Greetings from Wyoming!

These days life really is a highway. Life is then usually a dirt road, followed by an obscure 2-track and occasionally a dead end, but more frequently a network of paths that aren’t even on the map. Seed collecting has been taking me and the Seeds of Success interns hither and yon all over the eastern part of the state. I’m still amazed at how diverse the landscapes are. From the shortgrass prairies to the sagebrush steppe, from the alpine forests down the foothills, into riparian corridors and back up the bluffs, we get to see a lot of country.

We also get to see a lot of weather, and the summer storms have been amazing to watch (although they do not always bring very much moisture…). Alas, it was during one of those storms that Wyoming decided I was due for a new windshield. On the bright side, a healthy respect for this environment and the plants that adapt to it is not amiss.

Summer’s flying by!

Cheers, Abby D.

Hello again,

Another month has fled by here at the Surprise Valley. The month of July started out by attending a week long great workshop with the Great Basin Institute, Eagle Lake and Alturas Field Offices staff going over the Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) Strategy- ( Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation (ESR) monitoring protocol) the workshop was presented to us by researchers of the ARS Jornada Experimental Station. The protocol covered the whole process of establishing and running a monitoring plot. Several techniques include site characterization; in which the general area is described, soil profile description, plant species list, line intercept point, gap measurements, quadrat density and belt transects. It was a great opportunity to meet people in our field of work and of course acquire more useful knowledge to work towards managing natural resources.

The rest of the month we have been working on the ESR monitoring on an area disturbed by a wildfire last year. The whole process did not look that hard or time consuming during the workshop compared to how it really works on the actual site. We are still getting the hand of it but it is going smoother as we get more experience on it. Also on the days we are not monitoring I get some time to work on the seed collection which is going good, we have collected a good amount of species and still waiting for others to seed out. On one of the collections we partner up with the FFA club students from the local high school and collected Purshia tridentata (antelope bitterbrush) seed which will be started on their greenhouses and later on the seedlings will be planted on areas recovering from fire. I still get to help out the wildlife staff with which I had the chance to do some surveys on big horn sheep, help out in sage grouse habitat improvement projects and earlier this week I got the chance to help out the Modoc Wildlife Refuge do some duck banding which was a fun learning experience.

Until next time,

Hector Elias
2013 CLM Intern
BLM Surprise Field Office

So this is apparently a fairly long growing season for the Buffalo Field Office. We expected to be done running transects by late July. Our stack of completed allotments continues to grow, and more exciting opportunities keep showing up. Even more amazing… after all this time in the field, we keep finding species we haven’t come across before. We’ve literally been all over these plains, seen numerous ecosites, and are still keying new plants. There’s even a grass (commonly called Buffalo Grass) we’ve seen in one allotment growing abundantly that we’ve yet to see again. Pretty Awesome.

Earlier, I had the chance to camp out for about 4 days and assist in an interdisciplinary assessment of a local wildlife study area. The first part involved boring a number of trees for age, checking them for insect damage, and overlooking the canyon below (for science, of course). I learned so much about the effects of fire and insects from our fuels specialists and her counterpart from a nearby office. They are so knowledgeable  professional, and instructive. Really impressive people. Next, it was quite the hike down to the bottom of the canyon where there were water assessments, invasive plant assessments, raptor nest scouting, and bat collections going on. My first time seeing a bat   up close, and let me tell you, It Was Awesome! My girlfriend, who works with bats, would always tell me how cute they are. I naturally shrugged it off until I had my chance. They’ve got some amazing adaptations. From the structure of their arms to their squished noses to their incredible ears. We caught a rarity once. It’s called the Townsend Bat. Look it up, and see those ears and nose for yourself.

One of my fellow interns Kelly and I were given the task of corralling a group of children for a morning lesson on plants. We were given the freedom to create our own lesson plan, so (with the aid of the awesome booklets Kelly made) we were able to describe many uses for plants and how pollinators work in a particular ecosystem. Apparently edible plants are the best way to get a youngster’s attention, but maybe not hold it. They were so anxious to eat every berry they could find. Thankfully they ran up to us and asked if they were “eat-able” first.

Not so much job related, but I was graced with a visit from my significant other between her bat studies. I had prearranged plans during that time so I was here for about half of it. Thankfully, she had Kelly as appointed ambassador of Buffalo to show her the rodeo and other excitement. I feel fortunate to have had the time to show her around the amazing town that is Buffalo. We were able to see Devil’s Tower during Sturgis bike week. The monument is stunning. The theory on its formation is mind blowing. The statement in the visitor center on the aim towards silence while hundreds of bikes roar around was humorous.

Onward to more fun in the sun with the friends and coworkers I have here in Wyoming. Stay tuned for more action.

I am currently writing to you all while I am happily on sipping on some pineapple coconut water in the cool weather of San Diego. Although it’s nice to have a mini vacation from the now “cool” climate in Phoenix (thank goodness for the monsoon season…), I will be more than happy to return to participating in another Desert Tortoise survey and helping conduct sensitive status species (SSS) plant searches forAgave murpheyi. Most recently, I was able to attend a presentation on mountain lions hosted by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. I was excited to learn that my mentor had taken part of the research study when it was first formed and had asked numerous questions involving the how’s, why’s, and where’s of the research.

I will be sad to say that we conducted our last Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo survey last week and I never did see one, however, my bird identification skills have definitely increased since the beginning of this internship! And now I only have 3 more weeks left…so that means I have to try and fill up my days with as much knowledge and skills as I possibly can since the end is so soon!! 🙁 I can’t wait to update you all with what I have in store for my remaining weeks as CLM intern!

Hello fellow interns! I hope you’re having a wonderful time in your respective locations. Time is certainly flying by here in Buffalo, WY. My internship is already at its halfway point, which means a job search is probably in my near future. As much as I love my job here, I know it won’t last forever (sigh). My fellow interns and I have made lots of progress in both Seeds of Success and range monitoring duties. One of the things I love about working at the BLM is the amount of flexibility we have. People can coordinate interdisciplinary projects without too much headache, and it really helps to get things done when essential staff are gone. The SOS interns have been a huge help in our range monitoring duties, and us range interns have been able to assist SOS with some collections as well. However, field season is winding down (as I’m sure you all know) and there are opportunities to get involved with other projects. Just yesterday we were able to help with a project to clear out an area overgrown with pine trees by stacking the felled trees to prepare them for burning. Hopefully we will get to spend more time in the mountains for work, but we shall see. It’s nice taking these big work trucks into the wilderness, for they can reach places that my little Toyota Camry cannot.

Our work in the field is typically lots of fun. An interesting thing I’ve learned is the amount of variability in landowner attitudes towards government entities. Many ranchers and landowners are friendly and understanding when they deal with government employees. I enjoy these people, because they make our job much easier. Some people are relatively indifferent, or grudginly cooperative. A select few are downright rude, and even openly hostile. The latter can certainly ruin your day, as some fellow interns have discovered. All in all, a day in the field is typically a day well spent. Sometimes field work can get a little monotonous, but I’ve found it’s easy to spice things up by serenading your co-workers with some ’80s pop hits. Roxette always seems to make the day go by faster! It’s also a plus if you have awesome people to work with. I just happened to get lucky and be stuck with a bunch of fellow Alanis Morissette fans. How cool is that! Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend!

Here at Pine Hill Preserve my mentor Graciela has been keeping me busy on a variety of projects. These have mainly centered around two of the rare Gabbro soil plants, El Dorado bedstraw, Gallium californicum subsp. sierrae and Bisbee peak rush rose, Crocanthemum suffrutescens. I also spent several days helping the engineering technician survey some dry ponds at the Cosumnes River Preserve for a topographic map.

El Dorado bedstraw is a diminutive plant that grows in the shady under story of oaks and sometimes chaparral shrubs. The reproductive biology of El Dorado bedstraw is not well known. In the spring we examined the flowers of one population and flagged them with labels of male, female, or hermaphrodite. The literature says that El Dorado bedstraw is dioecious, meaning separate male and female plants, but these plants had not read the books, as many had both male and female parts. We returned to look at their fruits. We found that many plants had no fruits, some had small fruits, and some had much larger fruits. However, upon dissection it appeared that the small fruits did not have anything resembling a viable seed. If only the large fruits contain a viable seed, then this species barely produces any seeds at all, and perhaps primarily propagates itself vegetatively. Later we crawled through chaparral to a North facing slope with a good population of El Dorado bedstraw growing under black oaks and Toyon, and we collected some seeds. Graciela will take these to a local nursery to see if they can be propagated. She has also taken vegetative cuttings to this nursery, and it will be helpful to know which method is more successful if future disturbance requires mitigation and restoration of this species.

El Dorado Bedstraw with fruit

The small number of mature seeds also raises some questions. What pollinates this plant? Is there a lack of pollination? Is there herbivory of the seeds? Graciela recently attended a native bees workshop and is very excited about bees and other pollinators. She sent me back to the bedstraw to search for insects that might be associated with it. However it is now extremely dry and there was very little insect activity, and none of it seemed to be associated with the bedstraw, so this may need to be done again next spring or early summer. Graciela has also proposed that we come up with a grant proposal for a pollinator study for all of the Pine Hill Preserve rare plants. This project that will allow me to learn a lot about pollination biology, as well as how to acquire funding for projects, which I am realizing is probably the most important aspect of this field.

A beetle visiting the rare plant Stebbins’ morning glory

I have also been trying to work out the mystery of the Crocanthemum (formerly Helianthemum). Graciela and I have been assuming that all of the plants at Pine Hill Preserve are the rare plant Crocanthemum suffrutescens, Bisbee peak rush rose. However, the more keys and descriptions I look at, the more convinced I am that we have Crocanthemum scoparium, which is common, although the keys can be ambiguous and we may have both or even hybrids. The California Native Plant Society is working on re-listing suffrutescens because it has recently been revived as its own species. I have sent specimens from PHP to the author of a new Flora of North America, who is mainly responsible for bringing back suffrutescens as a seperate species, and hopefully by the time I write my next blog post I will be able to say which species is at PHP. This whole process has made me realize that taxonomy is a dynamic science and that it is hard to clearly define species, subspecies, varieties, etc. Considering to the uniqueness of the Gabbro soil community, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a plant that is quite different from other described variations of this genus.

Crocanthemum suffrutescens or scoparium?

Examining Crocanthemum pubescence

Joe Broberg

BLM Mother Lode Field Office

With the beginning of August comes the end of the West Eugene Wetland’s 2013 Field Season. All in all, I think it’s been a fairly successful–albeit early–season (last year the season ended at the end of August; we’re a bit ahead of the game this year). Through the course of the season, my monitoring lead and I (we are an awesome team of two) monitored five sensitive plant species and one endangered butterfly species. While the sensitive plant species are incredible, I’ve found that I derive most of my enjoyment from the various wildflowers and wildlife in the area. I love being able to go out in the field and know that I might see something new every day.

Some of my favorite wildflowers of the season:

Madia elegans

Asclepias speciosa

Spiranthes romanzoffiana

As for wildlife, I’ve had the great fortune to see a coyote, a rough-skinned newt, what might be a skink (I’m no lizard guru, so I’m not sure), and various birds.

Rough-skinned newt

A skink?

Anyway, now that field season is over, I’m off on a quick vacation before it’s back to the office to process paperwork and write reports!

Hello from the Mojave Desert!                                                                                                                    Its official! I finally moved into my position with the Ridgecrest, CA BLM field office.  I just completed my second week in the office and everyone has been fantastic in helping me get my bearings.  These past two weeks have been a seamless transition into the Recreation department.  I have focused mainly on trainings and finishing up restoration work plans and GIS maps for upcoming SCA (Student Conservation Association) crews.  Creating maps, maps, and more maps has been my recent objective.  This is my first big project.  The restoration crews arrive in about a month and I am assisting in getting the plans together for 4 crews and about 8 different work areas.  I am now on the downhill slope to having these projects complete!  Thanks to Jeff for all your help with ArcPad and ArcMap.  He has been a wonderful teacher and so willing to help me out at any time! I was not familiar with ArcPad a week ago and now I think I might be in love!  

There have also been several  training and field opportunities woven into the past 2 weeks.  I was able to join the other 2 intern (Alena and Tyler), Jeff, and Jeff for a morning of Abandon Mines monitoring training. It was great to get out into the field and learn about an unfamiliar resources (mines).  I joined Eddie Duque, another Recreation Specialist here in the Ridgecrest field office, for a basic ATV rider course.  It was a great day of learning safety and manuevering techniques for ATV’s.  We got a full day of training and riding in the  Jawbone Canyon open area.   Dana Jacobs and Marty Dickes both brought me out on 2 separate reconissence trips.  I joined Dana to scope out and take photos of the Nadeau National Recreation trail.  It is a pretty rough off road Jeep trail.  There were definitely a few areas we though we were going to get stuck. Thanks to the proficient driving of Rob, we made it out with only a couple of minor scratches! This will be the first National Recreation trail here in the Ridgecrest area.  On August 22nd, there will be a ceremony and official opening of the trail. Marty’s project was to take a closer look at Sage Canyon and determine proper route designation for and area that is surrounded by wilderness.  We were joined by two resource specialist to assist in locating private property boundaries and grazing considerations.

Though I have only been on the job for 2 weeks, I have been involved in different activities.  I have appreciated getting a larger understanding of the other departments and resources that are managed here in this field office.  Thanks to everyone for letting me tag along!

The past few weeks have been a bit of a blur for me. The plants that I scouted and collected specimens from back in June are now fully seeded out and Leah and I have been racing to grab as many as we can before they scatter to the wind, literally, in many cases. Some, like Hopsage (Grayia spinosa) and Prickly poppy (Argemone munita) are almost too easy, with drooping limbs/stalks bearing massive quantities of seed, ripe for thepicking. Others, notably the lupines and vetches, are incredibly frustrating to harvest. Every time you think you have 10k seeds lined up a batch goes moldy or the pods dehiss and scatter the seeds before you can make it back to the site. Win some lose some I guess.

While I think the SOS program is a great idea and generally well carried out, I can’t help but wonder that the difficulties of gathering seed are influencing our collections in interesting ways. Since our time is limited, I have been focusing on the varieties that are easy to collect from, which certainly screens out some otherwise excellent species. Is it worth passing up 2 easy collections of Ribes to get 1 of the less-seedy Amelanchier? I can’t say. Even within the same species, pickers can end up selecting for odd (and not necessarily adaptive) traits. For example, with Lupinus andersonii I’ve found that certain plants have many pods that stay both ripe and intact, while most plant’s pods dehiss and scatter as soon as they ripen. As a collector, I can tell you which plants get their genes represented more in the bags I send to Bend!

On a purely personal note, this past weekend it was lovely to get together with some fellow interns. The Alturas crew came down to the East Sierra for a backpacking trip which Leah and I followed along for a day, which we followed up with another hike with another CLMer from Ridgecrest on Sunday. Good times all around and it made me really thankful for the community aspect of this program!

Cheers, and enjoy your summers!

Good times in the truck, two days after a freak thunderstorm.