This past month I’ve had the opportunity to experience a few more miscellaneous projects and pursuits. I’ve begun learning to use GIS software which so far is reasonably straight-forward. Out in the field I’ve also been tackling some wildlife projects that aim to save the lives of various critters that may fall victim to the seemingly innocuous presence of watering holes and fences.

My first project focused on the pronghorn antelope in the area which are restricted in their movements by the thousands of miles of fencing that covers the state of Wyoming. For the most part, fences are designed to contain cattle so when possible, it is best to use a design that keeps cows in but allows antelope to pass through freely. Since pronghorn tend to be significantly more nimble than their bovine brethren, they prefer to pass under the fence which can sometimes be less than 8 inches above the ground. My job was to measure the height of the top and bottom wires as well as record the type of fencing. Most fencing here is barbed so it is important for the bottom wire to be smooth in order for the antelope to squeeze beneath it without injuring themselves. The state also has a history of extensive sheep raising which would also be able to get under gaps in the fence. Consequently, some old fencing is still exists that prevents antelope from crossing and any such fence needs to be identified so it can be replaced. Incorrect fencing can result in fatalities as antelope become entangled in the wire.

Although using a meter stick isn’t necessarily thrilling, the roads along the fence tend to be muddy and undeveloped so it did afford me another chance to use the winch. For me, any day with a vehicular challenge is a good day. Unfortunately, the excitement of being stranded in the middle of nowhere doesn’t perfectly carry over to video format so I added some electronic music to create some flare. Also notice I put gloves on before operating the winch. Safety first, children.

Stuck in the mud: Video

Getting stuck in the mud is messy business. Lucky for me, having boots made out of 90% mud is very fashionable this year.

I knew my boss would be jealous if I didn’t include him in all the fun so I made sure to track several pounds of liquid dirt into his truck. Don’t tell him though. I’d prefer it to be a surprise.

Sometimes working in Colorado feels a bit like working in a 30-minute nature special, with a different ecosystem after every commercial break. Our team from the BLM Colorado State Office has spent the past month crisscrossing the state–going from alpine tundra to Mancos Shale desert and back again, then on to aspen-spruce woodland and the sand dunes of the North Sand Hills– to monitor rare plants and continue to collect seeds for Seeds of Success.

In late July, we collaborated with some folks from the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, and the Mosquito Range Heritage Initiative to monitor Eutrema penlandii (alpine fen mustard), a rather diminutive plant that grows in some very beautiful alpine sites. E. penlandii is, in fact, endemic to Colorado’s Mosquito mountain range, placing it about 1000 miles away from its closest relative E. edwardsii in the Canadian Arctic. This trip was one of my favorites: it was a great opportunity to hike and work amid some breath-taking scenery as well as to interact with and get to know some great people from a variety of agencies and organizations.

We followed up this trip with more monitoring–this time working on Sclerocactus glaucus, or Colorado hookless cactus, around the Mancos Shale formations in Delta County. The Montrose field office gave us a lot of help, and we were excited to work with Brandee Wills, a fellow CLM intern, who has been stationed in Montrose for a few months, but whom none of us had met. It felt almost like being reunited with a long-lost twin of some kind… Brandee was great to work with, and I really enjoyed meeting her.

More trips followed as we traveled to the Piceance Basin–where well pads sprout up faster than the pinyon and juniper–to monitor Physaria congesta  and P. obcordata. We then took a break from monitoring to revisit a promising seed collection site at Dyer’s Gulch near Leadville. We found an incredible array of alpine wildflowers in bloom, including some really beautiful gentians and asters, as well as the Colorado blue columbine (Aquilegia coerulea) that we’ve had our eye on at various stages of flower and fruit.

Last week, I was very pleased to finally make a collection of Frasera speciosa, a monocarpic forb that, in flower, can reach 6 feet in height. It is an easy one to spot from the highway, with its distinctive, unbranched green flowering stalk, and I was starting to feel that it had been taunting us from private land along roadsides wherever we went. Luckily, thanks to Megan McGuire, the wildlife biologist at the Kremmling field office with whom we’ve worked quite a bit, we (that is, she) managed to find a large population of F. speciosa on BLM land in a lovely aspen-spruce woodland. It turned out to be quite enjoyable, and one of my favorite collections, as we stood in the shade (shade?) of trees (trees?!) and collected bountiful seeds held conveniently at arm-level by a forb that was taller than I am.

Most recently, we traveled to North Park to monitor Phacelia formosula (again with Megan’s help) as well as to do a quick seed collection of Heterotheca villosa while we avoided being mowed down by rogue dune buggies in the North Sand Hills. Field season has continued to keep us busy, and I’ve loved the opportunity to travel to an array of interesting landscapes and to meet and work with new people.

Cameron amphitheater- Eutrema penlandii monitoring site

A small but wizened Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata). I have a major Plant Crush on these trees and was thrilled to see them for the first time.

Devil’s Thumb and Mancos Shale in Delta County

Dyer’s Gulch with a lovely carpet of Erigeron sp.

Arctic gentian (Gentianodes algida)

Colorado blue columbine (Aquilegia coerulea), with flower and developing fruits

Co-intern Darnisha after collecting seeds at the North Sand Hills

Katherine Wenzell

BLM Colorado State Office

Lakewood, CO

I am about to finish my third month here in Redding and it has been a great experience so far. I have enjoyed getting to know the people around the office and I am happy that I no longer feel like a stranger in a strange place. I am getting familiar with our tasks and I have more courage to ask people here for help explaining things. I am trying my best to make the most out of this opportunity and learn important skills.  Some learning experiences and challenges may seem small, but the important thing is the sense of growth and maturity I feel at overcoming them.

This past month has been great. One of the coolest part of this internship is that since we use an elementary school’s greenhouse to grow out our seeds, we also get to spend time with some of the students once every two weeks where we can plan activities for them to learn about the greenhouse, about what BLM does, and hopefully about how to care for plants and the environment. I hope that with the time they spend with us, they can get a feel for the importance of maintaining land native and maybe even spark an interest in them to learn more, spread their knowledge with others, and know how to better protect their land. We have also gone on more stream surveys and those are always fun because of all the wildlife we encounter: turtles, giant salamanders, tree frogs, yellow-legged frogs, bullfrogs, crawdads, and fish!

I am excited for the restoration part of my internship! Since we have gotten our first taste of rain, we know that the planting season is upon us. I am eager to experience the many steps that lead up to a restoration project. Such as planning burns or mowing and herbicide application. Then there is a question of getting volunteers to help out, deciding which plants go where and then figuring out if we want to use some kind of irrigation system. Right now, I am trying to research about the options we may have for irrigation strategies like the deep tube system. I am also going to learn more about the different methods used for the native seed’s propagation, like how acorns are best grown in a bag with a moist paper towel in the fridge first, or how certain seeds need to be boiled first. I know there is a lot of hard work ahead, but I also know that it is going to be the most rewarding! I am also looking forward to getting a kayak lesson with a few people from the office, even though it will be terrifyingly cold, I know it is a great skill to learn and be able to use for surveys! Also, there is a day when I get to help at a BLM booth at the Coleman fish hatchery and I look forward to seeing inside the facility.

A few weeks ago we had the privilege of attending a California Native Plant Society workshop outside of Truckee, CA. The workshop was held at the UC-Berkley Sagehen field station where we learned the Relevé and rapid assessment vegetation monitoring techniques. It was great to learn and interact with the experienced botanists from CNPS staff as well as the other trainees.

The workshop began with a powerpoint presentation that went completely over my head and I left thinking I was in for a very painful 3 days. Once we got into the field everything started to make sense. The monitoring techniques consist of things that you may already know like estimating cover class, soil texturing, identifying land form, and creating species lists. However, the style of monitoring is set up so that these measurements can be taken quickly so the surveyors can map large areas in a single day. The training is a very useful skill to have but, in my opinion, learning from botanists and contractors from all over the US was perhaps even more valuable than the training itself.

Sagehen is an amazing place. The field station is located in the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains.  It is amazing how different the plant communities are not even 50 miles from the Carson City and the Great Basin.  For three days we botanized in alpine valleys, mountain sides and natural fens. We stayed in cabins and had access to showers and a kitchen which were welcomed luxuries and a nice change of pace from tent camping. My favorite part about the field station was their underwater stream gauging station where you can view trout and brook char.

Rapid assessment in a sub alpine meadow

Brookie from the stream gauging station

CLM Internship Blog post

September 24, 2013

It’s raining in the high desert this week. Snow is forecast at elevations from 7000 feet and above. The desert is a little confused. That burst of rain this last month, signaling the end of fire season, also the signals the cold to come. Yet, I am finding grasses sending up that withheld seed head in a last ditch effort to propagate. And Lupinus caudatus rebloomed. Yesterday, I even found two blooming Castilleja.

I am excited about the weather changes since Artemisia needs the cold nights to prompt the final part of its process. I have been checking on my populations almost weekly to start my collections for those species. With about 300 hours left, I still have considerable fall collections to make. Artemisia here I come!

Luckily, the Bend Seed Extractory is within a 30 minute drive from the office and as I look at the overflowing bags in my storage cubby, I may get to complete that final transport this week and create some space. Along with all those seeds are associated insects and crawling things that now share my cubicle! Unlike some of the other interns, it’s been a quiet and uneventful summer of collections. We have 52 collections and counting.

My most memorable moment of this month was the 105 degree (F) day along the John Day River slopes collecting Pseudoroegeneria spicata on a 45% slope above the river.

While the views were spectacular, the seeds seemed a bit thin and I was covering most of the 5 acre collection site… up and down a number of times. To add to the heat, I left my water bottle at the truck at the bottom of the slope. Finally, as I completed my last traverse at the bottom of the slope, I slid down the final scree slope at the road edge. It was deep red ochre and my slide left a clear exclamation point. I rested at the road when a couple drove up in a rented Toyota Prius and asked directions. I asked about their accents and found they were from Great Britain. Of course after the directions and handy maps in my pack, they asked about what I was doing and I got to explain about the SOS and CLM programs and Kew Gardens. Lo and behold they had been there and they shared with me a considerable amount of what they know of the gardens and the surrounding area where they live. It was fun to make the bigger international connection. So many days I simply get absorbed in my small task of collecting the seeds before my eyes – sometimes even missing the antler shed at my foot or the snake curled under the rock, and barely catch the scuttle of the fence lizard in the corner of my peripheral vision. Having the chance to talk to someone about my part in the bigger picture made me feel connected.
Reflections for next year
Find out which pastures are being rested and which are active before going in the field so you don’t get 3 hours out in some rugged country to find the cows ate absolutely everything and what they didn’t eat they trampled!

Robin Snyder
CLM Intern Prineville District BLM, Prineville Oregon

Whew! One week of training and two weeks of intense office work and I am beginning to forget what the inside of my tent looks like.  For several weeks it seemed I spent more nights in that tent than in my own bed.  Not that I am complaining of course- hiking on the dunes of Sand Mountain, counting rare butterflies, collecting native seeds in alpine meadows, and my favorite: watching epic desert lightning storms, these are all of the perks that come with fieldwork.

Here is a snapshot of what the past 3 weeks away from the field have looked like:

1.        Truckee River Education Event (TREE) at the Nature Conservancy’s McCarren Ranch property.  This event has been occurring for several years and is intended to get low income, inner city, elementary school children not only learning about nature but interacting with it in a hands-on way.  We had the opportunity to develop a new activity for the students that would get them thinking and talking about invasive species and the importance of biodiversity and native species.  We decided given their ages a game would be the best way to engage the children.  A lot of planning and research went in to creating this game and in the end it was deemed a success.
2.        California Native Plant Society (CNPS) Releve/Rapid Assessment: For two and a half days we spent our time around professionals from private and state agencies learning standardized methods of vegetation classification.  The training was housed at U.C. Berkley’s Sagehen Field Station in Truckee, CA.  The beautiful lodge pole pine forest was a nice contrast from the harsh desert landscape we have spent so much of our summer surrounded by.  This training was an excellent chance to network with professional scientists from a variety of disciplines.  It was reassuring to hear that despite talk of a shrinking job market- there is job creation and stability in the private sector. 
3.        Assisting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with the listing of a rare/endangered species:  This project has definitely been a labor of love.  Being the first listing for our office in recent history, the amount and types of data requested have changed several times.  Primarily we have been tasked with compiling spatial data in the context of natural and anthropogenic threats, in particular, development, mining, livestock grazing, and fire.   This project has required organization and an adaptive attitude.  It has been satisfying to pull together years of spatial data to tell the story of the threats posed to this species.  If all goes as planned we will ship our data out this afternoon and eventually have a federally protected species!

As fall approaches I am both grateful and surprised to get an extension on my Internship. I have had a wonderful experience in the Jarbidge Field Office. My mentor Pattie Jo Courtney is fun to work with, not to mention I continue to learn a lot from her. I am looking forward to the change of weather in October and starting a couple new projects. We are starting to look for slick spot pepper grass, Lepidium papilliferum, code LEPA. There are grid groups set up within the field office in different pastures. These grid groups are designed based on soil condition, plant species, and other environmental factors to best find the slick spot pepper grass. I have been walking the grids with a Juno GPS for about 2 weeks and I am not finding any LEPA. However, I have seen some sage grouse and I enjoy hiking across the desert, I get approximately 8 to 10 miles per day.
I will continue to do some wetland inventory as long as the weather allows me to get into the field. Wetland inventory includes finding the main wetland species, taking pictures and determine if the shape is the same as previous years. If it is, I take a point on the Juno and fill in the data dictionary. If the wetland is a different shape, I will take a polygon with the Juno and continue on with the information in the data dictionary.
That’s about it for now, until next time. Be Safe!

I never thought I’d find a seasonal survey job working with 8+ very different species, but my CLM internship with the Klamath Falls Fish and Wildlife Office (KFFWO) provided that. I have learned about not only a wide range of new species in this unique ecosystem, but also about my favorite part: the bigger picture – the chronic environmental problems that have led to the decline of some of these species and why. I also picked up some useful skills every wildlife biologist needs including new survey methods, renewed GIS skills, off road driving and electrofishing.
I’ve worked in teams before – one that comes to mind was working on a year-long research project at university, where we met weekly and then conducted fieldwork together. We had our challenges in terms of workload equality and team member reliability, but we pulled through in the end and we got on really well. This internship was a whole new level of teamwork. Not only did we spend whole weeks camping together in the field and sharing desk spaces in the office, but three out of four of us decided to live together. Here’s the thing about us: we’re all girls, we’re all intelligent and passionate about our work, we’re all stubborn and we all have radically different personalities. We’ve had a bit of an emotional rollercoaster this summer through our work and personal lives, and we’ve had our disagreements, but we’ve come out of it still speaking to each other. To deal with our disagreements and personality clashes, we’ve all had to rethink our words and actions and come up with ways to accommodate each other. What was most important to us was to maintain our professional work ethic and relationships and also to preserve our personal relationships and appreciation of each other. It’s been challenging, but I think we’ve all learned something from it, if only to be cautious when deciding to work on an all-female team… (haha). I have a new understanding of intimate teamwork.
Oh, and then there were the more practical things we learned, like how the Endangered Species Act works to protect endangered species in all its strengths and faults. The species I was lead for (Oregon Spotted Frog, Rana pretiosa) was proposed for Threatened status under the ESA just last month, and I had the exciting opportunity to present our frog fieldwork at a public workshop. The presentations went well. Private landowner attendance was limited but they were there, as well as Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams. I feel fortunate to be able to work with this species that was stuck at Candidate status for the last 20 years and see it moved forward to a proposed listing.
This CLM internship has been a unique experience I would never have had without the Chicago Botanic Garden.  I also very much enjoyed the professional development opportunities in the form of attending the International Congress on Conservation Biology in Baltimore this year, where I made some connections that have been important for consideration of my next career steps. Thanks CLM and KFFWO!

As project lead on the Oregon Spotted Frog surveys, I was invited to come on a site visit in June 2013 to a historically important creek along with private landowners, US Forest Service staff and private consultants. The creek was Jack Creek, and frog populations here crashed from over 300 egg clusters each year to less than 30 within a few years. It is thought that the primary driver was an intense drought year combined with overgrazing. Since then, a number of measures have been implemented to try and remedy this severe population crash. Radio-tagged beavers were brought into the creek in the hopes that they would re-establish and build up ponds along the creek where old dams are deteriorating or are lost. Grazing intensity is being more carefully managed by USFS. The purpose of our visit was to review the habitat and determine what else could be done to restore the creek. A developing headcut along the creek is becoming more pronounced and moving up the creek bed, threatening to drain surrounding ephemeral wetlands and increase sediment transport via faster, straighter flows. The private consultants that were present on our field visit had a proposal to halt this development by filling the headcut in with sediments and allowing the stream to re-establish itself as a meandering creek. Their company had recently performed similar work at a Nature Conservancy property in the area, and initial results were promising. I asked them when it had been implemented and they said October of the year before.
The solution brought about some questions; what’s to stop the next seasonally high flow from washing the sediments out and undoing the restoration effort? Their previous work had not been implemented very long ago; what was the life expectancy of these projects? However, these concerns were not expressed by other members of the group. Perhaps it is because the system is primarily spring-fed and does not follow traditional flood trends. Perhaps it is because there is urgency to implement restoration now, before the frog gets listed as Threatened and even restoration projects on federal lands require a formal Biological Assessment. They spoke of spending a few days out there prior to restoration construction to catch whatever frogs they could and temporarily relocate them out of harms’ way.
So I spoke with the private landowner on our way back to our vehicles from the creek. The man owned land adjacent to the forest service land and he grazed his cattle along the creek on the USFS land. His opinion was that the land had been grazed for over a hundred years (by his ancestors) and that the frogs had been coexisting quite happily with the cattle in that time frame. Indeed in the absence of natural wildfires and presence of introduced plants, well-managed grazing can provide the disturbance the landscape needs to provide suitable habitat for Oregon Spotted Frogs (and other species). He thought we hadn’t really given the beavers the chance to do their part, and that the best approach would be to give the system time to work itself out. USFS and other public stakeholders are afraid that the frogs are running out of time, and more radical actions need to be taken. I’m not sure what the best approach is, I agree with both parties but I wonder about the impact of the proposed restoration effort.
We revisited the area on September 20th. We were looking for frogs in a newly colonized area where they had been seen 4 weeks previously by a member of the public who previously worked for the Forest Service. We found 3-4 subadults on a portion of USFS property adjacent to that same private landowners’ land, holding on in a very small pool that had been heavily impacted by cattle. Cows had been found in this particular land parcel previously and the landowner built a new fence to remedy the situation. So what now can be done? The biggest concern was water permanence; these particular pools exist along the largely dry creek bed, and seemed to be spring-fed by a seep adjacent to the channel. This seep had been heavily trampled. The biologists debated whether an artificial addition of water would be helpful or a waste of resources.
This whole experience brings up some very important questions in my mind. In a system that has been heavily altered, how much manipulation should be done to save an endangered species? When is it better to do something over nothing? The short-term plan is to contact the landowner about the cattle again and warn of potential loss of grazing rights. Plans are moving forward for the head cut restoration. The evidence of range expansion in the frogs at this site are a good sign, I just hope they are expanding into the right place.

Finally, a wonderful six months has come to an end. It has been a great field season filled with wonderful people, memories, and experiences. I have learned so much and will leave here with much more knowledge, skills, connections, and friends than I came with.

Suited up for bullfrog hunting!

I gained a wide diversity of new field and survey skills this season including electroshocking, PIT tagging, locating egg masses, identifying western fish species, monitoring eagle nests, and much more. I have to say though, I will be glad to never look at another Applegate’s milkvetch again. We surveyed milkvetch for hours on end, for weeks, staring at the ground, looking for any tiny seedling of milkvetch. At times I would close my eyes after a day of milkvetch surveying and see milkvetch on the floor and carpet. Some of us even had dreams of milkvetch.  Milkvetch surveying was the only field work I wasn’t very fond of this summer, but it was a good experience either way, and when you’re outside in beautiful weather all day you really can’t complain much.

My favorite work of the field season was electroshocking. We utilized electroshocking for both bull trout and Lost River & shortnose suckers. Electroshocking was a lot of fun to me because it required a lot of action, focus, and quick movements and it was fun to try and capture the fish before they came to. It was also interesting to be able to handle the fish and inspect them so closely, as well at PIT tagging them. I got to know a lot of new fish species this way through close inspection of their characteristics. I realized that I really enjoy more hands-on kind of field work. I really enjoy working closely and personally with a species, up to a certain point of course. I wouldn’t want to do anything really harmful or too invasive to a species. Even though I generally consider myself more of a bird and mammal kind of girl, I found that I really enjoy the field work that is conducted for fish.

I do have to say that I did miss mammal and bird work this summer. I gained a lot of great experience and skills with aquatic species, which I’m sure will be very useful in the summer and make me a more diverse and competitive applicant for future jobs. Next field season though I would definitely like to gain more experience working with birds and mammals. I found that although aquatic species work is a lot of fun and you get to hang out in and near water most of the time which is great, my passion still really lies within the birds and mammals. These are the species that I get really excited about and feel that I identify with and understand more.

All in all, this field season has been an amazing, informative experience that I am very thankful to have had. Klamath Falls will always have a special place in my heart from now on. I will leave here with great experiences and friends, and probably tears. I found an amazing community of caring environmentalists here that are all very special people and I will have a hard time saying goodbye to. Memories and experiences last a lifetime though and shape the kind of person that you become, and thanks to all of these experiences, I know that I will leave here a better person.

I am very thankful to this internship program and to Krissa and Wes, who are two very caring and kind individuals that I’m sure have helped so many people, including me, and have provided unforgettable experiences. Thank you for making my experience possible.

Gearhart Mountain Wilderness with the crew after a long day of work

Red-headed sapsucker!