My name is Eric Livermore and I am currently an intern at the Boise Regional Seed Warehouse (BRSW) in Boise, Idaho. The warehouse supplies seed to government entities for fire rehab, stabilization, and other projects throughout the Western United States. The process of supplying seed is much more than just shipping seed. The warehouse stores more than 800,000 lbs of seed, and just over 35,000 lbs of that is sagebrush that is stored in a cooler between 30 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Proper storage of this seed is very important for preserving its viability and cleanliness, and ensures that the purchase and shipment of seed will be a simple procedure. The BRSW also mixes seed specific to a purchaser’s request. Seed mixes range from a couple pounds to a couple thousand pounds of different types of seed. No matter the situation, seed is usually used for drill seeding and dozer lines to aid in rehabilitation and, in some cases, future fire suppression.

Since I started my internship, I have worked in the office helping with seed requests, creating pick lists for selecting the seed to ship, and setting up shipments. Due to a heavy fire season, there has been a heavy workload to deal with. Among other things, there is a new regional warehouse opening in Ely, NV. I was very fortunate to be able to take a week to go down to Nevada and assist with the seed deliveries. That training gave me a very good idea of what it would be like to be a warehouse manager. During that training, I communicated with over 15 private vendors that sell seed to the BRSW, set up the layout in the warehouse for seed storage, and inventoried all seed that was delivered. It was quite the experience.

Other tasks that I have been assigned include calculating total amounts of cheatgrass that existed in each lot of seed from the largest seed buy of fiscal year 2012, creating spreadsheets analyzing peak operational efficiency in the warehouse, and creating an informational seed booklet for use throughout the BLM. Tracking historical seed prices and figuring out how many seeds have been purchased since 2011 are among other things I will be working on as well. Unfortunately, the shutdown did affect the schedule of completing my to-do list. However, I am confident that due dates will be flexible due to my inability to change the actions of others.

It is obvious that I will be busy in the coming weeks, but I am fortunate enough to pick and choose what tasks I accomplish as long as they are completed by their due dates, and in a reasonable amount of time.

Boise Regional Seed Warehouse

Bureau of Land Management

In late September I had the opportunity to participate in a partnership event put on by the BLM, City of Eugene, and Willamette Resources & Educational Network. This event invited volunteers from the community to help in a restoration project; at the site I was working at, this meant helping to restore a path from the damage and overgrown vegetation it had acquired over the dry summer.

We had a fairly decent turn-out considering that the weather report called for rains and high winds. The volunteers worked hard, and it was nice to see community members passionate about restoration and their environment. We were able to get the path into top-notch shape and everyone was able to leave with a sense of accomplishment.

I’m looking forward to more adventures to come!

Till next time!

Hello all!

It seems like ages since my last post on this blog. I see everyone is still very busy in their internships, those of us who haven’t already completed theirs anyway. Things are still rolling fairly smoothly here in Buffalo, WY as well. Our field monitoring season has ended some time ago, and now we are in a different sort of work entirely. I miss our old task of driving to the middle of nowhere to lay down a transect and collect some hard data, but our new tasks are every bit as interesting, if not more so.

A little while ago, we got to help out with a high school biology field trip by teaching the kids about various topics in ecology. It was a whirlwind of activity, but it was a lot of fun! My station involved drawing a tree stump using materials found in the forest, and then writing a poem about the stump to share with the group. There were lots of groans (“Poetry?! Ugh!”), but I think the kids secretly enjoyed their little creative task. We have also been involved in some burn pile monitoring, which involved wandering around the forest to locate isolated piles of slash and marking it with a GPS point so that it gets burned. That was a great couple of days, and we even found some unexpected scenery to enjoy! Perhaps my favorite task recently was to help re-blaze a BLM trail in the Bighorn Mountains called Poison Creek. The trail was beautiful, and it felt good to be helping with a public service to make the trail more enjoyable for everyone. This internship keeps getting better, and I sorta wish it would never end! Alas, it will be over soon, but that is for a later blog. Until then.

Daniel