Fire season has been ramping up down here (or up here depending on where you are) in Southern Oregon.  Not only did the largest fire in Oregon, The Oregon Gulch fire maxing out at ~36,500+ acres, just get contained roughly 20 miles south of us, but 7,000 recorded lighting strikes on Monday has lead to 12 new fires that are getting bigger as I type.  The socked in smokey valley, mixed with 100 degree days, has made going out and collecting not so enjoyable.  But being the diligent seed heads that we are, we have still been keeping up with collections and as of last week we met our target collection number of 60 and have since then surpassed it by a lot.  With the vast diversity in eco-regions and elevation in our district, our number of seed collections don’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.  It has been nice to think that maybe the seeds I collect today, will be used to rehab these burned sites tomorrow.

Oregon Gulch Fire

Oregon Gulch Fire

The top of Grizzly Peak

Since my first post, Cara (intern), Joe (mentor), and I have done a total of 11 SOS collections and somewhere around 50 habitat assessment transects. Many of our transects have been done at locations that have been assessed in the past, specifically at allotments that have been burned in the last year or so. Hearing our mentor, Joe, talk about how allotments used to look even within the last year, gives me a good idea of how superficially destructive fire can be. It’s always a welcome site to see the return of good forb diversity as well as little sagebrush recruits. On our travels we’ve come across some “friends in the foothills.” I’ve attached a few pictures below.

In addition to transects and SOS collections, we’ve also started to help with riparian assessments of “PFC” (proper functioning condition). This has been a nice change of pace as we get to work with more employees within our field office and gain more perspective into the other types of work that go on.

I’m looking forward to continuing to be involved in other projects as the collection season comes to a close and we finish up our habitat assessments. We’ve heard rumor of working with butterflies, raptors, some fish-shocking, and maybe even a river-ranger trip to monitor cow/grazing presence along the Payette River. Fingers crossed for all of those things!!

Hope everyone is learning a lot and still finding time to get goofy!

Best,

Zander

Intern at Four Rivers Field Office, Boise, ID.

Mourning dove eggs under an Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata).