Two DSL in one trap

I can’t keep track of time anymore because it seems that I wrote my last blog only a couple days ago. Even though all the other interns from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have left, the wildlife biology department is still keeping me busy with multiple different projects.

Last week I finished pitfall trapping for the New Mexico State endangered Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.  I had originally set a goal to set traps at 30 different pitfall arrays, but because of help from other hires, I was able to set 34 pitfall arrays. I was very happy that we were able to catch 16 different Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, all in areas where they had never previously been captured before. All of the new capture locations will be downloaded onto the BLM Carlsbad GIS and no development will be allowed within 200 meters of a DSL capture location. I feel great accomplishment knowing that because of my work, the BLM will be able to better protect this endangered species and its vanishing habitat

I am now going to be shifting my focus from pitfall trapping to a number of different projects including Yellow-Billed Cuckoo surveys, aquatic macro-Invertebrate surveys, and funnel trapping in known heronry locations. I have started the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo surveys. Specifically, we are trying to see the presence or absence of another state endangered animal (Yellow-Billed Cuckoo) along the Delaware and Black river. We survey along both rivers in areas where there is good tree cover and write down all the birds seen in a 20minute window. We then move another 100 meters down the river, or to the next available dense tree area, and survey again. A recording of the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo call is used, in an effort to attract any nearby individuals. Although we have not seen any Yellow-Billed Cuckoos, we have seen some other riparian obligates including summer tanagers, blue gross beaks, belted kingfishers, and Vermillion Flycathers.  In a effort to arrive at our location as the sun is rising and maximize our chances of spotting a Yellow-Billed Cuckoo I have had to wake up at 4 am the last week, and my sleep schedule has been a little out of whack.

I am still enjoying myself hear in Carlsbad and the job never seems to slow down. This week I participated in a local radio show explaining what the BLM and I were doing trapping the DSL and to help raise awareness of the lizard and other BLM projects occurring in the area. I am keeping active on the weekends and trying to see as many places as I can in the Chihuahuan desert. I have attached a few images of me doing bird surveys and pictures of the last couple of Dune Sagebrush Lizards I caught and me talking on the local radio station.

Local radio show trying to raise awareness on conservation efforts

Yellow Billed Cuckoo surveys

Hello!

Everything is still going well in the Missoula, MT field office. I am wrapping up my final month here and time has been flying by! Our field crew is continuing forest inventories, seed collection and sensitive plant surveys! This week we have done all of the above.

We have recently been collecting for bitterbrush and serviceberry seeds, which are ecologically and culturally important to Montana. I must admit we have had quite a few trials and errors! We began by picking bitterbrush seeds individually, and quickly realized there has to be a more effective way. So today, we went out and brought a huge bucket and hit the bitterbrush branches and let the seeds fall into the bucket! We collected 10 fold more seeds today than before. Not to mention way more bugs than before! I must admit it has been a fun change of pace from forest inventory!

Unitl next time,
Cara

Hello everyone,

It’s funny to read my last post from back at the end of June…along with my crewmates I was moving our camping site to a sheep pasture to continue HAF monitoring in the foothills. Since then we’ve been also monitoring wetlands, attending trainings and moving on to working with thermograph data!

First of all, although we finished after the first week of July, it wouldn’t be right to leave out our last week of camping and HAF monitoring from this blog entry. The sheep pasture turned out to be a spot fairly close to the main road so that it wasn’t as remote, but far enough that we could take a quiet walk through the grassland or climb the hill behind our trailer to see the stars and watch the sun sink into the horizon at the end of the day. Those two weeks that we spent finishing HAF and living in that pasture definitely presented a whole new set of challenges and new experiences. In a way, it was like going back to the beginning of the season: we worked in unfamiliar roads in more remote sites that took longer to navigate and hike to. Also the vegetation species richness (amount of different species) just about exploded in the foothills, I’d never seen such a high forb density and we were taking plenty of specimens back to identify, so we learned a lot of new species! The fields of lupine and penstemon created a beautiful landscape of red, purple and yellow, you could even smell the lupine!

On the weekends, I’ve been going on some trips to explore the west, including Dinosaur National Monument, Ritter Island, Shoshone Falls and even Cheyenne Frontier Days in Wyoming! On the way back, I caught a glimpse of northern alpine Colorado and I want to check it out more. But I am absolutely in love with Utah (so much like San Juan!), so I’m building up a list of places to hike and camp in on my way out at the end of the internship.

Living in a trailer, I realized how content I am living in small spaces. It’s cozy to be in a nook, taking up a small amount of space with a wild, empty expanse around you. Now that our fieldwork camping is at an end, we are driving from our field office daily to our work sites, often to collect data on wetland vegetation, attributes and map it on GIS. But now we are also downloading the thermograph data, which consists of using a GPS to find the thermograph apparatus, which is staked down in a stream pool collecting water temperature data and importing the data onto a field computer before re-launching the thermograph again to gather data for another year.

These thermograph streams are often in remote canyons, so we’ve been lucky to see a lot of cool landscapes, plants and rock formations. I love sitting back against an aspen and thinking about when the last human was last there.

Of course, in terms of some of the thermograph sites, someone visits them annually, but they probably don’t stop at the places we would stop or go further beyond the thermograph sites.  But leaning against this exact tree? Perhaps I am the first.

Working on wetland inventories takes us to more lush regions with access to water, so the vegetation tends to include riparian sedges and rushes.

Sometimes we’ll see birds, and we always are on the lookout for wildlife. I think we’ll also start Lepa monitoring (rare peppergrass species) pretty soon!

‘Till next time!

Maria Paula

Jarbidge Field Office

Twin Falls, Idaho

An interesting time was had this past week and I was able to see and enjoy many beautiful species. Fire monitoring was a large part of the week and we camped close to a monitoring plot in the TRE fire at about 6700′ in the Pinenut Mountains of Douglas County, NV. It was a breathtaking experience to see the sun set behind the Sierra Nevada Mtns and the fiery clouds looming over the high peaks. However, the greatest experience was sitting up and watching some of the Perseid Meteor shower. Never have I seen an event so magnificent as the fleeting flight and trail of a large meteor; it is an experience that cannot be summed up in words, only viewed in awe and wonder for such an opportunity. Another friend who decided to visit in the night (not necessarily a friend when trying to sleep), was a  North American Deermouse (Peromyscus maniculatus). He was scurrying under the tarp I was sleeping on and eventually I sat up and looked with my light and there he was about 4 feet away, twitching his nose in the air. Funny indeed for such a small animal to make so much noise. The morning brought the sounds of the Mtn. Bluebird, Bushtits, White-breasted Nuthatches and many other friends of the air. It was a pleasant experience to enjoy the wonders of the natural world on a fine morning.

To the coming of Fall,

Ethan Hughes

CCDO BLM

It’s a rule of thumb that if we’re trying to collect seeds (or even count seeds per fruit), it’ll be windy. It doesn’t matter where we are or what the weather is like – it’ll be windy.

In late July, four of us went hunting for Spiranthes diluvialis (Ute lady’s tresses), a rarely seen endemic of the Basin. We scoped out Brush Creek and a little wetland on the edge of town. We didn’t find any that day, but Hector and I found two populations to collect seeds from and we even went back that same day to grab one them, Eleocharis quinqueflora (few flower spike rush). When we returned a few weeks later to collect seeds from tule (Schoenoplectus acutus occidentalis), we found three Ute lady’s tresses!

Finally! Ute lady’s tresses!

We’ve also collected Allium acuminatum (tapertip onion). At first, it was fun to pop off an inflorescence and get a nice, oniony smell, but it got old pretty quick and it took me two days to get the smell off my hands!

The view from Blue Mountain.

I love learning plants’ scientific names. I’ve realized that I can communicate more effectively with non-botanists if I can also throw down the common names, but I think scientific names are way more fun. While helping with rangeland health assessments one day, all my hard work of memorizing scientific names paid off! One of the range cons was naming off all the plants in the transect when he said, “Western salsify.” As the recorder, I paused briefly, confused, but when he clarified by saying “Tragopogon dubius” I knew exactly what he meant! I know T. dubius as goatsbeard and while I would’ve been able to reconcile the two names by observing the plant, it was a nice “Ah-Ha” moment to realize that scientific names are as important as my college botany professor claimed!

I’ve never before seen red spines on prickly pear!

On a Tuesday morning a couple weeks ago, my mentor called a powwow of myself, Hector, Lisa, and Jabus. She told us that she had just discovered that Uintah County was holding a special event the next day where members of the public could raft down the “C section” of the Green River. Our office was supplying three rafts and needed an extra person to row. Our boss had decided that this would be a prime opportunity for all of us to tag along and scout the “C section” for weeds and seeds.

Loading up for a day on the river.

We loaded up the next day and headed up to the John Jarvie Historic Ranch. We took a total of seven rafts and two duckies (a.k.a. inflatable kayaks) with around 30 members of the public, 10 of which were under the age of 16! Jabus and I each took a duckie while Hector volunteered his rowing abilities. We encountered quite a bit of Russian knapweed (Acroptilon repens), whitetop (Cardaria draba), Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense), and American licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota). The highlight of the day was spotting a bald eagle sitting on a dead tree only 10 feet from the water’s edge!

I have no idea what this plant is, but I like it!

At the end of the day, everyone headed home, except for us. We drove back to Jarvie and spent the night in the bunkhouse. The next morning, we took our backpack sprayers out and went to work. The “C section” needed more TLC than we could provide in one day so we did what we could and drove back to the office. The next week, we did the same song and dance: spray during the day and sleep over in the bunkhouse.

The water wheel at Jarvie Ranch.

On the second day of the second trip, though, things got interesting. After lunch, we stopped at an infestation of Canada thistle, whitetop, and teasel (Dipsacus sylvestris). During lunch, I had noticed a small, dark cloud above us, but the rest of the sky was bright and sunny so I thought nothing of it. A little while later, though, it began sprinkling. It was still bright and sunny so again, none of us were terribly concerned. We finished the spot and got back onto the river. And then it started to downpour. The little raincloud above us at lunch had morphed into a huge, rumbling storm! We were soaked within minutes. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it started hailing.

The edge of our “little” raincloud.

We endured the weather for about 20 minutes before it let up. At one point, the sky cleared and the sun shone through. We were still getting rained on and when we looked up, we could see the rain falling through the sunlight. It was pretty cool. By the time we rafted down to the take-out and dried off, it was already time to head back to the office.

Me in the duckie. It’s hard to see, but I’m drenched after the rain and hail.

Since then, things have been rather laid back at the office. Hector and I are on the hunt for warm season grasses and trying to supplement any collections from this year that didn’t make the 10,000 seed mark. Bend told us that our collection of shortspine horsebrush (Tetradymia spinosa) was only about 15-20% filled which was a big disappointment for us. Seed collection is slowing down,though, so I’ll be spending more time on the Green River in my last weeks.

Stay dry, fellow interns.

-Dani

BLM

Vernal, UT

P.S. The last photos are from personal adventures, but I wanted to throw them in because they’re pretty neat.

Split Mountain, up close and personal.

The bottom of Flaming Gorge Dam and the diversion tunnel used to convert the flow of the Green River during construction.

Petroglyphs courtesy of the Fremont People in Dinosaur National Monument.

Hi there, stranger.  In my first blog post, I described an allotment called Little Island, where Taters and I proudly scrambled up and down canyon walls in the name of Sage-Grouse habitat assessment.  Well I returned there today with a BLM employee, Peter, to inspect some fences, and check for signs of livestock grazing along the riparian section of the allotment.  Returning to the area brought up good memories from the beginning of my term, and helped me realize how much I have learned since then.

In addition to assessing Sage-Grouse habitat and checking for signs of livestock grazing, the crew and I have been inventorying wetlands, downloading stream temperature data from thermographs, and searching for sensitive frog populations.  Soon we will conduct transect inventories for the proposed endangered Slickspot peppergrass (Lepidium papilliferum) and its critical habitat.

While I will continue to use the land management skills that I have learned during this internship for years to come, the experiences that I have had only happen once in a lifetime.  Please find a brief description and pictures below of two recent adventures I have had here in the stunning Jarbidge Field Office.

On August 4^th, we, the monitoring crew, went into the Bruneau Canyon to download some stream temperature data.  After wading through the river to access the thermographs, we made a quick stop to enjoy the Indian Hot Springs.

Indian Hot Springs

A very hot spring indeed

On August 2^nd, I climbed to the top of the Jarbdidge Mountains with a fellow CLM intern, Alexi, from the Shoshone Field Office, and thought, “Hey, I can see my field office from up here!”

View from the field office

View from the top!

Jonathan Kleinman

Jarbidge Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

This is it. I’ve officially reached the point where I see seeds every time I close my eyes. I have dreams about seeds. I dream about seed collection. I fear to sleep because I might have yet another dream of insects eating the seeds and then proceeding to eat me. When the sunlight hits my eye, the visions of Purshia tridentata I had pictured take on psychedelic hues behind my lids.

I may be going crazy, or maybe it’s just because it’s seed season. Maybe it’s exposure to what we call the ‘poison box.’ Maybe it’s Rawlins. Maybe I’m just tired. I just don’t know.

If I have to constantly see seeds everywhere, at least Purshia seeds are kinda cool looking.

Everything has been ripe all at once. We just keep moving from collection to collection. Never stopping. Always moving. Wishing we could camp to cut out travel time. Four days bent like gatherer women for one Purshia collection. We gathered in the heat, in the cold, in the middle of a thunderstorm. I maybe have taken to collecting from a comfortable seating place on the ground next to my shrub. I maybe almost fell asleep laying on little granite chunks during my lunch break. The jabbing rocks felt good.

We’ve finished 17 1/2 collections though. It’s been very… fruitful… I’m sorry. I began to write “productive.” I couldn’t help myself. One more week and we should finish another four. Or maybe not if Wyoming continues to get so much rain. We will definitely finish another two by next week. Then we finally hit our lull. A nice break before the sage brush. We only will have to check on our Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus populations in that time. We’re in excellent shape. Our goal of 25 collections will be no problem. It would be even less of a problem and we’d have hit 25 by now but sometimes, cattle graze too heavily and our species seem to be their favorite delicacy. Or, we miss one because we were out collecting something else. Which do you chose? We have two people, one vehicle. Then there was the HECO lost to fungus. What can you do? Move on. New vouchers. New locations. New species.

Capturing pollinators on film during a break from Pseudoroegneria spicata collection.

One of our collection sites: Prospect Creek Road. Collections of Purshia, Eriogonum, a                                               geranium, Idaho fescue, and squirreltail.

We still tromp around in oil and gas fields. We collect near uranium mines. We pass through H2S fields. We find ourselves dehydrated, further from the truck than expected, turned around, a tad dizzy, you name it. We have some fabulous stories. We’ve never been hurt or truly lost. I have also gotten to officially speak with a real cowboy. Like a legit, grizzled, working Wyoming cowboy. We’re learning the area very well, and we do officially spend some quality time in truly gorgeous locations.

Last week we headed out to Steens Mountain to do plant inventorying for two RNAs (Resource Natural Area). The purpose of an RNA is the be a “naturally occurring physical or biological unit where natural conditions are maintained in so far as possible”. They are also areas that can be used as baselines for measuring the quality of other similar environments and the effects that humans have on them, used for science, and used as a gene pool for species. The two RNAs we were to visit are called Rooster Comb and Little Wildhorse Lake. Rooster Comb is a 720 acre RNA near the base of the Steens and the Little Blitzen River. Little Wildhorse Lake RNA is about 240 acres and is documented to contain nine special status plants. We spent three days up on the Steens, staying out at a little cabin of a building that the BLM owns near Riddle Brothers Ranch.

We spent two days at Rooster Comb to cover more of the area. It was a nice hike in and out, traveling a good chunk of the way by the Little Blitzen. It was pleasant to settle in and examine the plants, asking “who are you?” and trying to listen for a response. We identified 79 plant species in Rooster Comb and I am sure there are many more we missed. A few of my favorites were Actea pachypoda (doll’s eye), Aquilegia formosa (western columbine), Populus angustifolia (narrowleaf cottonwood), Collomia linearis (tiny trumpet), and Scirpus microcarpus (panicled bulrush). We had to do some detective work since many of the forbs were no longer flowering. We used the vegetative features to figure these out.  On Thursday morning we rose at the crack of dawn and drove up to the top of the Steens. The views are spectacular, as you can see deep into the gorges of the green and craggy landscape. Little Wildhorse Lake is situated at the base of one of these gorges, where the land flattens out for several hundred meters before rising steeply again. Looking down from the top, the lake looks small and fish-shaped, the descent long. After taking the Gorge Trail a bit too far, we doubled back to the unmaintained Desert Trail. We followed it until it dwindled to nothing, and we were left scrabbling among boulders, dirt, loose rocks, and vegetation. Due to the likelihood of the feet slipping despite the will of the brain, we turned tail and headed back up, hoping to find a better way down on some other day.

Still, I was happy and excited to see two special status plants in the field above Little Wildhorse Lake. These were Steens Mountain Paintbrush (Castijella pilosa var. steenensis) and Steens Mountain Penstemon (Penstemon davidsonii var. praeteritus), both endemic to Steens. The paintbrush is a plant of similar style and structure to other paintbrushes, but with grayish-green bracts instead of being brightly colored. The penstemon is a large, brightly pink-purple and grows in mats low to the ground. Gorgeous!

Back at the top of the Steens, we met a botanist who is researching grasses (a new species!) and completing an Oregon guide to Carex species. He showed us on the map a way he has gotten down to Little Wildhorse Lake, so when we go out again we will try that way and hopefully make it down. I hope we do because I really want to see the plants down there – it is very beautiful. I would also like to find more of the special status plants and have a chance to do the paperwork and GPS boundary markings for the populations.

I went back up to the Steen over the weekend to hike down to Wildhorse Lake (a different lake from Little Wildhorse, but nearby). This is a steep descent, but has a good trail. The Eriogonums (desert buckwheats) were in abundant bloom, quilting the slopes with varying shades of yellow. Purple monkey flowers (Minulus spp.), red paintbrush (Castijella spp.), light purple wild flax (Linum perenne), the many stamened yellow blazing star (Mentzelia laevicaulis), white sandwort (Arenaria aculeata), and fuzzy pussytoes (Antennaria spp.) were also around. The lake sparkled in the sunlight and a long-beaked, long-legged wading bird stalked in the shallows.

Wildflowers at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez.

Castijella spp. at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez.

Eriogonum spp. at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez.

Minulus spp. at Wildhorse Lake. Courtesy Ariana Gloria-Martinez

I am now in my last month of my internship (where on Earth did the time go?!) and I am working on wrapping up the last projects I have been working on. My workload as of late includes finishing up some field work including animal activity surveys and collecting of pro v2 loggers that record temperature and humidity, massive amounts of data entry, data processing, and statistics as well as processing camera pictures and some more data entry!

It has been really awesome working on these projects from their inception to now the very end and to see how they have evolved over time and now finally seeing the results! I have learned a lot about experimental/project design, planning, implementation, trouble shooting and now data processing which will be invaluable skills for me to have in graduate school this September.

I got the walking blues.  After six years, my favorite pair of hiking boots took their last steps.  These boots have carried me across the street, across the country, and across the world.  I have hiked with them in New Jersey, Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, North Carolina, Utah, Nevada, California, Germany, France, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Australia and Tasmania.  They supported me when I worked for four summers as a janitor, giving me my footing as I hauled heavy desks and office furniture up and down flights of stairs.  They took me up and over mountains when I worked in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont.  Last summer we hiked ten 4,000 footers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  Together we hiked the Long Trail, and they stayed strong even when my knees could not.  These boots were made for walking.

Sadly, my boots met their match in the lava rock desert of the Eagle Lake Field Office.  Stumbling over loose rocks and sage brush, the soul of my boots was ripped apart.  I did the best I could, buying a tube of Gorilla Glue and trying desperately to keep them in one piece.  But when your soul is broken, there is no going back.  The soul of my boot ripped apart once again the next day.  I looked down at my dusty boots and decided that this was really the end.

Today, my new boots arrived in the mail.  They feel stiff and clunky on my feet, but I know that in time we will get along.  I hope that they carry me just as far as my old boots did.  As for my trusty old pair, I have a plan.  There is a tree on the side of Highway 395 near Reno that is home to hundreds of old pairs of shoes.  Different colors, styles, sizes, all strung up in the tree by their laces.  Next time I pass that tree, I will hoist my boots up into it.  There they can finally rest and reflect on where they’ve been.

Whatever you do, take care of your shoes.