I can’t believe I have been working in Carlsbad, for the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), for over a month now. I have been keeping a small journal listing all the different things I do every day. Reading through my journal, I am astounded by plethora of different jobs I have experienced over the past month. My primary task at the BLM has been finding the presence or absence of Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (DSL) in predetermined locations. The DSL is a habitat specialist that is only found in large dune complexes called blowouts, which are surrounded by shinnery oak. The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard was recently listed as “state endangered” in the New Mexico. If a DSL is found in a location there can be no development within 200 meters of that GPS point. Every Friday I use GIS to find locations within BLM land that maybe suitable for the DSL. Mondays I usually go to the predetermined locations and place pitfall traps in the hopes of catching a DSL. In every location we place 10 pitfall traps spread apart to maximize our chances of catching something. The pitfall traps are 5 gallon buckets sunk into the sand so they are flush with the surface; so far we have dug 21 arrays with ten buckets, meaning we have dug 210 holes all across southeast New Mexico. Every day after traps have been sunk, I go into the field and check the traps to see what has fallen in. I record any other reptile that has fallen in as well as wind speed and cloud cover. Traps are set out for five days and then pulled out. If a DSL is caught before those five days the traps are pulled out and we record the GPS coordinate of where the lizard was caught, the sex, and multiple pictures are taken to prove that we have caught a DSL.

Although I check traps every day, I still have time to experience and work with other departments at the BLM. I have been sitting in on NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) meetings to understand intricacies of developing something on federal lands. I have also been helping the BLM place interpretive signs into a nearby river explaining the ecology and history of the river. Last week we were invited to local summer camp to teach kids between the ages of 6 and 12 the differences between reptiles and amphibians and the importance of stream water quality. We have started to conduct macro-invertebrate samples along the Delaware River, and soon we will begin Prairie chicken surveys. On my off days, I have already hiked to the top of Guadalupe Peak (the highest point in Texas), gone 750 feet below ground level to explore the famous Carlsbad Caverns, and have been mountain biking in a nearby trail system. All in all there has not been a dull moment. The BLM is keeping me active and I am thoroughly enjoying my time here in Carlsbad.

Sand Dune

Pitfall trap

Male DSL

DSL and GPS

Whiptail

DSL female

Side shot DSL

DSL in natural habitat

Carlsbad Caverns

Wow, I’ve already been in New Mexico a month and a half. The time has flown by. It’s amazing how that happens when you really enjoy the work that you are involved in. There is so much to say since my last entry, but I had to narrow it down a little for today.
My fellow intern Sarah and I flew solo on making our latest SOS collection; the third of our season. It felt good to have the confidence to manage this on our own. Not to say that the collections are difficult, but this way our mentor could catch up on what she needed to do. I am completely amazed by how tenacious these desert plants are. The area has been in a severe drought even for a desert. I don’t know how anything could survive, but they do. The Utah serviceberry we collected from was showing signs of stress, some not doing well at all, but those tough shrubs still put out seed and promise of a next generation, hoping for better conditions for their offspring.

We should be in the monsoon season, but the rain has been spotty at best. All to the north and south the clouds have blessed the ground with their bounty, but our little pocket around Farmington remains parched. When we have been to areas with rain, it seems like a miracle, and for the landscape I suppose it is. Often I look to the horizon and see spectacular lightning shows against distant dark skies, or the cloud phenomena called virga (this does not happen in the east). According to Wikipedia, “In meteorology, virga is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates or sublimes before reaching the ground.” It’s pretty wild looking, you can see the rain coming down like purple or white chalk smears but it never actually makes a landing because the air is just so dry. I can’t wait to see the second coming of the plants that result in a little rain here. We get really excited when we see arroyos with running water in them. Rain dance for Farmington, because the seed collection options are slim pickings!

Another part of the job that has been thought provoking is the knowledge paradigm. We all have knowledge, of various kinds. Some is nearly universal, some selective. Part of coming to a new place is picking the brains of your new neighbors. What do you know about this area? It’s an unspoken question usually; I wait for the answers and then suck them up like a sponge when they come. Sheila is our mentor; a nearly native New Mexican (moved here from NY when she was 8 years old). Her understanding of the landscape and its ecology and culture is stunning. To have lived in one state so long makes her a NM wise woman in my eyes. She’s taught us some of those less obvious tidbits of local knowledge that are surely gems. We learned that ponderosa pines smell like vanilla if you get up close, that obsidian isn’t found here, so if you see some it’s an artifact, a shard of life of an ancient, and what petrified wood looks like. Our fuels specialist calls out to crows when she’s with us and they call back, and she knows where to see petroglyphs on canyon walls. Specialists in the office are happy to share their passions with us and their specific knowledge. We went out netting tamarisk beetles this week with a herp enthusiast and learned about the snakes and horned lizards that we found. We took some rocks we found – (BLM allows what they call reasonable take – a few pebbles are ok to keep) to a geologist and learned that they were carnelian, a semi-precious stone. I love spending time with these people. Even though I have almost zero local knowledge, we can all learn from each other. I taught Sheila that you can eat Russian olive berries! I continue looking forward to every day as a CLM intern and learning as much as I can in my short time here.

the Badlands

Netting beetles

Bull snake!

Here’s Cleome serrulata, a target species for Colorado Plateau seed collection. Maybe in a few weeks!

art of the ancients

A week ago today I was presented with the opportunity to go to the Ruby Mountains in eastern Nevada and if one has heard or seen of the beauty and adventure that can be had in Lamoille Canyon, they are sure to accept the offer. The drive from Carson City was about 5 hours and it was a pretty desolate stretch most of the way across, but there were some friends to see along the way, like Black-necked Stilts and Pronghorn. When we arrived in Lamoille Canyon that evening I was just able to complete a brief and hurried botanical exploration before a very large thunderstorm rolled into the valley. Being from the wonderful state of South Carolina it was great to hear the loud, rumbling thunder above and see and feel the rain after what seemed like forever.

The next day we were able to hike up Lamoille Canyon and over Liberty Pass to Liberty Lake. The walk was loaded with a large variety of wildflowers throughout many different habitats, such as Subalpine, Aspen Forest and Alpine. There seemed to be blooms of all different colors waving in the wind no matter where your eye wondered. Several of the species seen were Hymenoxys hoopesii, Chamerion latifolium, Psuedostellaria jamesiana, Potentilla diversifolia, Rhododendron columbianum, Smelowskia americana, Oxyria digyna, Luzula spicata and so many more beauties of the wild. If all these blooming flowers did not fancy the eye enough there was the pleasant and cheery serenading of several different birds, like the Hermit Thrush, Lazuli Bunting, Lesser Goldfinch and chatty Clark’s Nutcracker. Another very interesting natural wonder was the flight display of the male Broad-tailed Hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus). He would fly off his perch and then proceed to make trills with his wings as he flew almost vertically upward into the sky. Reaching the top of his ascent he would plummet downward towards the earth and turn up quickly and repeat the process making buzzy call notes as well. A truly wonderful thing to be able to see, especially when he landed and through the binoculars you could see him flashing his bright red throat in the sunlight!

The plants were incredible in this area and it was nice to come across a lot of new species in the high country habitats. I brought my fly rod as well and was able to do quite well fishing along Lamoille Creek in the canyon. The brook trout were very eager and made for a couple great evening of fishing on the water.

The beautiful blooms of Dwarf Fireweed (Chamerion latifolium).

Eriogonum heracleoides

Rhododendron columbianum (Syn. Ledum glandulosum)

Wondrous!
Rhodiola rosea

Physaria chambersii

A stately sentinel of the high country – Pinus albicaulis

Sedum debile

Flyfishing the high country was a great experience!

One of the fiesty fellows of Lamoille Creek!

May the summer treat you well friends,

Ethan Hughes

CCDO BLM Nevada

I am writing from Carson City, Nevada, where I am participating in a soil and plant ecology workshop.  The workshop has focused on interpreting the geomorphology of an area, understanding how that geomorphology affects its soil composition, and how its soil composition determines what type of ecological communities it can support.  The course has been taught by both academic and resource management professionals, who have done a great job of explaining how this information is used to make critical management decisions.  I am grateful for the new perspective, and am excited to dig some more holes!

In the spirit of my previous blog post, I would like to tell you about another one of my favorite days this summer.

I woke up early on Wednesday, July 2^nd, stepped outside the trailer, and celebrated under the stars.  The Milky Way formed a rainbow over my head, and I stumbled around in an awestruck, sleepy stupor staring up at it.  I woke up later that morning to an alarm, the sounds of the rest of the monitoring crew getting out of bed, and the trumpeting of Sandhill Cranes.  I drank black tea and watched the purple sky turn pink and blue.

A coyote – the first I had ever seen in the sunlight – lunged in front of our trucks as we drove lupine-lined two-tracks to our last two HAF sites of the season.  HAF stands for Habitat Assessment Framework, and outlines a methodology for assessing the suitability of Sage-Grouse habitat.  We have put a lot of effort into reading these sites, and so it was bittersweet to complete the project.

We were rewarded for our commitment to the project.  While conducting wetland inventories later that day, we flushed out about 20 Sage-Grouse.  These were the first Sage-Grouse I had ever seen.  We saw almost 100 more Sage-Grouse the following week while conducting more wetland inventories.  It was very special to see such large numbers of the birds we had been working so hard to conserve.

I could not be more grateful to work in the remote and wild Jarbidge Field Office, and I look forward to continuing to conserve it.

Jonathan Kleinman

Jarbidge Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

I may sound bitter in this post, but something has really been bugging me lately.  What’s bugging me, you ask? The whole collection of bitterbrush seed I’ve harvested is infested with bugs!  Or maybe I should be upset that my bug collection is infested with bitterbrush seed, it’s hard to tell.  I spent several days this week, along with fellow CLM intern, Natalie, harvesting bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) seed at different locations of the BLM Eagle Lake Field Office.  We have been monitoring these populations for over a month, waiting for the seeds to mature from a soft red seed into a dry black seed.  With the wait finally over, we went to work harvesting the seed.  Harvesting bitterbrush seed has been different than any of the other Seeds of Success collections we have done.  Instead of harvesting the seed by hand, it is more efficient to collect bitterbrush seed by placing a hopper (handmade by my mentor, Valda) under the bush, and smack the bush with a stick.  The seed then falls into the hopper along with some other plant matter, and to our dismay, thousands of large, black bugs.

Collecting bitterbrush seed

Most of the bugs that fell into the hopper were Say’s stink bugs (Chlorochroa sayi), although there were several different species of stink bugs being accidentally collected.  These bugs are pests, and feed on the bitterbrush seed by using their sucking mouth parts to extract the nutrients out of the seed.  The bugs were hard to notice when they were on the bitterbrush plants, but several fell into the hoppers every time we smacked the bushes.  Although the bugs could fly, most did not attempt to fly from the hoppers. There were so many bugs in the hoppers that it looked like the whole contents was moving.

Say’s stink bug

Knowing that we could not send the seed collection in to be cleaned in this state, we needed a way to get the bugs out of the seed.  We shoveled the seed into several paper shopping bags, and allowed them to sit overnight outside the BLM office building.  We returned in the morning to find bugs crawling all over the bags, the walls, and the sidewalk, as well as some disgusted coworkers.  We decided to move the bags to “The Yard”, the area where BLM keeps many of its vehicles and heavy machinery.  We left the bags there over the weekend, and returned on Monday to find most of the bugs gone.

Today we boxed up the seed (insect traps included, of course) and shipped it to the cleaning facility.  Hopefully enough of the seed is still healthy despite the infestation, and the Eagle Lake Field Office will get some bitterbrush seed back to use in fire rehabilitation.

Remember, fellow CLM interns: Just Say No to Bugs.

Sam

BLM

Eagle Lake Field Office

I spent the majority of time this past month searching for two species Erigeron decumbens and Horkelia congesta, an endangered  species and a species of concern both endemic to the Willamette Valley.  Unfortunately, Erigeron decumbens vegetative form blends in with other common grasses and forbs, making it very difficult to differentiate.  But when it is flowering, the striking yellow and purple colors are hard to miss!  While this work was very monotonous, I enjoyed the little things, finding various prairie critters, and listening to birds, good tunes, and NPR.   I now have a stronger back, an acute eye for particular textures and shades of green, and a holistic perspective on the crisis in Iraq.

  Erigeron decumbens – Willamette daisy

It has been fascinating observing how the prairie habitat has progressed with the season.  Flowering plants that flooded the fields with vibrant yellows, purples, reds, and blues in May and June are now merely dried up skeletons of carbon, which we now identify as thatch for purposes of habitat surveys.  The lowland prairies, submerged in water just two months ago, are clinging on to the last drops as even the sedges and rushes are beginning to dry out.  The upland, no question about it, wants to explode into a violent torrent of heat and flames and relieve itself of the heavy burden of matted dead grass, although most songbirds and small mammals probably love it.  New flowers are starting bloom, and new pollinators are starting to pollinate.  Grindelia integrifolia, known for its sticky leaves, are beginning to pop out of their spiky buds, and honey and bumble bees are ready to indulge on the sweet sugars they produce.  Ha! Nature happens!  Keep it real!

Eryngium petiolatum – coyote thistle 

Grindelia integrifolia-  Willamette valley gumweed