Early this April, I received word that my internship would soon conclude.  There was simply not any available funding to continue my position.  Although I was disappointed to leave my internship prematurely, I can certainly look back on the experience and say that I was blessed with a myriad of opportunities during my time as an intern.

One of the most valuable, but unexpected gifts I received through my internship was the practice of quiet.  While at work, I usually found myself quietly working on my own to accomplish the tasks of herbarium operation.  These hours I spent “with myself” were so valuable in helping me practice being content with my own company through the course of a day.  After beginning my new job helping manage a retail greenhouse (where I interact with many customers and co-workers throughout the day) I realized just how valuable that quiet time had been.  Even though I thoroughly enjoy working with people, I was surprised when I realized how much I valued that stable solitude.

I was also given the opportunity to get to know a wide range of positively wonderful people!  My co-workers were marvelous, and also incredibly knowledgeable and good-natured.  My internship has also certainly been an excellent opportunity for networking within the Bureau of Land Management, and has allowed me to work with a variety of people in my field.

During the course of my internship, I had the chance to participate in a variety of projects.  Most of these projects involved managing lichen specimen data using our access database.  Since these data management projects involved so much data and and required quite a bit of time, I did not have the chance to see them to their completion before I left.  However, I did get to see significant progression over time.  I also mounted many herbarium vouchers, and made a sizable dent in the specimens that had been waiting for years to be mounted. One project I was able to see to completion was the organization and labeling of our small herbarium library, which now contains a variety of botany related literature.

Many thanks to everyone for the chance to work with the CLM internship program!  With my internship now complete, I am excited about the possibilities of my new job, and I can’t wait to see where things lead!

My internship was a botany internship with the BLM WY in Lander. The goal was to conduct Seeds of Success collections and to create an herbarium collection for the office so they would have reference material. In addition to completing those tasks, I was also able to provide a huge amount of map data work for the office. This office had not ever had a botanist, and their data was unmaintained and challenging to use. I was able to not only collect a large amount of data last summer, but I was also able to organize the offices current data, and then some. With the help of the GIS specialist, I created two geodatabases that are easily usable and can incorporate all future data collection, both in-house and 3rd party. The big concern was that there were surveys that resulted in negative data that were never incorporated, and as a result, many areas were being surveyed multiple times. So they needed a way to show all areas of known locations AND any areas that resulted in negative data so that resources were not being wasted in duplicate surveys. I was able to provide this for them, and I believe that they are very grateful.

The field work that I did last season was also very rewarding. Being a native of the northest megalopolis, it was refreshing to see the vast open spaces that WY has to offer. And the serenity fed my soul.

I will miss WY and the people that I have come to know in the office here. This experience has not only allowed me to see beautiful country and make new friends, but it has also assisted me in making decisions about my future and career goals. My life and my person are better for it, and I encourage anyone to participate in this program.

It’s been quite a spring so far. Sage-grouse lek counting season ends next week, along with mornings that require waking up at 4am. Golden eagle nest monitoring season has begun, although unfortunately the nest I was originally assigned to monitor turned out to be inactive. Luckily, the Bighorn Basin has the greatest concentration of golden eagles in the country, so there are plenty others that are available for watching. I’ve been out and about mending fence, recording a few new raptor nests, seeking out nests of unknown species, scouting for seed collection sites, digging up specimens of the few blooming forbs around that I plan to collect from, recording powerlines using GPS, helping with the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Adoption event, and planning and teaching a lesson on raptor ecology for the local middle school’s Natural History Days (NHD).

Participating in Natural History Days, in addition to the Wild Horse and Burro Adoption, was a new task for me this year. My first day teaching, with the help of the friendly BLM Geologist and fellow raptor volunteer at the museum, was a great success. Now, on to my next teaching day on Tuesday…solo…

The lesson centers around raptors, or birds of prey, and features 2 live birds from the Greater Yellowstone Raptor Experience program at the the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. The first day we had a red-tailed hawk and a peregrine falcon, and next time I will have the great-horned owl and the peregrine falcon, because the hawk has prior engagements on that day. Many species-species and species-environment interactions are discussed in order to convey a message of the interconnectedness of life on the planet, as well as the importance of biodiversity and wide-reaching impacts of humans on wildlife and the environment. The lesson ends with a game of tag, in which some kids play the role of mice while others play the role of predators like rattlesnakes, red-tailed hawks, and great-horned owls. From this they can experience the difficulty of a prey species surviving the pursuit of predators in order to acquire food and feed their young, and that of a predator trying to feed its young while itself being pursued by apex predators like the owl.

Tag is probably almost as fun to watch as it is to play. I was actually able to play a little when one of my “mice” got tired and I had to take her place. As the number of mice dwindles from being tagged or “killed,” the predators start getting awfully hungry and competing more for the remaining mice. When the “car” (played by the Geologist) runs along the highway and “kills” predators like the hawk while it is on a kill, or a rattlesnake while it is sunning. The abundance of mice making it past the remaining predators results in the mouse food supply running low due to their overpopulation. In this way the students can better understand the checks and balances that are necessary to maintaining a relative balance in nature, and how it gets affected when even one type of predator or prey species is removed.

It was a pretty fun time had by all, I would say, including me. And although I’m somewhat nervous about my solo act, I’m looking forward to doing it again.

You might think amphibian surveys would take you to cool, damp, dark places. With the Oregon Spotted Frog, not so! During our first few weeks as I sat in the office, having taken on the OSF as Species Lead, I read the following as ideal survey conditions: warm, sunny days with little or no wind. Well that sounds pretty ideal indeed! While we waited for our supervisor to return from a training, we were set on some office work and whatever field trips staff undertook. When our supervisor returned, the first thing we hear is that it’s a hot, hot year and the frogs are spawning whole weeks before they’d ever spawned before (yikes!). Thus launched one crazy month of survey after survey.

Like many rare species, the OSF is quite shy and hard to find. Over the years, as surveys yielded fewer and fewer numbers of adults (my last few days of data reorganization have started to make this quite clear to me), the Klamath Falls FWS office changed survey tactics to focus more on egg mass surveys, which are far less mobile and cryptic then their originators. We had one special day this season where we saw a few adults and one subadult Oregon Spotted Frog (it was one of the warmest, sunniest days). OSF spawn when water reaches warmer temperatures in the shallows, usually around May through June/July, and the egg masses develop over 2-3 weeks. The trick is to catch the window when you can find the highest density of egg masses and get to the sites to survey, but each site window varies depending on local water temperature conditions, altitude, location, etc. As it was we caught the tail end of spawning at most sights, seeing little OSF tadpoles hatch out and occasionally get eaten by leeches. The presence of hundreds of chorus frog eggs is also a sign that we are too late.

We have been balancing local surveys around Upper Klamath Lake of known territory, with surveys of historic territory in the Modoc National Forest down in California. This was quite exciting as we have had the chance to look for OSFs where they have not been seen in the last 100 years or so, and had we caught any evidence of their existence it would have made some ripples. These surveys turned up negative in the end, but my fellow intern and I got to spend several nights camping in the Warner Mountain Wilderness, the past 3 weeks hiking into remote lakes and creeks and generally absorbing the beauty that surrounded us, including the occasional coyote spotting. Last week however we got caught in a few storms, and neither the frogs nor us were experiencing prime operating conditions!

Well, that just about wraps up OSF surveys for the year, next week will be working with several valued, yet endangered, fish species in the Klamath Basin. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

I sit here typing this at the end of a day of hiking around looking for rare plants and weeds in the Carson City area, so I’m quite hungry and tired, but glad to have been outdoors for the day.  Since last blogging, the team has done a lot of new things.  We participated in two outreach events for Earth Day, got some ATV training, went to a pollinator class to learn about native pollinator management, and have done some fire transect monitoring.  A couple of us also participated in a grueling weed survey in one of our range allotments.  This area consisted of nothing but steep mountain sides, and we hiked it for about eight hours and found not a single weed in the allotment.  Good news, of course, but what a day that was!

I’m getting a lot of practice identifying plants in the area, but there’s still a lot to learn.  The field season is picking up, so we have many outdoor days to look forward to and hopefully many adventures ahead.  Now that spring is here, the desert is starting to heat up, but we have yet to experience the worst it has to offer.  Being from a hot, dry climate myself, I’m kind of used to this type of weather, but my teammates are definitely not.  I was honestly more worried about the snow in winter, so I guess we all have new challenges to deal with.

Good luck, Team Manatee!

I have been having so much fun these past couple of weeks driving out to different allotments and identifying as many plant species as I can with my CBG partner Emily! I have to admit that driving on less than well made roads can be scary at times, like when the road is more or less an incline with multiple huge chunks of rocks in the way, BUT it is so much fun and rewarding when you get through it. This upcoming week will involve a couple meetings involving NEPA and range con management, so it will be interesting to learn all the aspects relating to those subjects. Until the next time, here are some pictures I’ve collected on my phone while out and about!

Funny looking saguaro!

Little ECHEN surrounded by “teddy-bears”

One of the most beautiful views I’ve encountered

Burro photo bomb! Can you see him?

The infamous GILA MONSTER caught mid-blink!

Here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, we’ve been experiencing some weird weather–sun. This is, for Oregon, an abundance of sun and a serious lack of rain. Eugene is over 12 inches behind in its usual rainfall.

This means a few changes in the monitoring routine. With the warm, dry weather, everything is blooming early. My monitoring lead and I will be wrapping up Bradshaw’s Lomatium (Lomatium bradshawii) monitoring in a couple of days, while this time last year we were just beginning it. The endangered Fender’s Blue Butterflies are also out earlier this year, and their flight season is moving fast! I helped do the first survey earlier this week and we were able to confirm that Fender’s were indeed out at one of our sites; Fender’s Blue Butterflies are nearly identical to Silvery Blue Butterflies, a common butterfly, so capture and release (with the aid of an awesome tool known as a butterfly net) is one of the only surefire ways to identify them. We’re expecting the flight season to peak soon, so there are definitely a few more butterfly surveys in my future.

I’ve had some good luck with viewing wildlife this year. I was lucky enough to see a coyote fairly closely a couple of weeks ago. It ran within 100 feet of the macroplot we were monitoring as if it didn’t have a care in the world, and it was a real treat to see. Coyotes have a way of bounding and hopping while they run that was very unexpected.

The other wildlife sighting that I was excited about was mining bees! My first thought when I saw these little pollen-covered bees crawling into a hole in the ground was “Bees? That aren’t in a hive?” I had never heard of them before. While monitoring lomatium at one of our sites, we stumbled upon a fair-sized community (I’ve read that they’re solitary bees and  instead of living in a colony will burrow their own holes, but will dig the holes near other mining bees). It was very interesting watching them work.

So much sun is unusual for a Willamette Valley spring!

A mining bee at the entrance of its home

Rain
Fire
Wild flowers

So glad to get a CLM internship! I have been placed in the Vernal field office with the BLM. It is located in the beautiful Uintah Basin in Northeastern Utah. There is one other CLM intern placed here, so it has been nice to learn together.

In Vernal Utah, there is a lot of oil and natural gas development. The areas we have been to, so far, have been dotted with well pads. It is interesting to learn about the hopeful balance of resource use, conservation and recreation. I hope to learn more about the process of leasing land for oil development as the weeks go on.

Schoencrambe argillacea

Our work at the Vernal Field Office will be monitoring sensitive, threatened and endangered plant species populations and Seeds of Success work. The past three weeks we have been monitoring for three different species, all of which come with their own challenges. My favorite so far has been Schoencrambe argillacea (clay-reed mustard). It grows in nearly inaccessible places which made hiking sometimes exciting; including navigating through canyons and up steep slopes to find suitable habitat. It is a beautiful mustard, and I think the difficulty in finding it makes it even more endearing. Rare plant monitoring can be discouraging at times when we are not finding any plants, but it is exciting when we find new populations!
The weather has been mostly mild, but we did have snow the first week… and are having thunderstorms this week!

Thunderstorm West of Big Pack Mountain

I am so grateful to have this opportunity as a CLM intern, and I am sure that I will learn a lot from my mentor and co-workers, as well as the landscape.

Spring has finally arrived in the San Bernardino Mountains. It’s a drought year here in Southern California, but some plants are managing flowers. Many I’ve seen have crumpled in the heat and will not be producing a seed crop this year, but such is life in the mountains above the Mojave. I mentioned in my last entry that I was excited to see the spring-flowering plants that I missed due to my internship starting at the end of last May. I’ve seen all but two rare plants on my “to see” list while in Big Bear- so that’s pretty good!

Probably the most exciting news of this last month was a visit from my college advisor, Tass Kelso. She and her husband, George, had not yet seen the famous pebble plains of Big Bear and stopped by on a road trip to visit their family in Southern California. Tass is a Primulaceae expert and was interested in some pebble plain endemics that belong to that family; specifically a Dodecatheon and an Androsace species. We found both plants, the Dodecatheon was in flower and the Androsace was in fruit. As I understand it, neither of the species in question fully key into any of the currently acknowledged species of their respective genera. Botanists in the area have been referring to the Dodecatheon as D. hendersonii and the Androsace sp. as A. septentrionalis  but both have some key morphological differences that have made Tass curious. She was thrilled to get specimens of both of her research subjects and was astounded that we saw about three of the endangered plants and five of  the threatened/sensitive species found on the San Bernardino National Forest all in flower during the course of a four-hour tour! It was an absolute treat to be part of the conversations that afternoon between my CLM mentor and my advisor; both of whom I regard very highly.

The iddy biddy Dodecatheon Tass collected.

As for my normal duties, I finally finished all of my data entry from last season and got caught up on the backlog of element occurrence data that was floating around the office from the hands of one intern to another. Color coding what I have entered into our geo-database made me feel like my effort was not in vain, as the slog of repetitive data entry will often make one feel. I really have accomplished a lot over this last year.

Another exciting aspect of my job recently was that I got the chance to participate in grant writing. I have always been interested in grant writing and was thrilled to be charged with the task of helping the Restoration Program Manager with applying for an $800,000 state OHV grant. I helped construct and edit two Soil Conservation Plans and reported on last year’s restoration accomplishments. The latter was made infinitely easier than it has been in the last few years, thanks to our new geo-database that myself and a fellow field technician created for our restoration program.

May will be my last month of being a CLM intern; we’ll see what it brings!

Lizzy Eichorn, San Bernardino National Forest