Taos has held up to its reputation of being a quaint mountain town full of eclectic residents and unconventional life styles. I’ve had the chance to check out the famous Taos Earth Ships, and I’ve hung out with some of their residents. For those unfamiliar, the Earth Ships are off the grid homes that are made primarily of recycled building materials and exhibit energy efficient designs. Because most of them utilize locally found soil to construct adobe-like mud walls for the structures, I find them to closely resemble life-sized sand castles. As you drive past them on the main road, it appears as if giants have constructed sand castles with various types of artistic designs all across the desert horizon. Apart from its interesting communities, Taos has also proven to supply an ample amount of outdoor entertainment. The town is riddled with fantastic Mountain bike and hiking trails. I’ve also had the opportunity to try out white water rafting on the Rio Grande.

mountain biking in Taos

Apart from my social life in Taos, my Internship has proven to be extremely educational and exciting thus far. I spent the majority of my first weeks in Taos helping with an invasive species mitigation project at a local camp ground. The project is being undertaken by a local youth conservation core. To aid the conservation core in their efforts to mitigate invasive species at the campground, I created a field guide of commonly found invasive species in the Taos area, and helped in locating and prioritizing work areas at the campground.

I have also gotten two SOS collections under my belt. Our first collection was Chaetopappa ericoides. The collection was memorable to me as we deployed the use of hand held vacuums to collect our seeds. Due to the fluffy nature of the plant’s seeds, vacuums proved to be an effective means of collecting many seeds in a small amount of time. They simply sucked right up into the vacuum. Our second collection was Hesperostipa comata. Although we resorted to a more traditional hand picking method, we still managed to collect well over the 10,000 seed minimum.

Shortly after our Hesperostipa collection, we were informed that a rare species of Astragalus was found on a parcel of land that was scheduled to be treated in the near future. The proposed treatment involves disking the entire parcel of land. Upon completion of the proposed disking, all of the existing flora will be uprooted, and the soil will be tilled up to about 6 inches depth. The rationale behind carrying out such a treatment is to decrease sage brush abundance, and increase the abundance of grasses and forbs on the site. This management tool has not always proven to yield such outcomes however, and in some cases has increased the abundance of invasives. Despite the controversy however, our crew was given the responsibility of surveying the entire 300 plus acres of land for populations of Astragalus ripleyi. This task is still ongoing, and involves combing the entire proposed treatment area by walking quarter mile to mile long transects that are spaced 10 meters apart across the entire treatment area. So far we have been at it for 7 days, and have found about 6 populations of ripleyi. We hope to be finished with the survey by the end of the week, and resume SOS collections shortly after.

Wild horses within the Lander BLM Field Office

Just two weeks ago we were arriving in Chicago for our week of training at the CBG. The training, as well as the symposium that was held at the end of the week, served as a great opportunity to grab hold of the cause that we are working for during this internship. It’s always helpful to widen your perspective to a bigger picture of the conservation goals at stake and to identify your role in making those become reality. It’s great to continue on into the season with this vision – knowing that some of our days may be long, hot and tiring, but also knowing that we’re making a contribution toward the progress of largescale native plant restoration and to the science that will keep these western ecosystems healthy.

Collecting the height of key species to monitor rangeland health

Now armed with our matching muck boots, we’ve begun collecting rangeland monitoring data, measuring the stubble height of key species in riparian areas to determine if grazing has been too heavy in an area. Eventually Erin and I will be on a monitoring rotation, visiting the same sites every couple of weeks. The riparian sites we’re collecting data from are where cattle particularly love to spend their time mowing the grass to the ground, but which are also some of the most important sites ecologically. Other than grazing the grass down too short, the cattle also have the potential to cause something called hummocking, which is severe small-scale mounding of the ground (see photo). Since the soil in riparian areas is so wet, the cattle’s hooves cause depressions where they walk, leaving mounds around the areas where they have not stepped. Over time these will worsen and water loss can become a problem. Less water is held in the soil and protected from evaporation or simply flowing down stream, which changes the function of the ecosystem on an essential level.

Monitoring rare Astragalus sp. in Dubois , WY

The field season is getting rolling! Our schedule has Emma and I doing roughly three days a week doing vegetation monitoring and two days doing Seeds of Success seed collection work. The vegetation monitoring involves identifying key species and evaluating how grazing is affecting them. This is done by taking stubble height readings across a specific area and taking an average. From this information, we can decide how much grazing can continue in a certain area and when the cows need to be moved. We have a handful of sites that we visit in rotation every couple weeks. I enjoy visiting these sites because we travel on the ACTUAL Oregon trail to get to some of them. I think this is incredibly cool because the landscape in this area is unaltered and would have been exactly what the pioneers would have seen on their journey.

Our Seeds of Success work has just gotten off the ground. We are learning the target species list, and trying to find big enough populations of each plant in the field. For each seed collection we make we need at least 20,000 seeds, so we need to find fairly large populations. We also are only allowed to take 20% of the available seed so we don’t decimate the population. This week we found a large population of a Cryptantha species while monitoring, I think it will be perfect for a Seeds of Success collection!

We also went into the field one day to help our botanist search for a rare species, Dubois milkvetch (Astragalus giviflorus var. purpureus). It is a species that is endemic to Dubois, Wyoming and grows on steep hillsides. We actually found the plant without much trouble, and found a good sized healthy population.

The rare Dubois milkvetch!

We have seen much more wildlife in the field. I have seen many sage grouse, which are much bigger than I expected them to be! We have also started to see many baby pronghorn. My favorite, though, has been the wild horses. One day we saw a herd of about 100 horses, it was a very cool thing to see.

A few of the wild horses we saw in the field

This month also included our week long workshop week in Chicago. The workshop was held at Chicago Botanic Garden, which is absolutely beautiful. We attended classes such as botany of the west, inventory and monitoring methods, and S.O.S. instruction. We received career and graduate school advice, and attended a symposium on large scale restoration efforts. When not in session, we explored the 385 acre botanical garden and visited downtown Chicago. Overall it was a wonderful week, it got me really excited to be a part of the natural resource field.

The beautiful Chicago Botanic Garden

I have also been exploring the Lander area more extensively. The road into the mountains was just opened last week, and luckily my family was visiting this weekend. I took them up to the alpine lakes in the mountains, which were stunning.  It is very nice that we are able to escape the heat by going up in elevation! I can’t wait to explore the mountains more.

One of the lakes we visited up in the mountains

A field of wildflowers in the mountains

Lander is a beautiful place to live, and it is pretty wonderful to be able to work amidst all this beauty. I feel pretty lucky to be able to call this place my office. Until next time!

– Erin   Lander Field Office, BLM – Wyoming