The days are growing short here in Nevada and so does the length of our internship as we have only 2 weeks left. Funny enough 10 months has gone by fairly quickly and now winter is returning to the area as the leaves have fallen and early snow has come to the Sierras. It has been very nice to see the Cottonwoods and Aspens turn this fall and hopefully this last collecting trip will still have some fall colors in the canyons of the mountains.

Lewisia rediviva

I have had the opportunity to learn many things this year, but the most exciting has been learning and studying the flora of the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada Mountains! As a botanist it is simply fascinating to learn about new species of plants in habitats that are totally foreign to you. This gives countless opportunities to learn more and more about all kinds of plants in some amazing country from low deserts to high alpine summits; not to mention all of the amazing wildlife that you encounter.

Bright yellow fall colors of Populus tremuloides near Sonora Pass

This opportunity of working in Nevada has really encouraged me to continue to seek opportunities in the west for work or graduate studies. I look forward to seeing where the skills that I have gained and the experiences I have had will take me in the future. I have some exciting opportunities in the works and look forward to see where they will lead. It has been great to work with friends who are also botanizers and appreciators of the outdoors. Nevada has been a splendid place to explore the beauties of the natural world and make some great friends.

A large friend in the Toiyabe National Forest

May the sun always brighten your tomorrow friends,

Ethan

Sunrise over Death Valley

I dismounted from my trusty steed, Bronzie, and crunched down onto the hardened gumbo. So this is what they mean by the word desolate. A northerly wind whipped at my dry lips as I scanned the horizon for signs of life. Luckily, I wasn’t the only sign of life this time. My partner had taken it upon himself to accompany me on my journey; a recon mission to get a lay of the land and to see if the treasure is abundant enough to make it worthwhile.

I hadn’t been to these parts before and a strange, low humming sound caught me off guard. Futilely craning my neck to try to see past the lonely buttes, I was surprised to see a low flying aircraft coming towards me. Instinctively, I ducked and buried myself in the sagebrush, a remnant of my days as a thieving vagabond. I waited as the aircraft flew by and then doubled back over me. Was I being paranoid or am I actually being accosted for trespassing on some kind of sacred ground? Thankfully, my partner was there to reassure me that we were on safe land where we were supposed to be. I reluctantly stood up and began to focus on why we were here in the first place, although I felt a twinge of unease as the plane circled overhead a third time.

“So, it looks like we got a good bunch here,” my partner said, a waiver of excitement in his voice. “You don’t say,” I agreed as I guided my hands through the dry branches feeling hundreds of our treasure falling into my palms and onto the ground. On closer inspection I could see we had some good ones, really good ones.

“Looks like we hit the jackpot,” I said hoisting the strap of my brand new Seed Sucker 2000 over my shoulder. My partner had come up with the idea to use this new tool and so we’re in on this adventure together sharing in the rewards and glory.

We went straight to work and within an hour or so had decided that the new tool was the best idea since toaster ovens. Pretty soon, long after I had forgotten about the aircraft, we had a new set of spectators. A group of ladies had come to the edge of the road to get a closer look at the two orange freaks. Feeling quite proud of myself at the moment, I tipped my hat and blew them a kiss. If only I didn’t already have a family back at home… Who knew Montana was brimming in such riches. I remounted Bronzie and took a last look at the landscape before heading in for the night. I’m not sure why I had originally called this place desolate, she just hides her secrets well. As I began the long journey home, a low humming sound began to stir somewhere off in the horizon.

Hello stranger,

In an attempt to reflect on the past 6 months, I will recount the events of just one day – Thursday, November 6, 2014 – and elaborate on the thoughts this provokes.

I woke up at 5 AM, and prepared my backpack for the day.  I was ready for sun, rain, and snow.  I got to the office at 6 AM, gathered the navigation equipment, scraped ice off of the truck, and set out on the familiar drive to the field office.

Let’s stop there.  Waking up before the sunrise has become a habit.  I feel well prepared to work in a variety of weather conditions.  I feel confident driving a pickup truck over difficult terrain.  I can navigate with Trimble GPS units, and if they ever malfunction, then I can still reach my destination with a map and compass.  These abilities are largely a product of my CLM internship experience.

I love the sunrise, and it has been a pleasure to see the majority of them for the past 6 months.  I will miss this sight tremendously:

The sun rises as I enter the field office

Soon after entering the field office, I turned onto a gravel road, and then again onto a two-track road where I was met by rocks, barbed wire fences, and loitering cattle.

Let’s stop again.  I was not expecting to learn so much about livestock during this internship.  However, they are a major player in rangeland dynamics, and I am grateful to have seen where our Nation’s beef comes from.

I’m going to miss these gals.

I pulled over by the stretch of land where I would walk approximately 10 miles of slickspot peppergrass transects.  Some may find this task monotonous, but there is nothing else I would rather do.

Allow me to explain.  The internship began with sage-grouse habitat assessments, which required identifying an abundance of new plants, and mastering new monitoring techniques.  The focus shifted to locating remotely-sensed wetlands, and describing their vegetation composition and water source.  This task allowed us to explore some amazing country, where we often wondered if anyone else had ever been.  Next we downloaded thermographs for water temperature data collection in streams, which were quite welcome in the heat of the summer.  These priority projects were broken up with various trainings and other opportunities such as mineral pit compliance inspections, frog searches, and rain gauge measuring.

After working hard to internalize all of this new knowledge and skill, it was nice to just soak it all in while walking around looking for slickspot peppergrass – to just be out there.

Happy to be out there, and start walking

I listened to the coyotes howl as I began my walk.  Their howling was lost in the wind, which was sometimes interrupted by chirping birds.  I flushed sage-grouse every once in a while, and smiled at the thought that these birds are what brought me out here.  While walking, I proudly distinguished between about 10 different species of dead grass, and marveled at the recently snow-covered mountains.

So while it is time to go home, I leave not just with new botanical skills and land management experience, but also with a strong relationship with a landscape that I could have never imagined.  I am proud to have helped sustainably manage and conserve our Nation’s land, and am surer than ever that I want to keep doing this for the duration of my career.

Thank you,

Jonathan Kleinman

Jarbidge Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

A view of the San Bernardino Mountains, north from the lower slopes of the San Jacintos

Aphids on a pod of climbing milkweed (Funastrum cynanchoides hartwegii)

My field season wound down in mid-October, although many of our threatened, endangered, and sensitive plants are still detectable.  We got the first winter storm of the season on Halloween night; mostly rain, but a bit of snow and sleet at higher elevations. 

The photos in this post are from a (personal) backpacking trip I took down to the San Jacinto Mountains in mid-October.  I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from the village of Snow Creek.  This section of trail has gorgeous views of the steep, forbidding north face of San Jacinto Mountain and is also an interesting passage through different vegetation types.  The trail begins on the desert floor, dominated by creosote bush (Larrea tridentata) and brittlebush (Encelia sp.), and winds up into montane conifer woodland (with white fir, Jeffrey pine, and Quercus species). 

I have been doing a lot of database work, entering the season’s finds into the Forest Service database.  Last week I helped our Restoration crew plant at one of our restoration sites.  I’ve also been spending time in the herbarium, processing collections from this season and seasons past.  The herbarium work has turned up some interesting collections from this field season, including an intriguing Nama species (more later, if it turns out to be something good).

Mountaintop Ranger District

San Bernardino National Forest

Here’s a pictoral journal of my time in Anchorage, AK! I definitely didn’t post as much as I meant to (this is my first one) but I had to have a record of my amazing time in this internship and this place! So here it is.

Over the course of this Summer and Fall, I’ve learned and traveled all over the state, from the Mighty Yukon River (yes, “the Mighty” is warranted, it looks as big as a lake) to the little isolated Rohn Cabin on the Iditarod trail next to the South fork of the Kuskokwim.  I’ve been in the Alaskan, White, Chugach, and the Kuskokwim Mountain Ranges, ID-ing plants, digging holes through permafrost, determining successional seres and keeping an eye out for rare and invasive plants alike.

I’ve learned so much in my time here, especially in the UAA Herbarium, about collection management and databasing, and then how to use that information to prep for the field, compare similar species, and use voucher information for plant range reports. And working in such an expansive, unpopulated state gives you the feeling that you’re really making a difference. There’s so much more to do here! So if you’re an intern lucky enough to have been placed with Alaska BLM, and even if you’re not a fan of the cold, I would highly encourage you to consider getting up in the 49th state! You won’t regret it, and who knows, you might get a bite from the “Alaska Bug” and end up staying here, as I hope to do!

The time has come to apply for other jobs, federal and otherwise, and I can’t be thankful enough that I have the experience I need to give me an edge in that hunt. Thanks to all my CLM mentors and friends that have made my time here formative, fruitful, and fun.

Driving down the Richarson Highway, looking at the Alaska Mtn Range, surveying for SOS species.

In the White Mts near the little village of Central, doing NRCS Soil Survey Work.

Sunshine Mtn in  Kuskokwim Mts near McGrath, collecting SOS species.

Rohn Cabin, on the Iditarod trail, invasive plant monitoring and removal.

At the Rohn Cabin airstrip, removing invasives.

In a burnt spruce forest overlooking the soft, rolling White Mts during NRCS soil surveys.

In a wet meadow in the White Mts, having found a moose jaw. Hoping to collect some discount from the Moosejaw outfitters for our excellent advertising shots.

My fellow intern Bonnie, taking a sweet shot of the Alaskan Range, just south of Denali on the George Parks Hwy.

The South Fork of the Kuskokwim River

The BLM Anchorage pair, going where no interns have gone before. I think Alaska has left a mark on us, don’t you?

This was my last week working for the BLM in Pinedale, Wyoming. I have had a great experience and I am planning to come back and at least visit, if not work here, soon. I started my internship coming from a different field and I have enjoyed this work and learned a lot. I was a full time zookeeper before I decided to change my career path and this internship was a great way to experience something new and get my foot in the door with this type of work.

It took me a little while to get used to Wyoming being a New Jersey native and travelling here after living in Florida for over a year but, after the first few weeks it started to feel like home. There is a different culture here that I enjoyed learning about and you can’t beat the recreation opportunities in a town right next to the Wind River Range, Wyoming Range, and just south of Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park.

Looking out at the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range

Not only did I get to work in the Wyoming Range analyzing potential Lynx habitat but I was also able to learn to identify shrubs, grasses, and forbs of Wyoming while completing vegetation monitoring on grazing allotments. Working for the BLM I got to learn not only about these plants but about grazing and the cattle industry. There is not much public land where I grew up and learning about the controversies involved with this land and the views and opinions from every side was very eye opening.

Getting ready for production clipping

Another, sometimes controversial, activity that I have learned about is hunting. Again, coming from 30 minutes outside of New York City I have never learned much about hunting. I was able to assist Game and Fish at a check station and take out mule deer teeth for aging and lymph nodes to test for Chronic Wasting Disease. I learned about the regulations and how the numbers of tags available for the year are decided. I was also able to help friends prepare their meat and tasted my first game, definitely a new experience!

Freezer full of game!

Overall my time in this internship has been excellent and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone. The people that I worked with in the Pinedale field office were very welcoming and I was lucky to work with and learn from my mentor, Josh. It was nice to be able to work with all of the wildlife biologists and the range conservationists. I was able to meet a lot of people that way and participate in a multitude of projects. My resume has definitely grown and I am excited about my prospects.

I am sad that this is the end of an adventure but I’ll be back for more! See you later Pinedale!

Sydney B.

Wildlife Biology Intern, Pinedale, WY

Despite the cold and the shortened days here in New Mexico, I’ve managed to get out to the field a couple times to do some scouting for next field season. I ventured out with a range tech and a wildlife biologist to the far eastern part of the district to a solitary 40 acre parcel of BLM in a sea of private land, called Turkey Canyon. The entire parcel was nearly pristine, and we saw signs of cougar, bear, elk and mule deer. The entire area showed great promise for seed collection next fall with Bouteloua gracilis, Bouteloua hirsuta, and Lycurus phleoides to name a few.There’s a lot of history on the land.It was once a pre-historic sea, and then three-toed dinosaurs traversed the land, as evidenced in Clayton Lake State Park. We made a side trip to see the dinosaur tracks at the park. The town of Clayton (30 miles south of Turkey Canyon) is home to the New Mexico’s only lynching in the Clayton’s history (for good reason), which was a debacle apparently. I won’t go into detail, but I recommend reading about it. Let’s just say, that the waitress from our lunch in town told us to never rob a train in Clayton.

There are two weeks left in the internship and things are winding down here in Carson City. The seasons are changing and the last few species are dropping their seed. Our work has turned from primarily fieldwork to primarily office work, trying to squeeze one last field week in before we hunker down and write up our reports. It has been getting quite a bit colder in the past few weeks. There is snow on the Sierra Nevadas now. The season change was one that I had never seen before. Just as it started getting cold enough to snow, the few deciduous trees out here in the desert started to change color and senesce. It made for this weird phenomenon where nothing changed except for small flaming streaks that highlighted riparian areas across the rolling mountains. Other than those small streaks, there has been no significant change in the way this desert looks. It is quite beautiful, but also gave me perspective on the types of plants that can withstand the harsh environment here. While it is fall, it certainly isn’t the rolling autumn colors of the Midwest, which I have been used to seeing these past four years.

(The senescence of the deciduous trees on the eastern side of the Sierras, near Yosemite)

Earlier this week, we went on a small day trip to a nearby town of Dayton, in order to collect seeds. We had found a nice patch of Gutierrezia sarothrae (which we just call Gouda), in the foothills. I sat down to check out the seed viability to see if the Gouda was ready for collecting. Just as I was finishing, one of my coworkers casually said, “There is a tarantula right behind you.” I have heard people prank others by saying “What’s that behind you,” and so at first I thought he wasn’t being serious. Of course, I still reacted to that comment and jumped immediately out of seat, making sure to shake the back of my shirt. Lo and behold, my coworker was in all seriousness; sitting not a foot away was a tarantula! It was both awesome and freaky-looking at the same time. About the size of my palm, this tarantula was hovering, motionless above a hole in the rock. I am unsure how I missed it before, unless I moved the rock somehow and it appeared to protect its home. I had never seen a tarantula in the wild, which was really cool, and now I can check that off my list. This tarantula was weird though, and it took us a few minutes to realize why. I guess some bird or small mammal nearby had a nice tasty snack at some point because this was a seven-legged tarantula!

(Seven-legged tarantula facing down over the small rock hole)

Here is to another two weeks!

Ari

Hey There Humble Readers,

Greetings again from a sunny week in Nevada!  It’s been a while since I posted to this blog, and time here is continuing to roll by as summer has faded and autumn is just about in full swing.  I do hear though that fall in Nevada doesn’t really exist.  It’s more a quick transition from the hot summer months to the much cooler winter months in a matter of weeks (or as some have told me, what feels like days).  Happy to be out here seeing and feeling different types of weather patterns and season, but in all honesty, I will very much miss the scent of fallen deciduous leaves crushing beneath my feet.  It’s an experience one can only know by taking the long forest roads of New England.  There’s nothing quite comparable to a turning red or sugar maple, American beech or the last blooms of our goldenrod and staghorn sumac fading and welcoming the soon to come winter snow.  Then again, I’ve never made a pie from Nevada apples or ran a maze through Nevada corn.  This too, might be something not to miss!

Seed collecting trip in the backyard of Yosemite!

Speaking of things not to miss, I recently (as in a couple months ago now) went up to Virginia City for the Annual International Camel and Ostrich Races.  That was quite the site!  Watching grown men try and jump on the back of an ostrich while it circles around a dirt track was not only entertaining, but also hysterical.  The camels were a bit calmer, but the ostrich wanted nothing to do with a person on its back.  I finished up the day of races with some homemade ice cream and fudge from “Grandma’s Shoppe”, and headed back down the sandy hills of Virginia City….successful (and culturally filled) day!

On another fun note, I’ve recently learned first hand that parts of Nevada and California are quite geologically active.  Prior to coming out here, I made it a small mission of mine to find as many hot springs as possible.  So with that in mind, I took a day trip to drive a bit south and check out some hidden tubs; this turned out to be one of the experiences I surely won’t forget about my time in Carson City.  Relaxing in a pool of water at about 100 degrees overlooking an expanse of meadowland and mountains was actually incredible.  The east coast may have beautiful Autumn colors, but we certainly don’t have much in the way of these awesome hot spots.

Hidden gem!

As for work goes out here, we have finished up all of our fire monitoring for the season, writing our summarizing reports on the data we collected, and are working on some other projects.  Seed collecting has been a main focus for us these days, and along that vein, this week we are taking a trip south to the Mono Lake region for some major collections.  Looking into collecting various chenopods including Krascheninnikovia lanata, a species we haven’t seen at this point.  It’s going to be a very exciting week up in the mountains and valleys of the more southern Sierras.  We are hoping to explore several mountain passes and make some collections along various elevation gradients.  And best yet, it looks like we will be staying on a former BLM worker’s property who has natural hot springs on her land.  Looking forward to some more hot spring rejuvenation!

A few of us on the team

In other news from Carson City, we are investigating doing a salt grass, Distichlis spicata conservation project.  Once a cultural assessment has been completed by our office archeologists, we are hoping to transplant a portion of a healthy population of salt grass to an area inundated with the invasive tall white top.  This will help establish new areas of native plants and in future years we hope to increase the diversity of the area with other natives, too.  I am personally excited about this new project because it is an experiment in something that we have not really worked on before.  Sort of a direct action at (hopefully) eradicating an invasive population and reestablishing a native population.  Fingers crossed on that!

Well, it seems it is just about time to take off for our seed collecting journey down south, so I must end this post.  Hope everyone is enjoying the approaching conclusion of this internship program.  We have about another month here in Carson City, it’s going to be a good one.

Sunny wishes,

Andrew

Carson City BLM

It feels like I have done a million things since I last posted a blog and it’s only been a month. There’s far too much to say so I will keep it short and share a bit about the latest project I have been working on.

A few months ago one of the reservoirs on our resource area was dredged in order to make it habitable for fish.  Some areas had to be removed of vegetation to complete the project. I have been in charge of revegetation, which includes planting a native wildflower garden on an archaeological site. The goal is to make it a pleasant place for fisherman, hunters or campers to enjoy. Last week I planted 20 aspen trees. I am excited to see how they will do because quaking aspen is a really hard tree to grow and most wildland plantings are unsuccessful. This week I harvested hundreds of willow and cottonwood cuttings, which I will plant next week. I put together a seed order for planting on some of the more disturbed areas and I am still designing the native wildflower garden. It has been a really fun project to work on. I have learned a lot along the way and am eager to see how it turns out.

Lesson: Use your resources! There are so many knowledgeable people out there and once you get them started, they love to talk about what they know! If you read a paper online by someone working for the forest service or NRCS or wherever, look them up and give them a call. I received great information from a number of people I contacted for advice on this project.