It’s hard to believe that this year’s field season for this project is now over.  The last three weeks have been filled with trips to our White Mountain, Quaking Aspen, and Sierra Madre sites.  While I love working in the field and am sad to see the field season end, I’m also happy to be able to relax after long days of fieldwork and process insects in the lab.

Sarah DePaolo and I hard at work recording vegetation data

We had some great temporary research assistants for these trips!  Kaelyn Helson, a BLM volunteer who is starting a fisheries and wildlife program at CSU this fall, was kind enough to help out for a couple days and UWyo student Candis Duke went on several trips with us.  Thank you, ladies, for your much appreciated assistance!!

Kaelyn Helson and I on a hazy day

Candis, research dog Rookie, Sarah, and I

We were fortunate enough to see some amazing wildlife in these last weeks!  We saw a wounded kestrel near one of our campsites, which was sad but beautiful.

Kestrel

We also saw two golden eagle kills — a jackrabbit and a young fox.

Golden eagle with its kill

The victim

We also saw a number of wild horses and many pronghorn.

Bombus on Machaeranthera canescens

Insect collections are slowing down, but we have been getting some interesting insects still – notably robber flies (Asilidae), bee flies (Bombyliidae), and Bombus workers.  We also have still been seeing horned toads, including some very small babies and different color morphs.

Candis holds a horned toad

I will miss our beautiful field sites!!  Good luck to everyone still in the field!

Quaking Aspen

Sadie Luna Todd
CLM intern, UWyo WYNDD/BLM
Laramie, WY

New space

Our office space was moved this month to make space for new future interns. This meant that we got to clean up, re-organize, and re-decorate! Not only did we get a bigger space, but we also got additional desks and computers to accommodate us all. We now have a big shelf where we can keep all of our seed collections sort of like a seed library. We even got to put up posters on our new wall space and I am absolutely loving it!

China Gardens Cages

We needed to go back to one of our restoration sites and check on the survival of the plants there. I was happy to see that most of the plants are surviving. Some oak trees were doing so well that they started growing out of their tubes, so we replaced them with new white cages that gave them plenty of space to grow out big and strong.

GIS Training

Our mentor set up a class with Andy, our GIS specialist to show us about using GIS. It was a very introductory type of course, which I was thankful because I had never used this program before. He is a great teacher and he is so knowledgable, he made it seem like there was nothing this little program couldn’t do! I enjoyed learning about how to create maps. Hopefully we can encounter a situation where we need to use this program so that I could get more experience with it, but for now I am just thankful for the general knowledge I gained.

Office Float

Our office coordinated with some other groups to out on a river float where we could learn about some of the projects going on around the river. For example, there are man built pockets along the river that create habitat for fish and wildlife. This was my first time going out on a river float, so it was pretty exciting, my favorite was going through the faster currents and little eddies, although the entire portion of river we covered did not even exceed a level 1! Overall, this was a great experience because I got to interact more with some of the people in our field office and to top it all off, we did this while floating along beautiful clear waters surrounded by a gorgeous view and even enjoyed a tasty BBQ afterwards!

Mussel Survey

Stuart took Renee, Virginia, and myself out to clear creek river and together we looked for mussels along the shallow parts of the river, It was kind of like a huge scavenger hunt day. We initially thought it would be a great day to be out because it would be nice and sunny, but with our luck, it actually started to rain on us for parts of our journey through the bone numbing water. I didn’t think I would ever feel cold here in Redding during the summer considering the 100+ degree weather I was starting to get used to, so you can imagine how shocked I was to actually hear thunder and lightning. The main mussel we found was Margaritifera. I was determined to find as many as I could, and I was proud to say that I found the most out of our little group! We found two big populations and some individuals scattered along the way. I was pleased to see this native mussle doing so well.

Invasive Plant Survey

Stuart took Virginia and I to take inventory of the invasive weeds growing along a 9 mile portion of the Sacramento River. The first two miles were the slowest because we needed to take down all the weed types we saw, take a picture, and GPS their location, but unfortunately it also happened to be the most disturbed section and had the widest variety of weed species. This was definitely one of the most adventurous things that I have ever done. There were some sections were we had to hike through thick bushes, poison oak, and thorny black berry. Not only did we hike, but we jumped, slid, and climbed as well! Our fearless leader was amazing though, he made sure we were perfectly safe throughout our journey and had so much energy… unlike myself who felt her feet would burn and disintegrate underneath her. We were debating on how we felt about not encountering as many weeds as we though we would find, did we feel a bit of disappointment at having hiked and gone through all that to not find weeds? But then we thought, “Seriously? OF COURSE WE ARE HAPPY! The weeds haven’t completely taken over!”

It is my last day in Wyoming. As I reflect on my time here, two aspects stand out the most: (1) how much I have enjoyed deepening my understanding of insects, and (2) how much I have cherished sharing experiences with the people I have met.

During my CLM internship, I developed a deeper understanding of insects while gathering field data, pinning insects collected from the field, and poring over reading material. In addition, I learned about insects from the Wyoming research team. A big thanks to Sarah DePaolo, Michael Dillon, Lusha Tronstad, Sadie Todd, and Aaron Strube for sharing your knowledge on many topics, including new insect collection techniques; recollections on insects you adore; details on wing venation necessary for bee species identification; and suggestions of potential graduate supervisors, who study pollinators, for me to contact.

The CLM internship, which took me far away from home (Vancouver, Canada), also helped me meet new people. I fondly remember sharing many experiences during and after working hours with them. For example, in the field, we spotted wildlife, such as the horned lizard and pronghorn. Eating at Anong’s Thai restaurant with our group — especially when we ate family style — brings back great memories. In addition to my team members, I met others who I have also thoroughly enjoyed spending time with, including Joy Handley (botanist at the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database), Leon Miller (University of Wyoming Education student who kindly let me stay with him and his family for 1.5 weeks), and Abby Dockter (CLM intern on a Seeds of Success project in Wyoming). Joy showed me around the Rocky Mountain Herbarium at the University of Wyoming. Vedauwoo and its beautiful scenery was a treat to share with Leon, Marcie, Onyx, and Jade as we hiked around. Abby and I met near the end of my internship, but we did not let that stop us from having many adventures, such as making chokecherry jam, “nerdy window shopping” (which involved bookstores), biking, and attending local performing arts events.

I return to my RA at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver with many new ideas and fond memories. I intend to keep in touch with those I have met, and to further expand my understanding of insects.

Leaving my hometown to come to Buffalo, WY seems like forever ago to me. I feel at home out here and am grateful for all the outdoor activities, friendly people, outlet for creativity, and simple way of living that this land in the middle of nowhere seems to give. The town of Buffalo is a happenin’ place and I can’t wait for the next crop of CBG interns to get to know it. Where else can you take a bluegrass guitar clinic from the same guy who taught you how to shoot a revolver? Where else are there street dances every other week and nearly untouched (seemingly) miles of trail 20 minutes away? Yes, this internship is going by extremely fast but I also have fit in a dizzying amount of adventures and experiences in a very small amount of time. My job alone at the BLM is responsible for more than half of them.
In the time since I last wrote, I have continued range assessments (Sean and Dan, with some of my help, have completed 50 allotments), lent my time with a fuels crew and other volunteers from the state to thin some pines from a BLM piece north of Gillette, traveled to San Francisco and northern Cali (not for work), came up with an irrigation plan for a native plant propagation farm the Buffalo BLM is trying to get in the works, attended Longmire days (it’s a TV show filmed here) in Buffalo, hiked 3 miles upstream at Outlaw Cave (for work), and became UTV certified.
Range health assessments and I have a love/hate relationship. The Daubenmire, sagebrush length and height, and line point intersect tests are tedious, especially in the brutal Wyoming sun, but they do mean a day in the field. This means talking to ranchers, keying out new plant species, seeing first-hand the spread of Bromus tectorum (cheat grass) and the effects of over-grazing, and seeing more and more parts of north eastern Wyoming that I would probably have never traveled to. I particularly enjoy getting to know ranchers, and I admire the Buffalo BLM’s effort to establish a personal connection with the ranchers that lease BLM sections, even if some of these ranchers couldn’t despise the BLM more. One such rancher initially was very rude to us interns but after we chatted a while, I got to know his perspective and even if I don’t agree, I love learning about where people come from and what they think is important. After chatting further about gardening, he even gave us interns some squash that we fried up later. Thank you Rancher John for giving us a good meal.
Hiking at Outlaw Cave/Middle Fork (Hole in the Wall spot), the famous hideout spot for Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and the Wild Bunch, was comparable to my adventure at Gardner Mountain, which some of you dedicated readers may remember. Our objective was to pack out trash from the bottom of the canyon, where the caves are located. I was recovering from being pretty sick, so was kind of nervous about my ability to hike down and up the canyon, and the length in between. But your body usually rises to the occasion, and all sickness faded as I was overwhelmed by the canyon’s multi-colored rock and its river’s beauty. Sean and I were assigned fishing access #2 up to the outlaw cave campground, which gave us around 2.5 miles of river to scout for trash. We found several beer cans, propane canisters, possible Butch Cassidy gunpowder jar (!!!! doubtful), random foam and tarp pieces, and this big plastic ring that was not a fun hiking partner for Sean. There were many points where we had to be up to our waist in water to move forward, which was refreshing and pleasant until we found nematodes in the water. Besides nematodes, we found a centipede, bear scat, bones of all sorts, horsemint, dogbane that we made bracelets out of later (thank you Dean), and choke cherries. When Sean and I got to the campground bottom, we met up with the other two interns, Dan and Nick, who had fishing access #1-fishing access #2 and then down to the bottom of outlaw cave campground to scout for trash and we all ate lunch/fished. We hiked up the canyon from there to the campground to set up camp and wait for our mentors, who hiked 5 long miles of river from the other direction. They were down in the bottom of the canyon for 9 straight hours and were relieved to have dinner and set up tents waiting at the top.
I’m looking forward to the 2 more months of my internship and hope all of you that are nearing the end or are finished the best of luck with future endeavors. I hope that those of you that are still in your internship get the most out of it and always, happy hiking/exploring/interning!
-Kelly

Since the CLM workshop in Chicago, Jess and I have been quite busy!  Unfortunately during Chicago we lost a few of the populations which we had previously scouted out; the Hesperostipa comata and the Grayia spinosa had already matured and lost their seeds.  We have collected from 10 different populations so far.  We were skeptical at first about our ability to collect 10,000 seeds per population, but we have not had an issue.  We did an estimate on the number of seeds we collected for Cleome lutea using the weight of 100-500 seeds and then using the total collection weight; we estimated that we collected around 75,000 seeds.  We also did the weight estimate with our population of Eriogonum alatum which we only spent about 30 minutes collecting and each fruit only has one seed.  Amazingly, after that amount of time we estimated that we had already collected 4,500 seeds!

At first we were uncertain about the best method, but we quickly learned as we collected Acnatherum hymenoides. We thought the best method was to cut off the infructescence. However, by doing this we had to do a lot of manual cleaning by hand before sending the seeds off to Bend, OR.  Other interns informed us that stripping the seeds right away worked a lot better and resulted in little to no chaff, so we made sure to do this as best as we could for our other collections.

While most of our time since Chicago has been spent locating populations and collecting seeds, we have been able to do a couple other things to diversify our experience.  We went out with our herbicide guy and learned about a few of the different invasive species in our area.  We marked the plants for him so he was able to treat that area.  We also were trained on the methods of how to assess PFC (proper functioning condition) on streams.  Finally, we spent a week working with SWCA, an environmental consulting group, monitoring plots of Sclerocactus wetlandicus and S. brevispinus.

It has been a full month with lots of learning and adventures 🙂

Last week was a change of pace for the botany crew in Carson City. We spent the week surveying a rare species of butterfly Euphilotes pallescens arenamontana  or the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly.  This species is endemic to the Sand Mountain Recreation area outside of Fallon, NV. This little butterfly is completely dependent upon its host plant, Eriogonum numalare, which the larvae feed upon.

The Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly is currently listed as vulnerable. But environmental groups are working on a proposal to get it listed as threatened or endangered.  This would mean big changes at Sand Mountain which is primarily used by OHV enthusiasts. The BLM has already constructed a large system of trail markers and fences to try to limit the damage done by ATV’s but a network of social trails still infringe on the Eriogonum habitat.

After establishing the transects at the end of the first day we experienced another rarity for Nevada, a thunderstorm. It was nice to work under cloud cover and finally receive a little moisture but the lightning strikes were a little too close for comfort.  Being stuck out on the middle of a sand dune is not the ideal location during a lightning storm. After a brief period of assuming our lightning positions and getting caught in a downpour, Zeus was kind enough to spare us his wrath.

Here I am posing as a comparison of height to the corn we grew as part of the National Soil Health Study we are doing. This is a few weeks prior to being fully mature so some of the corn ended up being over a foot taller by harvest!

My last post was not too colorful because of some technical issues, so I wanted to show you all some of what I’m doing out here, and some of the beautiful things I get to see! Enjoy!

One of my major projects at the PMC is gathering and cleaning seeds for the National Park Service and the BLM. Here I am putting seeds from Nassella pulchra (Purple Needle Grass, and let me tell you its seeds are every bit as sharp as a needle! They can go right through leather gloves!!!) through a Hammer Mill to remove the awns before we used another machine that uses blowing air and different size screens to sort the good seed from the bad and the chaff.

One of our UC Davis Plots studying different mixes of plants and what pollintors they attract through out the year