Hello everyone, weather has started to become spring-like, with a 60 degree day yesterday. Almost all of the snow has melted; Robins and Blue Birds have made their return. It is only a matter of time until all the snow is gone in the lower elevations and the ice melts off the rivers and lakes that surround us. It has been a pretty fun month in the high desert of Wyoming. Sage grouse have started their mating rituals on their leks. For those of you that don’t know what a lek is, I will give a brief description. 

Signs of active leks include feathers, droppings, and tracks. A Lek is a traditional courtship display which is attended by male sage-grouse in or adjacent to sagebrush dominated habitat. These strutting males attract female sage-grouse by the brilliant feather colors and sounds made by the male sage-grouse. Leks are counted at 7-10 day intervals over a 3-4 week period after the peak of mating activity. Some leks in the KFO can have as many as 150 birds at any given time, others only contain 30 or less birds. The BLM is not able to count every lek in the Kemmerer Field Office, we receive help from the Wyoming Game and Fish and other volunteers. Even with all this help some leks will go uncounted.

I have spent much of my morning hours driving around doing lek counts, to give wildlife managers an educated idea of sage-grouse populations. It’s been great being able to get out into the field and take a break from writing NEPA papers. Until next time, I hope everyone has fun!

Jeremy Sykes

Bureau of Land Management

Kemmerer, Wyoming

2014 has been a busy year so far at the Safford BLM office. We have initiated several new projects as well as have continued to develop our existing work.

Non-native removal in Bonita Creek continues to be a regular task. Having four interns has greatly increased the number and frequency we can get out to set nets. And we have already had a contract crew out to conduct a week long intensive removal effort. With Andrew Johnson’s knowledge of Access, he has created a database to more effectively analyze our non-native removal data. This allows us to take a better look at which net types have the highest catch per unit effort, and which portions of Bonita Creek are still harboring the highest numbers of non-natives.

Several pollinator gardens have been planned and installation should begin this spring. Allegra Mount received a seed grant from Native Seed Search. These seeds have been germinated in the Discovery Park greenhouse, as well as at the Our Neighbor’s Farm greenhouse. Other seeds from our returned SOS collections will be germinated as well. A pollinator garden will be planted at the Discovery Park campus with educational signage about the importance of pollinators. We hope to have a high level of community involvement in the installation and up-keep of this garden. A pollinator hedgerow is planned for the Our Neighbor’s Farm garden. Our Neighbors Farm is an organization that grows produce to give to those in need in our community. We hope that raising awareness of the importance of pollinators can make a difference in this community.

Our work with Sky Island Alliance continues. They are such a wonderful partner organization. At the end of January, we had an amazing work weekend at Turkey Creek. SIA brought out a group of 30 volunteers and we planted around 250 Giant Sacaton in our restoration area. We camped at the TNC field house (which is a lovely spot) and enjoyed socializing with all of the interesting volunteers.  Van from Stream Dyanmics was out for the weekend with our group, and did some surveying of Turkey Creek to determine if building rock structures, such as gabbions, could be of benefit to the site.

I was able to participate in the Cumulative Effects NEPA training that was held at the Safford Field Office in February. Writing Environmental Assessments is a complicated process that I am learning, and I was glad to get some more exposure to the various elements of putting one together. We spent two days going over the Cumulative Effects of a particular EA that our field office is working on.

In early March our crew traveled to Ft. Huachucha in Sierra Vista to participate in a Springsnail identification and in a monitoring training put on by Arizona Game and Fish. While just a one day training, we were table to review a lot of relevant information about Springsnails in AZ and visit two nearby springs to practice our monitoring skills.

We have been doing some restoration work near the border in conjunction with a SCC crew. The SCC chainsaw crew came in and cleared a lowland area of mesquite. Then we came back through and seeded with native grass seed and covered the seeded areas with mesquite brush. The mesquite brush cover helps to keep the seeds from blowing away and provides some shade to help the grasses get established. This project will hopefully help to raise the water table in this area, and restore the native grassland that once thrived here.

Since my work began in the Safford field office, monitoring native fish has been a large component of my job. Throughout my time working in Bonita Creek, my boss Heidi had started to notice a high frequency of lumps on the native Gila Chub. As the frequency and severity of these lumps increased, Heidi decided that a proper evaluation of what was happening to these fish was needed. She got her permit revised to allow for capture of a small number of Gila Chub to then be transported to a laboratory in NM. We still have not heard from the lab what exactly is happening with the fish, but hope to know more soon.

During March I got my first hands-on experience building fences. Andrew Johnson and I headed north to lead two crews of ACE in a restoration and fencing project. A riparian area along Silver Creek, near Woodruff AZ, had been very degraded from cattle coming down to the water. The stream bank was experiencing a lot of erosion due to lack of vegetation.   Our crew’s goal was to cut willow poles from the adjacent banks that were not degraded, plant them on the degraded banks, and fence the whole area off from grazing. We started by having several people cut 6 feet long willow poles and piling them on the degraded banks. We used a boat to shuttle from one side of Silver creek to the other. We used hammer drills with 2 feet long drill bits to drill holes into the degraded bank. The willow poles could then be inserted in the holes into moist soil, and the hole packed in. We made groups of 16-20 willows in clusters along the bank, with 5-8 feet of space between them. Hopefully, with cows being kept out from this area, the willow poles can put out roots and begin to stabilize the degraded bank of Silver Creek. With such a large amount of workers, we were also able to clean the surrounding area of trash, and remove some small tamarisk. It was a wonderful learning experience for my restoration, leadership, and fencing skills.

I continue to be involved in diverse stimulating projects. Having a group of four interns allows us all to focus on different projects. We work great as a team; learning from each other’s various specialties. Come May, I will have been at this office for 1 year, which is quite hard to believe. The time has flown by. And in August I will be attending the University of New Mexico to study for my masters in Biology. I doubt I would have had such a competitive application for this position without the experience I have gained from the CLM program.

It is funny how quickly I have adapted.  When I think about my first evening here it seems so long ago.  My third week on the job is coming to a close and I have settled in a healthy routine, learned everything I need to know to work successfully in the field, and made pals with some of my coworkers.  Now I don’t mean to sound cocky, there is so many things to learn here, and I have not even begun to scratch the surface of the plants around here.  This area is so vast and the maps are not 100% trustworthy, the value of local knowledge here is great and in no short supply.  It would take years of being in this area and talking to people to be totally comfortable to head off into the hills for the weekend.

On the other hand, I feel comfortable with the three main sagebrush species associated with the sage grouse.  This is fundamental to identifying good habitat and can also tell you much about other factors influencing a site.  I have learned the major invasive species impacting the habitat, Medusa head (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), and north africa grass (Ventenata dubia), and I understand how and why they are impacting sage habitat so strongly.  Some of the major areas of our work I know like the back of my hand and drive them at 4 am in the dark on the way to conduct surveys without slowing down at every turn or side trail to recheck my map and compass, which is huge (and now allows me a little more sleep).  So when I say I know what I need to know to get in the field that is what I mean.

It seems as though most people in this area are preparing to some degree for the summer.  I am expecting some pretty intense wildfires this year and it seems that the whole county has that same expectation.  This is one reason that those grasses listed above are so bad.  They alone are not so bad, I see them everywhere blending into the communities, sagebrush is fine, forbs are in place, native grasses may be lacking, but they are there.  The problem is how they affect the behavior of the wildfires.  They spread the fire rapidly and increase the intensity of the burn.  These grasses live under and around the sagebrush so it can lead to the destruction of hundreds to thousands of sagebrush at a time.  Sagebrush takes anywhere from 35 to 100 years to return to its mature productive status.  But while it is rejuvenating, the grasses move back into the open spots and out compete and allow western junipers to move in.  The poor sage grouse…they need healthy sagebrush habitats to live and be happy!

I love it here.  I have always wanted to get to an area like this; one that still has a rugged and slightly wild feel.  But I can see how interns coming from a more city life setting or life style may arrive and not know what to do with it.  There isn’t a Walmart for 100 miles (awesome), there is no McDonald’s, everything is like 30 miles away at least, and even then it’s probably something outside involving exercise.  There is no internet connection unless you rent your own house and pay for it.  But I have found the time to pursue my many interests that, during school, I had little time to enjoy.  Thanks again CLM!