Monday:  The week began as usual with office work and preparation. We use this day to research the area that we will be going to so that we know the species that have occurred in that area previously. While preparing to go to our field sites we make maps of the area so that we can get to our sites quickly and efficiently.

Tuesday-Wednesday:  We all arrive at the field office earlier than the time we plan on leaving so that we can load up the trucks with all of our equipment and water. Once the trucks are loaded we head out. This Tuesday we headed out to the Pinenuts to do some Fire Monitoring. Each of these sites required a bit of a hike in but provided a wonderful view of the valleys below and the fire scars marking the surrounding hills.

The view from one of our monitoring site.

The view of the burn scars on the hill sides from one of our monitoring site.

Thursday:  Half of us went to the Herbarium to verify vouchers collected for seed collections and from field sites.The other half of us went on a seed collecting adventure. We traveled to a riparian area where we collected four species. It was at this site that I found a beautifully constructed spider web.

A beautifully constructed spider web.

My time here in Shoshone, ID is coming to a bitter end. In less than a month, I will be leaving Shoshone and moving to Boise for a new adventure. The past few weeks have been dedicated to bat surveying and acoustic monitoring. With most of my background in vegetation monitoring, this is an interesting change and I am happy to be learning something new. After a quick scan through the acoustic data, we recorded little brow bats, big brown bats, and Townsend’s big-eared bats. Acoustic monitoring requires the use of a lot of technology that I didn’t have a lot of experience with. We used a recording device called the Anabat which had a GPS, display screen, and a microphone attached to it. Around 8:30pm we headed out towards the Little Wood Reservoir, attached the microphone to the top of the truck and watched the screen to see sudden changes in frequency levels. Though the process of acoustic monitoring is very mild, you may not see many bats, and you are mostly staring at a screen.  It’s amazing when you know you are recording a bat! It gave me a new appreciation for the technology that is available to us to use while monitoring. We were supposed to attend the Eastern Idaho Bat Blitz this week to do more acoustic monitoring and mist netting, but due to weather it was cancelled. Hopefully it will be rescheduled for next week. Besides that, we are wrapping up the season and finalizing some of the nested frequency data from earlier in the season.

I hope everyone is enjoying the last few weeks of summer.

Alexi

Coming from the fringes of punk-rock and beat-the-system movements, I did not expect that I would find a job working for the federal government so fulfilling, but this is precisely what I discovered as a CLM intern with the BLM. I enjoyed the hands-on work, assisting other staff and agencies, and even the politics. Above all else, I want to work as a public servant, which I believe is at the core of government work.

Beyond establishing my interest in working for the federal government, the most I gained from this internship is confidence.  This internship required that I work independently, which means I had to rely on my judgment and expertise to accomplish many new tasks. With this confidence, I have relaxed about my career prospects.  I now know I have a good head on my shoulders and that I will find a career I enjoy.  Thanks to everyone who made this internship possible.

There are several big changes in my life following this internship.  First, I will drive back from California to the east coast. This is big because I have lived in Cali for a year now and thought I would be here longer.  Second, I will be traveling to Nepal and South Korea for three months.  This is a trip I have been planning and saving for since the beginning of college, and I am thrilled that it is finally happening. I will be visiting a Nepali friend and Peace Corps volunteers. Visiting PC volunteers in a new addition my journey thanks to my internship: my BLM co-worker and cubicle-mate, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, encouraged me to check out the PC while traveling.  Third, when I return to the states, I will be pursuing a government job.  I have been stalking USAjobs regularly and applying frequently.

Fingers crossed,

Stephanie Wilson

Arcata BLM Field Office

Arcata, CA

Rockin’ a banana slug outfit with Ranger Julie

This is a guide to how to choose a career. More specifically, this guide is about the beginning stages of how I figured out what a “fulfilling” career means to me. This guide is beneficial for people that likely embody the following characteristics. First, you believe that work can be fulfilling and are seeking work of this nature.  Second, you do not have any clear idea of what you want to be when you grow up. If you wanted to be a police officer since age 2 ½, this guide is useless. Alternatively, you may have had a clear idea of what you wanted to be when you grew up, but are now disenchanted. You now know that being a vet does not mean you get to hold fluffy puppies all day, but instead involves a lot of sick animals and poop. Third, you are not drowning in debt and are willing to make temporary monetary sacrifices, perhaps with parents there as a safety net. To follow this guide, you will have to work temp jobs and internships that don’t pay the best and don’t have benefits. You will have to put thoughts of retirement and owning a house on hold. You might have to donate a large portion of your stuff to Goodwill so that your belongings can fit in your two-door Toyota Echo.

After graduating, I had no idea what jobs even existed, especially because the college I attended focused on teaching critical thinking instead of how to get a job. I was aimless. First, I had to view this position as an advantage. I have incredible amounts of freedom right now with little responsibilities and that allows me to be mobile and explore, which is a freedom I will have to sacrifice when I do have a more permanent career.  I took advantage of that freedom and embraced this opportunity to explore career paths rather than blindly attending graduate school or accepting any job I could get.

Second, I accepted that I truly had no idea what career I was interested in and that that was okay. Ironically, I learned this through reading the book What Color Is Your Parachute. This classic helps reader figure out what his/her ideal job is based on his/her specific skills and preferences.  As guided by the book, I created a map that outlined my preferences for all aspects of a job: salary, work environment, location, etc. At the end, what I held in my hands was a map full of vague descriptions that outlined this one fact: I had absolutely no idea what my preferences were. I needed to explore careers more in order to know them.

Third, I changed how I thought about a career.  This is the most important step I took. I had always focused on what “job” I wanted, as in what I wanted to do day to day and what career title, such as “biologist” or “botanist, I wanted. However, I was missing the context that this job fits in. A biologist does different tasks day to day depending on the organization s/he works for.  I shifted my focus, then, to the context. With some guidance from my father, I concluded that there were largely four different contexts that organizations with paying jobs fit in: for-profit, non-profit, governmental, and academic (note: academic organizations aren’t really its own category, since many are non-profits, but professorship is such a unique experience that I counted it as separate context). I focused on deciding which larger context, rather than the specific job, was the best fit for me.

Fourth, I worked for organizations in each of these different contexts as an intern or temp. I tried to remain unbiased by judging my experience based on the values and structure of the organization. For example, I found that even though non-profits are not pursuing profit, there is still a strong focus on making enough money to stay in business. This influences the culture of the work-place, and I had to decide if this was an aspect I preferred and weigh how important this aspect was in light of others.  I focused on weighing the values and traits of the context rather than on more personal reasons, such as how much I liked my fellow co-workers and supervisors. I will focus on the personal aspects more now that I have decided which context I want to work in and as I refine what work I find meaningful.

I feel very satisfied with the process I have taken and the context I have chosen. Perhaps this will help others, too. Best of luck!

Stephanie Wilson

Arcata BLM Field Office

Arcata, CA

Hello there! The monsoons seem to be finally kicking in here in the Four Corners region, a bit behind schedule. My fellow intern Sarah and I had been scrapping and scrounging for SOS collections up until about a week ago because of the drought. Now we are knee deep in species to collect from and part of the job is to keep everything straight – what IS ready, what COULD be ready, what we need to check on, arranging priorities and organizing our weeks to squeeze it all in. Because of the scarcity of good collection material prior to rainfall in our immediate area, we began looking further afield (far out, man!) and this has resulted in potential collections for the coming weeks in some really amazing landscapes. We’ve been able to explore San Juan and Carson National Forests and lots of new BLM land. I’ve seen many blog entries about the deteriorating road conditions in the field and (fingers crossed) we’ve been ok so far, but the roads are getting slick as the plants are making seed!

I’m thrilled to be so busy and we’ve had many learning opportunities beyond our SOS collecting lately as well. We joined other members of our office on a noxious weeds field trip to learn more about the identification and management of these nasty plants and as a bonus took part in the delicious barbeque afterwards! Another day we went out with our threatened and endangered species specialist to assist him with the transplanting of the adorable and state endangered Brack’s Cactus, Sclerocactus cloverae var.brackii. This was a lot of fun and there is always some special ambience felt in the presence of such a thing, but part of it was also saddening. I was dismayed that we had to transplant the little cactus to begin with, because its survival rates may prove to be poor and I wish it could stay where it happily grew originally. This brings me to a topic which I have avoided touching on so far, which is the oil and gas industry and its death grip on the Farmington area, the reason we had to transplant the cactus and make way for the things our society deems more important. However, I will save the in depth discussion for another blog entry.

On a lighter note, Sarah, Sheila, and I will keep working hard to make as many wonderful seed collections as we possibly can and learning from our coworkers and filling our heads with images of the beauty of the southwest. Last weekend I hiked 8 miles and camped out in Colorado’s gorgeous Echo Basin, didn’t see another soul besides my dog and a mule deer the whole time, and I relished the solitude. I also was lucky to have a friend visit from back east and we got out to Utah to check out Canyonlands and Natural Bridges and Manti-La-Sal National Forest, (all of which I highly recommend). The outdoor experiences here are supreme and I’m loving it! I hope all of you throughout the west are finding the CLM program as fulfilling and amazing as we are!

hoodoos and badlands in Lybrook, NM

Transplanting cactus

After a hard day of collection – our booty!

I get paid to collect seeds here? Wow! Echo Basin, San Juan National Forest

Well, I suppose I’m a little late on the blog for July but I got priorities and let’s be real, is anyone reading this? For those of you still feigning interest I will now list off the collections we have done since my last blog: Hesperostipa comata, Elymus elymoides, Artemisia arbuscula, Poa secunda, Atriplex gardneri, 2 Purshia tridentata, Oenothera pallida var. Trichocalyx, Achnatherum hymenoides, Eriogonum ovalifolium, Eriogonum umbellatum, Pseudoroegneria spicata, Psoralidium lanceolatum, Sporobolis airoides and we have started a Geranium richardsonii collection. So, needless to say we have been super-duper busy especially when some species’ seeds need to be counted one-by-one such as our antelope bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) and the lemon scurfpea (Psoralidium lanceolatum). I hope you enjoyed my list. We are up to 18 collections now and are getting close to our goal of 25.

We did find time for one other project helping our fisheries biologist break up some beaver dams on one of the tributaries to the famed Muddy Creek, an area of conservation importance in part due to the concurrence of 4 native fish species endemic to the Colorado river basin: Colorado River cutthroat, bluehead sucker, flannelmouth sucker, and roundtail chub. This area is highly affected by coal bed and natural gas development both of which use large amounts of water which then becomes polluted and must be disposed of. Second to the threat of energy development is the threat of invasive species which prey upon and hybridize with our native species. It was a welcome break from seed collecting to grab a Pulaski and slap on some waders and just raise some hell for the beavers.
In other news: I went to Colorado to visit a friend and do some hiking and camping. The wildflowers were going crazy in the mountains and when we reached our destination we came upon a community of marmots and pikas. The marmots were quite friendly while the pikas were a little shy. On one of our collections I found a giant ram skull with the horns completely in tact. I nabbed that baby up, as you can see, and am thinking of ways to strap it onto my head for a Halloween costume. Ooh yeah, and some great news for the environment, Germany put a 7-year ban on fracking!

That’s all for now folks, running on comp time.

Life up north has been progressing quite wonderfully.  After a week getting friendly with the gold miners on the Fortymile river and a June and July full of record breaking rain (http://www.alaskapublic.org/2014/07/11/fairbanks-rains-approach-record-levels/), August has arrived bringing with it some dryness (hallelujah!) and color.  While the lower 48 is still solidly in summer, leaves are beginning to change up here: aspen leaves turning bright yellow, fireweed red and dwarf birch an alarming shade of highlighter orange.

Fall is coming…

In my last post I mentioned starting on a post-fire community monitoring project in Nome Creek.  This plan was put to action a few weeks ago by myself, Jim (wildlife biologist) and a fellow intern, Emily.  Jim, Emily and I drove to Nome Creek, arriving too late to complete a site that night.  Plus it was raining (ok maybe August hasn’t been THAT dry).  Instead we took a short stroll behind the field station to practice plant ID and test out our rain gear.  Jim had a solid knowledge of different mosses and lichens as he often works with caribou.  This is something I have not had much experience with, so I am looking forward to getting better at moss and lichen ID as this project progresses.  The 30+ bags Jim has of just ‘common’ mosses that look exactly alike is not an encouraging sign, however.

The next morning we navigated to two different sites in the Nome Creek area.  The first was ¼ mile from the road.  This seems close but tussocks, hummocks and sphagnum considered, it took quite a while to navigate to the site using GPS.  Once there we had to locate the part of the area that was actually surveyed by British students back in 2001 with only 2 grainy disposable camera pictures to aid us.  Keep in mind these sites burned in 2004 so we were often looking a rather different scene.  We eventually matched up ridgelines, clumps of dirt and the charred remains of trees and laid down a transect along what we hoped was close to the original transect.  For the first site, Jim walked us through the protocol: recording extensive site information, doing a point intercept transect, collecting soil samples, estimating caribou browse, denoting burn severity, measuring amount of organic matter burned, counting saplings, taking photos and installing site markers so that these sites can be more easily found in the future and used for long term ecological studies.  Our current goal for the data is to investigate levels of spruce regeneration among plots and analyze how this relates to burn severity, pre-fire amounts of organic matter, site soil moisture and amount of organic matter burned.  Jim (and others) have noted that often sites that were previously spruce forest will regenerate after particularly severe fires as deciduous dominant forests (or simply shrublands), see: http://www.firescience.gov/projects/briefs/05-1-2-06_FSBrief10.pdf

All said and done, surveying one site took upwards of four hours.  Quite the procedure.

Emily and I visited more sights after Jim departed, noticing low spruce regeneration on all.  I am excited to collect more data and see where this project goes.  As summer is coming to an end, data collection will have to resume next May.  I’ve just received word that I will be staying in Fairbanks through next May and hopefully into the field season so with any luck I will be able to follow this project along and collect data next summer.

Transect line ready at top of Nome Creek Tabletop Mountain Trail

Some Populus tremuloides regeneration

Odd fungus found at Nome Creek Campground. Any fungus nerds out there that know what this is?

Other exciting August happenings include a second trip to Denali National Park to meet up with some fellow Tar Heels who came up to visit and backpack through the backcountry, and a trip to central Alaska’s beloved bird inspired towns: Chicken and Eagle.

Teklinika River, Denali National Park

Hiking in Denali’s trail-less wilderness backcountry

My supervisor Ruth and I conducted NISIMS surveys (for invasive plants) on the way to and around Chicken and Eagle and attended National Public Lands Day in Eagle.  The weather was perfect for National Public Lands Day—crisp fall air, clear skies, cool temperatures, abundant sunlight—and Eagle is an adorable little town.  Eagle residents, BLM employees and more gathered to celebrate public lands.  A knowledgeable local resident led young-uns and others on a nature walk, the local history expert conducted a tour of the abandoned military fort (Ft. Egbert) established in 1899, children collected pressed and displayed leaves, a Ketchikan artist led a workshop on loop weaving, BLM employees grilled burgers and dogs, root beer floats were served and a good time was had by all.  The whole scene brought me back to autumn in the Midwest with its abundance outdoor activities, festivals, crafts and food.  My favorite season by far.  Around a fire later that evening I learned more about the residents of Eagle—many of them live a subsistence lifestyle meaning they hunt and gather for all their food (save perhaps one Fairbanks Fred Meyer run per year for non-perishables).  As such they are incredibly knowledgeable about flora, fauna, weather, soil, water etc. of the surrounding area and completely in tune with the environment.  It was quite impressive.  The fact that they depend so much on the land also means that the stakes are high.  A failed caribou hunt can mean a hungry family–no grocery store to run to for supplemental food (nearest decent grocery store is in Fairbanks, 6 hours away).  Each family that lives this way knows exactly how many caribou they need to make it through the winter, so changes in the environment that disturb or change the migration patterns of caribou have dire consequences for them.

With only a month and few weeks left in my internship, I am making the most of my time here in Colorado. This past month has been a rainy one, which has made scheduling a bit hard. We got a late start on spraying along the river this year because of the high flows. This put us behind schedule already and the rain has made it hard to get down the river. However we have had five or six good days on floating the river so far, including a two day camp out. Luckily our section of the river is looking pretty good compared to other sections of the river in other BLM districts. We mainly have to worry about Musk, Bull, Canada, and Russian Thistle along the river. We don’t have any Tamarisk in our section, which is something to be thankful for.

Along with river spraying, we have been doing some line transects monitoring for rangeland utilizations and post fire monitoring. It is good to get away from spraying for a bit and get back to more science based work. Next week it looks like we will be meeting up with State Botonist, Carol Dawson, and her CLM interns to do some more rare plant monitoring. It looks like we will be gathering data on Phacelia spp. Working with Carol is a great opportunity to learn my western plants, as well as gain some valuable field research experience.

Work is great, but the weekends here in Colorado are amazing. There is so much to do here and it seems as though wilderness is everywhere you look. Not only that, but the music scene is unmatched (great free concerts). I love it so much that I have decided to stay here over the winter to work at Keystone resort as a ski instructor. If you haven’t been to Colorado, start planning a trip.

Railroad Earth at Red Rocks

Never Summer Wilderness

Eagles Nest Wilderness

Never Summer Wilderness

Over night work float down the Colorado

Devils Causeway Hike (500ft drops on each side. 4ft wide)