treatments work or fail depending on the situation. I was also able to help with rangeland monitoring plots. And even though I loved my time spent in the field, one of the most important skills that I honed this season was in the office: GIS data management. The various projects that I worked on have helped me to recognize what I want to do in the long term, both educationally and in my career, which I find to be just as valuable as the field-related skills that I have acquired or improved upon this season.

Of all the different aspects of this internship, I will miss the land and the people the most. This area is gorgeous, and I got to explore so many hidden spots that I would probably never have gone to otherwise. I was also lucky to have ended up where seven other interns were also posted. This meant that a diverse group of awesome, smart women (yes, all women) from around the country were here to go camping, hiking, to music festivals, and have barbeques with. Not only were they fun to hang out with, but also to work with. Fieldwork often requires people to work closely for long hours at a time, in the middle of nowhere. It felt like our crews worked well together and made the assignments more of an adventure than a task.

While I am excited to move on to future plans, I feel some sadness for moving on from this endeavor. I hope to visit this area again in the future and to keep in touch with the many people I have gotten to know in the past six months. The CLM internship has been a rewarding experience that I would recommend to anyone considering a career in environmental sciences or natural resource management.