Hello everyone!

For the past four weeks I have been working as a range intern at the BLM office in Lakeview, Oregon. Lakeview is a small town in southeastern Oregon, about 14 miles from the California border and not much farther from the Nevada border. This BLM district is huge, which means I am seeing new sights everyday! So what does a range intern do? Well, so far I have been going out to different allotments and checking on the vegetation in the pastures. I do what is called a utilization study to determine how grazed the pasture is, and basically its overall health. Later on, when more CLM interns join me, I’ll also being doing trend studies.

For this job I’ve had to learn to identify grasses and some sagebrush. That was a change of pace for me since I am from the east coast and I’ve always done better identifying trees. But it’s actually been pretty easy, since I only have to know about six types of grasses and several types of sagebrush. I’m enjoying learning about the flora of the high desert. And it helps that several people that I work with are very knowledgeable about the vegetation around here. Now if only I could start remembering the names of the local forbes.

Some highlights from the past month were: ATV training, going out in the field with different range cons, and learning so much about the local plants. Some lessons I’ve learned are: don’t forget your GPS, and don’t assume your truck can drive through anything (I got my truck stuck in the mud the other day. But I’m proud to say that I got it out all by myself.).

I’m looking forward to the exciting adventures I’ll have to write about next month!

Allyson Schaeffer

Lakeview, Oregon, BLM

               This month I have considered the following:  present land management decisions based on past measures that are best for the future.  Differing opinions and politics surface because of the predictive requirements of land management decisions. The Arcata field office handles these expertly, respectfully addressing and discussing different points of view both amongst the public and within the office.  However, these decisions are complex and intricate, and the best ones are often obscured, demonstrating that predicting the future, indeed, is a difficult feat.

                The first scenario where I was exposed to the tension of past and future management decisions was during a field day with geologist Sam and fisheries biologist AJ at Baker Creek, a small tributary that feeds into the Mattole River.  Baker Creek serves as important spawning habitat for coho salmon, which are facing extirpation from the Mattole Watershed.  In the late 1970s, BLMers removed fallen redwood logs from the tributary to increase water flow.  Our reaction, today, to that decision: What were they thinking?! The logs are crucial for creating salmon habitat because the wood dams up water, creating pools that are banquets of aquatic invertebrates for coho to feast on and fills the groundwater in the surrounding floodplain, which is a crucial water source for the tributary during the dry season.  Last year, the Arcata BLM felled and dragged small trees into the creek to correct the management decision of the 70s.

                The second scenario is an on-going discussion in the office about how to respond to Sudden Oak Death, a rapidly-spreading phytophthora that destroys the tanoak populations and threatens the forest ecosystems in Northern California and much of the west coast.  It is difficult to gauge the threat of SOD, recalling the predictive nature of land management decisions.  Some argue that the BLM should aggressively eradicate the disease through pesticide application and removal of whole infected tree stands. Others argue that we should proceed cautiously, focusing efforts on forest health by selective thinning and monitoring.  Since “heavy-handed approaches” have not been effective in the past and the office wants to avoid future errors, we currently implement a cautious approach.  The conversation continues.

                Whether its building coho salmon habitat or planning a SOD response, the BLM is both assertively correcting past mistakes and cautiously preparing for future scenarios.  Of course, predicting the future and criticizing the past are futile. Instead, we focus on making careful decisions based on current information learned from past mistakes so that, in the future, the phrase “what were they thinking!?” is uttered even less frequently then it is now.

Baker Creek after the logs were removed and before restoration.  Notice the channelization of the stream. (Curtesy of the Sanoma Land Trust)

Baker Creek after restoration, logs in place.

Did you catch my Bill Nye reference?

Greetings everybody!

Looks like everybody is having a great time! I love all the picutres up on the blog right now. Sadly, I am the worst at taking non-work related pictures..I promise my newly-back-at-work resolution will be to take more pictures!

So I’ve been back at work for three weeks now (this is my third CLM internship, and my second one here in Montrose, CO) and I’ll tell you what, my “tor”-mentor is getting his money’s worth! Straight back into things! But I absolutely adore this job so it’s been great to get back to work. Let’s see, so far I’ve:

• spent a week doing Sclerocactus glaucus (only the cutest cactus on the western slope!) monitoring with the awesome CLM Denver crew (shout out to Nathan, Phil, and Carol!!)
• jumped right back into rare plant surveying – hunting down Payson Lupine and Naturita Milkvetch in the west end and discovering our first population of Naturita Milkvetch here on our side of the plateau (only Phil, Nathan, please tell Carol that I only found a total of 18 Naturita Milkvetch’s at that site in Escalante…which means that we collected like, 10% of the populaion with our two samples…)
• aaaaand I’ve also been going out in the field and checking on some old data we have for various species of Oenothera for Miss Krissa at the CBG who I will hopefully get to meet sometime in the near future when she comes out here to do some work with Oenothera (check out her lab! http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/skogen/index.html, her research is pretty darn neat!)

Isn’t it adorable!?

So that’s the skinny on what’s been going on so far! Looking forward to some cool things coming up!! Lek count tonight/early tomorrow morning, High Lonesome Ranch cactus work (where I will hopefully meet the cowboy of my dreams and we’ll ride off into the sunset together!!), river trip to survey cactus down the Escalante strip of the Gunni (that’ll be awesome, the river rangers are kinda the cool kids at the office – the football players, if you will, and while I’m just a band nerd they’re really nice to me!), aaaaand then my sister will be in town and we’re gonna rage a quick trip to Moab! (And that only takes us to the middle of May!) I promise I’ll try to take some awesome pictures to make my blog more readable.

Also – I would just like to point out that my “tor”-mentor has been staring over my shoulder this whole time, correcting my spelling errors.

Your Cohort –

Brandee Wills
Uncompahgre Field Office BLM
Montrose, CO

I have been seeing so many beautiful flowering plants so far this spring I thought I would share them with you! These are some of my favorite plants so far on the SBNF.

This is the Forest Service sensitive Mojave paintbrush (Castilleja plagiotoma). It is endemic to the SBNF and is the host plant for the larvae of the watch list Checkerspot butterfly.

The scale bud (Anisocoma acaulis) is one of my favorite desert annuals on the SBNF.

The mojave mound cactus (Echinocereus mojavensis).

I have seen this adorable San Diego coast horned lizard twice now on the forest! It plays dead to catch bugs to eat and is a watch list species on the SBNF.

This beautiful ash-gray paintbrush (Castilleja cinerea) is federally threatened and only found in the San Bernadino mountains.

Ivesia agryocoma

The flowers of the Forest Service sensitive silver-haired ivesia (Ivesia agryocoma).

Forest Service sensitive Parish’s rock cress (Boechera parishii) is endemic to the San Bernadino mountains.

Forest Service sensitive Peirson’s spring beauty (Claytonia lanceolata var. peirsonii).

Another Forest Service sensitive Phlox dolichantha.

This is the Forest Service sensitive Parish’s alumroot (Heuchera parishii).

The Forest Service sensitive Coville’s dwarf abronia (Abronia nana ssp. covellei).

This is my first rattlesnake that I have seen out in the field.

The beautiful flowers of Yucca schidigera.

This is beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris).

In terms of work, I have been surveying some potential OHV routes out on a high desert area of the forest, which is where I have taken many of the these photos. There also has been a bit of survey work on a limestone mining claim. Limestone has many endemic plant species, not to mention federally threatened and endangered ones as well.

There are so many TESW (Threatened, endangered, sensitive and watch) plant species here, I have been spending a decent amount of my time entering those data into the federal database.

I attended a Poaceae workshop with many of my colleagues, which was very informative and very fun. I also took a trip back to Joshua Tree NP on my personal time and was rewarded with lots of wildflowers and pleasant temperatures.