The past month everything has moved so quickly. Maybe it’s the shorter span of sunlight, or the dwindling days of that familiar summer sun. Perhaps, it was the realization that this internship was coming to an end. It seemed so weird to me, that just like that, I was going to be out on my way, on to the next adventure.

When I moved to Boise I literally knew no one, and was in the same situation as most interns probably were in. However my situation slightly differed than some in the fact I was living completely by myself, in a neighborhood that was full of retired people and young families. No roommates, no college housing that was around. Which was fine with me, but I will admit, it was much more of a conscience personal challenge to go out and make friends with random people than I had ever dealt with before. I learned from this experience that moving to a new place, or really facing any new experience should be taken as an opportunity and it is what you make of it. At first I was hesitant to go out to restaurants and dine by myself and to join in on events in the community–but I’m so glad I did. On a whim I started going to yoga classes in a park and happened to meet a girl who was a nursing student at BSU and told her I was new to the town and didn’t know anybody and asked her to join me in grabbing some coffee at the local saturday market. She was very welcoming and introduced me to several of her friends and great local places in town. For a semi-introvert like myself this was definitely pushing my comfort zone but I’m so glad I personally challenged myself this way. I hear and know of seasonals who move to new places and never go out and experience it. From this effort I made to do so, Boise will always have a special place in my heart.

My co-workers at Four Rivers also will have a special place in my heart. Each and every person in our field office truly wanted us as interns to succeed and learn. I know this sounds silly but I never thought people would be so willing to go out of their way to help a couple of newbies gain experience. I appreciate the positive attitude and support the members of the Four Rivers Field Office gave to us more than they know. It also was an eye-opening experience that no matter how much experience or time you have under your belt, managing natural resources is a constant and ever changing learning experience. This, and working with various people who have different and varying opinions has really helped further form my natural resource opinions.

One thing that was most rewarding to me was the plantings we just did. As a hands-on learner I have always gotten the most out of physically doing things, but something I enjoy most is physically being able to see the results of work I have done. I have come to that realization over the course of this internship. Over the past two weeks Zander and I have planted several hundred plants for both landscaping and habitat improvement. In the process we were able to see Idaho’s rarest plant–Packard’s Milk Vetch–which only occurs in a 10 miles radius around Emmett, ID. We also had the opportunity to work with several volunteers and at one point, 140 volunteers from the Lineman school nearby. During this experience I learned that I really enjoyed teaching people with little or no background about the world around them and why it was important. Those volunteers planted nearly 1,400 sagebrush yearlings in approximately 2 1/2 hours which was incredible!

I’m so grateful for this experience working as a Conservation and Land Management Intern and would like to thank all of you at CBG for the wonderful program you have created and being so accessible to communicate with.

Boise–it’s been real. I’ll miss your amazing food scene, microbreweries, Saturday city market, rolling hills and rushing rivers, that giant white neon cross that looks over the city and meets the stars, and most of all, the wonderful people that live there. Something I won’t miss? Medusa-head and cheatgrass. Cheers.

-Cara Thompson
Four Rivers Field Office–Boise District BLM

Atop the Hills near Emmett looking for Packard’s Milk Vetch–a scenic view that summarizes what most of the Boise area looks like

The complex geologic history of Idaho is seen everywhere. The grey patch in the center is where we hiked in to do our plantings to increase native pollinators to the area

The rarest plant in Idaho! Packard’s Milk Vetch in all of its post-seed glory

Parry’s alpinegold (Hulsea vestita parryi)

A late-blooming San Bernardino Mountains bladderpod (Physaria kingii subsp bernardina)

Rock loving oxytrope (Oxytropis oreophila var. oreophila). This species occurs in AZ and UT, but in California it’s known only from high elevations in the San Bernardinos. This picture was taken at a new population in southern California.

In my last blog post, I mentioned a potential new location of fringed chocolate chip lichen, Solorina spongiosa, which is rare in California.  Kerry Knudsen, a lichenologist and curator of the lichen herbarium at University of California Riverside, verified the specimen in September.  This is a new record of the species in the San Bernardino Mountains; the other known locations are in the Sierras.     

I’ve been continuing to monitor populations of T&E in areas around the Mountaintop Ranger District, and especially focusing on older occurrences.  San Bernardino Mountains bladderpod (Physaria kingii subsp. bernardina, pictured) is one species that I’ve been monitoring; it is federally endanged and grows on carbonate slopes around Bear Valley.  In mid-September, I spent a few days working with the Urban Conservation Corps in the Bighorn Mountains Wilderness; we surveyed the wilderness for recreation impacts and removed weeds.  The Bighorn Mountains Wilderness is a little-used and little-known wilderness, but it’s one of my favorites.  The view over the desert from the relatively inaccessible Granite Peaks is amazing.  Many of our plant species endemic to carbonate soils occur in areas of this Wilderness.    

Mountaintop Ranger District

San Bernardino National Forest

We’ve returned from Central in one piece, and it was definitely an interesting stint. We were out in the field from September 11-22, which proved to be well into the Alaskan autumn. When we arrived, the birch leaves were aglow in all their ochre glory, and by the time we left, the trees were bare and the flurries were falling.

Central, as seen from the helicopter

It was a bit challenging (and admittedly sometimes frustrating) to ID Salix spp. that lacked catkins entirely, and sometimes with senescing leaves.

Mornings were often in the mid- to lower-20s (Fahrenheit), and midday rarely exceeded the mid-60s. It was a dream come true. And, to add to the whimsicality of it all, I saw my first aurora borealis!

But the wonder doesn’t stop there. The ranges surrounding Central — the White Mountains, the Crazy Mountains, the Victoria Mountains, etc– are interesting because that region of Alaska was never glaciated. Thus, the rolling topography there hasn’t been scoured by glacial retreat or carved into arrêtés and valleys. It isn’t the scenery one typically envisions when imagining Alaska, but its shrub-dwarf/lichen expanses are majestic in their own right.

Still, there remain many exciting things ahead in our final 90 hours as CLM interns. Today we checked the final box on our SOS-organizing checklist (at least from the herbarium end), and our vouchers are on their way to the Smithsonian (and to Fairbanks) as I type.

And, at the end of this month, there will be not one but TWO conferences at which to publicly botanize! The first is the Alaska Invasive Species Conference, for which Katie, our co-intern in Fairbanks, will be visiting! The second is the 2014 Alaska Botanical Forum, at which Charlotte and I will be presenting on our CLM adventures. Good stuff, no?

Hope all is well in the lower 48!

BB

Today would have been my official last day of the five month internship, but luckily I am here for 6 months and possibly more thanks to the princess sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata var. wyomingensis and A. cana). One of the big goals of this internship, according to my mentor, is to acquire huge sagebrush collections and since seeds won’t be ready until November sometime, I get to wait until they do. And according to all the rumors, they are late bloomers this year; they are just so special.

The sagebrush seeds will hopefully be used for restoration projects; I am hoping for crested conversion fields and other weed-infested plots of land where straight up broadcasting of seeds wouldn’t be enough. The plan is to grow up seeds so that 2-3 year old plants can be transplanted (by willing volunteers). I wish I could stay on to see this come into fruition. Although I may not be here for that, I did recently get to observe and take part a little in the second process after seed collecting; the growing. The BLM has a partnership with Special K Ranch, a working community for high functioning adults with mental disabilities. It turns out for the past several years they have been able to help out BLM offices in Montana with the space and labor it takes to grow up seedlings for restoration projects.

I met up with some folks from the Dillon and Missoula field offices as well as Wendy, our state botanist, who heads up this partnership and cheerfully describes it as her rogue operation.  I was amazed to see an entire greenhouse filled with 2 year old baby sagebrush plants, which actually were destined to be transplanted by a MCC crew this fall in northern Montana. Woohoo! So good to see stuff getting done. Not only were there sagebrush, but a few river birch and other wetland plants to be used for riparian stabilization next year. They, too, were collecting seeds at the ranch, although from grow-out plants (so they were at least all in one easy to get to place) the fall forbs being some asters such as Prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) and Hairy golden aster (Heterotheca villosa). I left after helping lay out a weed cloth for next year’s garden (it’s expanding!) feeling refreshed and inspired by the wonderful people and the wonderful work they are doing.

I recently was granted another opportunity to interact with the public outside of BLM. I volunteered for the 7^th grade science teacher at the local junior high school to help with a river monitoring field trip at the local Big Spring Creek. This was an amazing science experiment that the teacher, Mr. Paulson, had been conducting for the past 22 years! Measuring things like stream depth, velocity, macroinvertebrates, dissolved oxygen content, total phosphorus and nitrogen, and total fecal coliform, his science class has collected a fairly good amount of historical data. Not only have they collected the data, but their findings have been used to make important changes. One year when the total fecal coliform levels were extra high, they brought it to the attention of the town who quickly found out there was a sewage leak that had gone undetected.

I got to play the part of resident “scientist” for the day and perform the chemistry tests with some of the students. I have to say, I was really nervous at first not having dealt with 7^th graders in a while, but they were surprisingly fascinated by what we were doing, were really fun, and super well-behaved thanks to their teacher.  If there are seeds left in the next couple of weeks, I plan on taking the students out for another hands-on experience to help me with seed collecting (yes! Free labor!).

These past few opportunities along with working at the BLM have allowed me to explore a few different avenues within science/botany, since I’m not totally sure if working for the BLM is for me. Although, now that I see there can be more to the BLM than policies and NEPA documents, maybe it is.

A few random photos because I didn’t take any of what I talked about.

In the North Moccasin Mountains

Bugling elk at the Missouri River Breaks, and yes, I did take this picture with my phone.

Theodore Roosevelt statue at TR National Park in ND

A prairie dog t-shirt found at the local sports store

I have now finished my work as a Conservation Land Management intern for the BLM Bishop Field Office. In the 2014 field season I successfully completed the target amount of 15 seed collections. This was probably my favorite task for the season. I was given the independence to scout over an approximately 750,000 acre area and make my own decisions on what to collect and when. This project helped me to improve my individual organization of field notes, data, photographs, and voucher specimens. It was also perhaps the most official work I have been a part of; this gave me a great sense of pride in what I was doing, especially when it came time to submit all of my vouchers to The Smithsonian. I feel honored to have been a part of the Seeds of Success program.

Sage grouse are a topic of major concern in the Bishop Field Office; which contains a majority of the population and habitat for the distinct population segment of the Greater sage-grouse, which is currently a candidate for listing on the Federal Threatened/Endangered Species Act. I was tasked with measuring vegetation monitoring plots at sage-grouse nest sites, one of the top three priorities for the field office. These plots are a thorough method of observing vegetation specifics in and around birds that nested this year. Data collection involved locating the nest site; which required driving many miles on rough dirt roads, hiking off-trail through dense shrub covered hills, and finding the nest itself upon arrival. Reading these plots called for the following of a strict protocol. After becoming familiar with the protocol by working with my mentor, I was able to lead a volunteer in data collection. It was a good feeling to be given this responsibility. Similar to gathering nest plot data for sage-grouse, I also completed or established post fire vegetation monitoring plots and riparian condition monitoring transects. For theses plots I was also given the responsibility of leading a volunteer or co-worker.

I worked on many other projects over the course of the season as well: rare plant surveys, invasive plant survey/treatment, sage-grouse radio telemetry tracking, boundary marking for fuels reduction treatments, bat-surveys, educational youth outreach, stream restoration construction, herbicide spray treatment vegetation transects, greenhouse construction, baseline wilderness survey, and many more. It has been an inspiring and engaging field season filled with personal development and skill building. I knew coming in to this internship that I had been offered an amazing opportunity, and it has gone above and beyond my expectations. My mentor, Martin, and I got along exceptionally well, and he truly is someone I aspire to be like. Thus I have been offered the chance to return next season, I have proudly excepted and am already anxious to build upon all that I learned this year. Until then it will be Tamarisk removal all day, everyday. Preserve the good, remove the bad is now my season to season dichotomy. I would highly recommend the Conservation Land Management internship to anyone looking to expand their relationship and appreciation for public lands. Thank you to the Chicago Botanic Garden for supporting such a meaningful and productive program.

Tyler