A day on the river

It’s just about the halfway point for me and I am starting to get a bit worried about making my seed collection target of 30 species (maybe we shouldn’t have been so ambitious, I am only one person after all and I’m only at about 10). Some days are much less fruitful than others; I just spent about an hour trying to ID a plant that turned out to be the noxious Russian Knapweed, Acroptilon repens (yuck! I wanted so badly for it to be a native!). I guess I still need to brush up on my weed ID skills. I haven’t had the chance to go out in the field with the weeds specialist yet, but I did get to go out on the river and that was spectacular.

So the river of which I speak is the Missouri River, which is about 2 hours north of Lewistown, where I am stationed. One of the largest rivers in the US, it flows for 2,341 miles from the mountains in western MT to the Mississippi River in Missouri. It is a sight for sore eyes seeing so much water after weeks of dry heat that has turned the ground into a solid brick. OK, I lied a bit; Lewistown has a beautiful spring running through town, which is actually the third largest freshwater spring in the world at 50,000 gallons per minute with some of the world’s purest water. I am pretty spoiled with excellent drinking water, but other than that it is pretty dry.

The 149 mile stretch of river on which I boated is part of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, meaning it is land that will be protected from development forever. The proclamation of the monument was actually made by President Bill Clinton right before he left office and much of it looks the same today as it would have when Lewis and Clark navigated the river in the early 1800s. There are some cattle grazing allotments (grandfathered in) along the river today and that was one of the reasons I went on the river, to help with fence repair. The BLM manages the monument and is responsible for the up-keep of some of the fence lines, especially near the river where the water level fluctuates, which constantly changes the end point of the fences. Lewis and Clark had predicted that the land surrounding the river would be almost impossible for settlement, but yet it happened when homesteaders came in the early 1900s and the remnants can be seen today in the grazing cattle and remaining standing structures. The land surrounding the river is known as the “breaks”, the term for the dramatic draws and cliffs that the river has created in the sandstone over time. We boated for 30 miles upriver while I scanned the breaks for big horn sheep, bald eagles and other wildlife. The 30 miles seemed like an endless journey through almost pure wilderness and I would have missed the sheep completely had Aurora, who manages this area, not pointed them out to me.
Some days when I am out scouting for plants alone I often have no luck in finding a large enough population or only find species whose seed have passed. Lately, what has made up for the lack of plant luck is my luck in coming across bird nesting areas, especially the all-important species of concern. I have been dive-bombed by goshawks, which was very frightening. They would fly straight at my head and I couldn’t help but duck even though they’d veer off at the last minute. I also thought I was going to be carried off by a golden eagle when less than 20ft away, I startled it and watched the massive creature rise out of the grass ready for it to turn back toward me and finish me off. Thankfully that didn’t happen, I just watched him soar and discovered his mother and their nest in a cottonwood. Maybe my mentors are turning me toward wildlife…

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Big horn sheep!

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Lamb!

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Fritillary on Gaillardia aristata

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Goshawk eyeing me suspiciously.

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Goshawk on the defense

 

 

July in the Western Slope: Beyond Cacti

July at the BLM Grand Junction Field Office provided more fun work experiences and opportunities than the ongoing search for the Colorado Hookless Cactus in the North Desert. I was able to join about 20 office employees on a field trip to Pine Ridge, an area near DeBeque where a 40,000 acre fire raged in 2012, the largest my office has dealt with. The purpose of the trip was for everyone to see how fire rehabilitation efforts were working, despite some initial complications, such as the fire happening at the end of a fiscal year so they were not able to chain and re-seed as soon as they hoped to. And then there was little rain for about a year for what they did seed, but things are looking okay for most areas with a few areas dominated by Bromus tectorum, of course. The first thing they seeded was a manufactured sterile grass to just stabilize the soil and prevent erosion (they had a big problem after the fire of ash and soil eroding into nearby water supplies) and even though it was supposed to be sterile it is still around a little bit… They did not re-seed any forbs so it was good to see some globemallow and others popping up on their own!

We have ventured beyond the desert to some creek beds and canyons to search for Sclerocactus glaucus and were rewarded one day with seeing wild horses! They were beautiful but I felt a little bad because as soon as they saw us they immediately froze and didn’t twitch an ear or flick a tail while we snacked nearby for 20 minutes. Eventually the mother and colt continued grazing but the others didn’t dare move at all until we left.

Wild Horses

Wild Horses

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We also got to help the office hydrologist do a stream health assessment in the Dominguez Escalante National Conservation Area. We did macroinvertebrate sampling and discharge and flow rate monitoring. The water was high from monsoonal rains and it felt soooo good!

Macroinvertebrate sampling

Macroinvertebrate sampling

 

macroinvertebrate sampling

macroinvertebrate sampling

 

Flow rate and discharge monitoring

Flow rate and discharge monitoring

I took last week off to visit my fiance who is working in Jackson, Wyoming and my mom drove from NC to meet me there. We went to Yellowstone and Teton National Parks and saw these guys pretty close up (it was scary when one tourist started whistling at the grizzly bear….):

Elk

Elk

 

Grizzly bear

Grizzly bear

 

Elk

Elk

 

Baby bison

Baby bison

My mom and I then continued on a little road trip to visit Ouray, Telluride, Mount Evans (where I saw bristlecone pines over 1,000 years old!), Denver, Rocky Mountain National Park, Eagle, and Glenwood Springs. I especially loved RMNP because above the treeline was cloudy and misty and reminded me so much of Ireland and Scotland, and I also finally saw a moose!

Back to work this week!

Lindsey B,

BLM GJFO, Colorado

NRCS and CMP

The past month has been both fantastic and exhausting! Most of my July was spent in the backcountry: I first spent two weeks on the remote Sitkinak Island (SE of Kodiak Island) where I served as a biotech/botanist for an NRCS Soil/Eco Site Survey, then cashed in all of my accrued comp hours to go backpacking in the Bitterroots with one of my best friends.

As is the case for southern Kodiak Island, spruce and alder have yet to reach Sitkinak. This makes ecological site descriptions a bit more complicated than usual: because most of the preexisting descriptions involve alder and spruce or their eventual succession, the communities on Sitkinak don’t quite “fit” the typical community delineations. Though that’s ultimately a task for the senior NRCS ecologist to tackle, I thoroughly enjoyed discussing what it means to be a Reference Plant Community in this context, and the pros and cons of our current methodology for site description.

In the absence of alder and spruce, then, the island is dominated by forbs, graminoids, and occasional Salix sp. which is quite alright with the 500 or so cattle whose ancestors have inhabited the island since 1937.  The Alaska Meat Company currently holds the grazing rights for both East and West Sitkinak, and for you omnivores out there interested in conscientious meat consumption, it’s difficult to beat the degree of “free range” achieved on Sitkinak.

It’s also hard to beat the views that Sitkinak affords. It would seem our NRCS crew somehow pleased the gods, because the skies remained blue for eleven of our fourteen days on usually-grey-and-misty Sitkinak.

Until next time, I’ll leave you folks with a few highlights of the island!

Looking out at Kodiak over an Eriophorum-Sphagnum dominated swale

Looking out at Kodiak over an Eriophorum-Sphagnum dominated swale

Looking east toward the northern end of east Sitkinak

Looking east toward the northern end of east Sitkinak

Looking east toward the southern end of east Sitkinak

Looking east toward the southern end of east Sitkinak

Sitkinak's primary river

Sitkinak’s primary river

The lagoon dividing the two islands

The lagoon dividing the two islands

Solidago-graminoid plains
Solidago-graminoid plains

Diggin' holes and findin' plants!

Diggin’ holes and findin’ plants!

 

Fishing and caving in Idaho

It’s August already and Alexi and I have crossed off a few more things on our Idaho Bucket List. The most exciting of these accomplishments is that we finally caught our first fish in Idaho over the Fourth of July weekend! And it couldn’t have been in a more beautiful place. We backpacked into the Sawtooth Wilderness up near Stanley, Idaho with Jonathan, another CLM intern out of Twin Falls.  Our destination was Toxaway Lake, but unfortunately there was too much snow at the pass we were going to cross, so we decided to camp at Alice Lake.

Not a bad view from our campsite at Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Wilderness.

Not a bad view from our campsite at Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Wilderness.

We were a little hesitant about camping there. On our way up we passed a man who saw our fishing rods sticking out of our packs and immediately began to tell us how the fish were not biting at Alice Lake. He told us he had tried everything and seemed to have fancier equipment than us. Then he proceeded to tell us how the mosquitos were so terrible that he spent most of the time in his tent. So yeah we were a little apprehensive. But as soon as we came upon Alice Lake we saw a woman who had already caught a few fish and was catching even more in just a half hour. Alexi and I immediately dropped our packs and ran for the shore. Within an hour we had both caught our first fish and it was glorious. They were beautiful brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) with their signature pink dots outlined with blue haloes and bright red/orange lower fins.

Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) caught at Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Wilderness

Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) caught at Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Wilderness

As soon as we caught a fish immediately got out our knives and cut off its head so it wouldn’t suffer. Then Alexi taught me how to gut the fish by making a cut on the ventral side and then pushing the organs out. I was definitely not expecting the fish to still be moving during this process so I was a little spooked when it suddenly jumped out of my hand (this was a good 5 minutes after I had cut off its head).

The gutted brook trout-probably right before it jumped out of my hand!

The gutted brook trout-probably right before it jumped out of my hand!

We threw the gutted fish into a plastic bag, tied it to a rock and put it in the water to keep them cold while we kept fishing. I’m not sure why that man we had encountered earlier didn’t catch any fish, they were definitely biting! We brought some salt, pepper and butter packets just in case we caught fish and cooked them on our camping stoves. These brook trout were meaty and delicious.

Nothing like eating freshly caught trout in the wilderness!

Nothing like eating freshly caught trout in the wilderness!

Fishing at our campsite at Alice Lake.

Fishing at our campsite at Alice Lake.

Although they are an invasive species out here, we appreciated their contribution to our first successful fishing experience in Idaho. Since that trip we’ve also tried our hand at fly fishing and it turns out we are actually pretty good at it. We got the casting technique down and caught a few rainbow trout up near Sun Valley, Idaho. I’m currently looking for fly rods on Craigslist.

Catching rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) during our first try at fly fishing!

Catching rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) during our first try at fly fishing!

Work has also been very exciting lately since we have started doing bat roost surveys in lava tubes. Before entering the caves we have to put on jumpsuits, helmets, kneepads and gloves. We also have to make sure we have three sources of light. After exiting each cave we have to decontaminate to prevent the spread of white nose syndrome, which has decimated the bat populations in the East and is heading west. I’ve never been caving in lava tubes, so I wasn’t expecting everything to be so sharp. There were some places where we had to crawl around on our stomachs to squeeze through some tight areas, which resulted in many bruises the next day. Most of the cave entrances were blocked by a wall of Russian thistle (Salsola sp.), so we had to battle through them to find the entrances.

Had to battle through Russian thistle (Salsola sp.) to find some of the cave entrances.

Russian thistle (Salsola sp.) blocking some of the cave entrances.

At some of the caves we were greeted by Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) that flew right at us and over our heads. They build their nests at the entrance of the caves, which are littered with owl pellets and bones of small mammals and birds. I’ve got a good collection of owl feathers, which are the softest feathers. Altogether we’ve surveyed about 30 caves in our field office. I was super excited because about half of the caves had Lord of the Rings themed names- so I was nerding out a bit. We have found only one maternity colony in a cave called Aragorn. The maternity colony of Townsend’s big-eared bats (Corynorhinus townsendii) was comprised of six adults and two pups. The pups were quite large already- about half the size of the adults.

Towsend's big-eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) maternity roost with 6 adults and 2 pups.

Towsend’s big-eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) maternity roost with 6 adults and 2 pups.

One of the bats started to fly around us, so we quickly left so as not to disturb them anymore. Although we only have found one maternity colony so far, it is still very exciting since this is the first confirmed documented sighting of a Townsend’s big-eared bat maternity colony in the Shoshone Field Office.

Well it has been an exciting month since my last blog post. I’ve been applying to winter jobs like crazy (have an interview on Wednesday!), took a trip to the Tetons, did a trail run up to Sawtooth Lake and went home to North Carolina for a week. Yesterday I did a hike with the Idaho Conservation League up to Grays Peak in the Pioneer Range and saw some incredible views and met some interesting people. I know August will be just as exciting- I just wish it would slow down a little bit.

Until next time,

Avery

Shoshone BLM Office

Running up to Sawtooth Lake- still lots of snow up here!

Running up to Sawtooth Lake- still lots of snow up here!

View from Grays Peak in the Pioneer Range near Sun Valley. Notice the Eriogonum ovafolium in the foreground.

View from Grays Peak in the Pioneer Range near Sun Valley. Notice the Eriogonum ovafolium in the foreground.

An assassin fly with its prey that landed on our truck the other day.

An assassin fly with its prey that landed on our truck the other day.

Found some friends in Ketchum, Idaho who are helping to clear out some of the invasives.

Found some friends in Ketchum, Idaho who are helping to clear out some of the invasives.

Found a nice swimming hole along the Little Wood River- complete with a diving board!

Found a nice swimming hole along the Little Wood River- complete with a diving board!

Witnessing the start of the Dietrich Fire near Shoshone.

Witnessing the start of the Dietrich Fire near Shoshone.