Over the last month a lot of my energy has been focused on studying two animal species found in the Panoche Hills Recreation Area: kangaroo rats and the federally listed blunt nosed leopard lizard. We have been conducting kangaroo rat granivory trials to examine how kangaroo rats interact with the shrub Ephedra californica and understory annual species which are mainly invasive grasses. We also have been using animal activity cameras with night vision to monitor their activity under shrubs and in open areas. Very recently we have also begun an exciting collaboration with working dogs to survey lizard scat under E. californica shrubs and in open areas. This technique for surveying animals has proven to be very useful and is able to quickly and accurately survey animal populations in an area and is a very exciting collaborative project.

Over the next month we will be finishing up our leopard lizard survey and I will begin the preparation for manipulative experiments with E. california to further test the interactions of the shrub with animals and annual vegetation. This will also have important restoration and conservation implications for both species, especially with future predicted climate change.

Here are some pictures of me and another researcher (Alex) with a leopard lizard!

As I reflect on the last 6 months, I recognize the many ways that I have grown professionally. In dealing with a variety of seed vendors and other BLM employees, I have been able to sharpen my professional workplace skills, as well as my customer service skills. Personally, I have been able to get a better understanding of what it looks like to commit yourself full time to BLM projects that aren’t completed in just a few short days, or even weeks. It has been made clear that many projects take many months and years of hard work and commitment before being completed, and that doesn’t include the preparatory time before getting started. It takes a lot of passion and hard work to turn visions into reality. That’s something I will remember for years to come.

This internship has also taught me that hard work pays off. There were a variety of projects that I was assigned, some harder than others. A number of those projects took many weeks to complete. Regardless of how much time it took though, every day of hard work applied to that project was a day well spent and brought me one day closer to completion. It was unfortunate how quickly time passed when working hard. I wish I still had some more time to enjoy this experience.

Another factor that really made me enjoy this experience was the ability to sharpen my computer skills. I spent quite a bit of time on the computer and was able to learn many new things on Excel and Word. Having the capability to get better at utilizing those skills and learning new ones was a really good thing for me.

I am grateful for this experience and will always appreciate my mentor and the things that he taught me. I am also appreciative of the other individuals that I was able to work with and get to know. They were valuable in assisting me when I had questions and providing insight when things were clear as mud. This was a great experience and a great networking tool. I am confident that the addition to my resume will be a benefit in more than one way when applying for jobs in the future. I wish you all the best of luck in your future endeavors. Work hard, have fun, and enjoy your summer.

Boise Regional Seed Warehouse

Bureau of Land Management

Boise, Idaho

Erythranthe carsonensis

It’s been an eventful month for the team and I here in Carson City, NV.  We began the month by traveling to Boise, ID for pesticide certification. It was basically like taking a super condensed college course, then having several finals at the end of the week. It was a challenge, but the whole team passed the general pesticide exam, as well as all of the category exams. We are straight up pesticide certified, so don’t mess with us!  We also did a couple of outreach events. We helped organize the Truckee River Environmental Education event on Earth Day. We took the kids on a botany safari and organized a game that taught the kids about noxious weeds. We also had a BLM booth at Earth Day in Reno, which a lot of families enjoyed.  Our booth had free posters, tattoos, homemade plant pressed book marks, as well as a couple games which included ecosystem jenga (super fun!) and the trash game, where the players had to guess how long it took certain everyday trash items to degrade.  Reno Earth Day was pretty neat, I got a chance to walk around a little bit and check out the vendors, food, and live music.

My favorite project we have been working on this month is rare plant monitoring.  We have been surveying for both Ivesia webberi and Erythranthe carsonesis.  We have successfully mapped several polygons of the Ivesei, and have been attempting to survey elsewhere for the plant. It’s been kind of a treasure hunt! We only spent a day surveying for the Erythranthe carsonesis, but it is a very unique looking plant, characterized by a yellow flower with a tiny red dot. We did find a few very small populations, a couple of them only have two or three individuals. Many plants are in bloom right now, so I expect lots of seed collecting on the horizon…

I’m signing off from my fantastic adventure that was the SOS/CLM/CBG internship with much gratitude and appreciation to the people and systems that put time, energy and effort into making this program a possibility.

My time with the CLM was slightly different than the experience that most people had. Instead of working in a BLM Field Office, reporting directly to a natural resource specialist within the Bureau of Land Management, I was dispatched to Patagonia, Arizona to work for Borderlands Restoration, L3C. I still had duties that required me to collect seeds using the Seeds of Success protocol, but anything over the 10,000 seed accession that the BLM held on to came back to Patagonia to be used for restoration mother plant populations. Once these mother plant populations are established, we will be able to dramatically ramp up the source of readily available native seeds for use on public and private lands alike.

My favorite aspect of the CLM/SOS/CBG internship is that it connected me with people actively involved in restoration. I was afforded the opportunity to identify native plants in the field while strengthening relationships with conservationists from different federal agencies and private industries alike. I know that the connections I made will continue to develop, even though my funding source will change.

The funding that SOS provided allowed me to develop a seed collection protocol for Borderlands Restoration, passing on knowledge to another organization. I will in turn train future seed collectors with other funding sources to over time increase the available seed resources for future restoration activities. The SOS support also allowed me to set up a seed lab for Borderlands Restoration to clean, assess, and store wild seeds.

Now that I’m equipped as an experienced wild seed steward, I’m excited and honored to continue carrying the torch of seed love. I’m excited to continue developing as a seed scout, harvester, cleaner, hoarder and steward. Thanks for all of the knowledge, resources and support Bureau of Land Management, Seeds of Success, Conservation and Land Management and Chicago Botanical Garden! May this internship continue to bear many yields of delicious fruit

My fellow interns and I have stayed very busy the past few weeks monitoring and measuring plants all across the Mojave Desert. This past week we traveled to all three of our common gardens to monitor and measure our transplants for a second time. We were happy to see that survivorship in the gardens is still quite good and many plants have new growth.

In addition to measuring and monitoring the common gardens, I also traveled to the Eureka Valley in Death Valley National Park to continue with measurements of two endemic and endangered species: Eureka Valley dune grass (Swallenia alexandrae) and Eureka Valley Evening Primrose (Oenothera californica ssp. eurekensis). Although the strong winds, heat, and aridity of the Eureka Valley create a rather hostile environment, these plants don’t seem to mind! Many of them have dramatically increased in size since my last trip to the dunes and several have an abundance of flowers and seed pods.

As I struggled to stay hydrated and avoid sunburn I couldn’t help but marvel at the adaptations that enable many organisms, including the plants I measured, to successfully live in the dunes. Although I finished each day of fieldwork feeling exhausted and a little sunburnt, my experiences in the dunes were extremely rewarding. I enjoyed working with plants that are found nowhere else in the world. Additionally, the scenery of Eureka Valley is absolutely breathtaking. Each night when I would camp under the stars I had a stunning view of the Milky Way stretched across the entire night sky. This is a sight I had never seen before and it is one that I know I will never forget.

Until next time!

Renee Albrecht

Las Vegas Field Office, USGS

The sun sets on a day of fieldwork in the Eureka Dunes!

My last month here has been an exciting one: the desert is in bloom. Every week, a new plant comes into bloom. One week the palo verdes turn from pale green to bright yellow, the next the massive silver-grey ironwoods turn pink, and the dense arrowweed stands are all tipped with little purple flowers. But easily my favorite of all these are one that just came into bloom this week, the Smoke Trees. Normally they’re a uniform grey green color, billowing out in a way that really does look like smoke. But this first week of may, they’re flowering, and the silvery plant is suddenly spotted with rich purple-blue. Looking closely, one can see that each flower is ringed with orange spots on the sepals, and with a deep orange stamen poking out the end. Amazing, and presently my favorite plant out here.

Of course, shortly after flowers come seeds, and shortly after seeds come CBG Interns collecting for Seeds of Success. So I’ve had my work cut out for me there: seven 10,000-seed collections done and mailed off to be cleaned, with plenty more to come. It looks like my fellow interns are also enjoying the desert flowers, so I hope they are all as enamored by the smoke tree flowers as I am.

Joe Brehm

Eriogonum ovalifolium var. vineum

Pholisma arenarium

Mojave paintbrush

We’ve been doing surveys for carbonate endemics and other sensitive species at two mining claims, out towards the desert side of the forest.  There’s a lot blooming right now, including the adorable borage above (Pholisma arenarium) and the federally endangered Cushenbury buckwheat (Eriogonum ovalifolium var. vineum).  I headed down to the chapparal for a backpacking trip over the weekend, for a taste of another part of the San Bernardino Mountains flora.   

We finished surveys on the north side of the forest, as part of a project to close some unauthorized off-road vehicle routes, while designating others.  Mojave paintbrush (Castilleja plagiotoma, pictured), a hemi-parasite on buckwheat and sagebrush, was one of our target species.  We’ll be conducting surveys in the southeast part of the project area in May; since this area is at a higher elevation, the phenology is farther behind, and we’ll be focusing on a different suite of species of species. 

In mid-April, we attended a Forest Service sponsored Poaceae workshop at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.  It was a great introduction to CA grass genera, grass morphology, and more difficult and subtle key steps and characters.

Mountaintop RD, US Forest Service

Big Bear Lake, CA

The maples were almost in bloom when I left the city of Buffalo to begin work as a botany intern in the Vale district of Oregon. Soon their fruits will mix with the urban sounds in the air and perhaps land gently on the waters of Lake Erie. I’ve lived in Ontario, Oregon for a month, yet, the torrents of Niagara River escaping the glassy waters of Lake Erie persistently occupy my consciousness. Personal relationships formed and disappeared within that industrial environment and memories of those now guide me through a new land void of my personal narrative.

My main interest concerns the ecological relationships within a social and natural system that constantly places us within a complex narrative full of diverse elements. However, despite my best efforts, my descriptive abilities fail as I try to explain the layers of relationships occurring within the public lands and sagebrush steppe. A long history of use sits heavily on these lands and it appears on the landscape as some indecipherable script.  As I try to write something of this hidden language for the entry, I come in contact with a photograph of two men near Steens Mountain. Both men wearing denim jeans and layers of cotton flannel stare into the camera with a dejected aspect to their faces. Behind them a vast steppe stretches to the foot of the mountain and a startling gray looms in the sky.  A shovel sticks out from the ground and one of the men holds a cheat grass bouquet. I mention this photograph because it captures a moment in the ecological transformation of the sagebrush steppe. A change sparked by the grazing of cattle and continues to this day. Perhaps after staying out here and listening to more stories about the land I will be better equipped to explain these relationships, but this is all I have for now.  

After working as a botanist and environmental educator in Oregon for more than 7 years, my present stint at the BLM Ridgecrest Field Office feels a bit like a sabbatical. What a learning experience and adventure it is proving to be; less than 2 months into my internship here, I have already experienced a tremendous variety of work projects and outings, here in the Western Mojave.

Wildflower display in Nine Mile Canyon, Sacatar Trail Wilderness

Taking advantage of recent spring rains in the Western Mojave and Eastern Sierra Nevada, and the amazing blooms that have followed, the Seeds of Success program is once again a major focus for me. The combination of sufficient precipitation and our team’s dedication has resulted in more forb-species seed collections than have occurred here during the past several years.

Caulanthus inflatus population, Grass Valley Wilderness

In addition to the native seed collections I have taken the opportunity to involve myself in several other aspects of botanical work, at the Ridgecrest Field Office, and elsewhere in the California Desert District. Highlights include:

• As part of an interdisciplinary team, I helped conduct rangeland health assessments in the Bright Star Wilderness, where we performed quantitative toe-point vegetation transects, as well as qualitative proper functioning condition (PFC) assessments of a grazing allotment.

Interdisciplinary team, hiking into the Bright Star Wilderness

• Another exciting aspect of the internship has been several days of rare plant monitoring, tracking the progress of populations of Astragalus magdalenae var. peirsonii (Peirson’s milk-vetch), Cymopterus deserticola (desert cymopterus), and Mimulus shevockii (Kelso Creek monkeyflower). Other BLM special status plants that I have had the pleasure to encounter in the field include Erythranthe rhodopetra (Red Rock Canyon monkeyflower), Phacelia nashiana (Charlotte’s phacelia),  Eschscholzia minutiflora subsp. twisselmannii (Red Rock poppy), and Pholisma sonorae (sand food).

Rare plant monitoring in the Algodones Dunes

Phacelia nashiana, a BLM special status plant

• While perhaps not quite as much fun as finding rare plants, another important project has been working with invasive plant inventories. This has included becoming familiar with the NISIMS (National Invasive Species Information Management System), using mobile GIS tools to record, map, and report weed infestations and treatments.

Workers prepare to remove an invasive salt-cedar from a riparian area in the El Paso Mountains

• Collecting for the plant display at the Ridgecrest Desert Wildflower Festival, teaching botany lessons to fourth graders for the Sand Canyon Environmental Education Program, and helping to document a new species of Claytonia with botanists from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, are a few more of the diverse botany projects, in which I have participated so far.

Owens Peak Wilderness

Gopher snake near Grass Valley Wilderness

And much remains to come! On the horizon is a NEPA training in Las Vegas, a vegetation monitoring class in Billings, plant mapping projects, writing assignments, and yes, more native seed collections. I will be sure to keep you posted as things begin to heat-up here in the Mojave.

Marcus Lorusso

BLM Ridgecrest Field Office