We have been busy busy interns at the BLM Eagle Lake office. We have been monitoring several species of special status plants in addition to our Seeds of Success collections.

Saving the world, one SOS collection at a time

Although  grass collections such as Squirrel Tail and Great Basin Wild Rye go much faster, I have a soft spot for berry picking.

My beloved Bitter Cherry

Although I do enjoy the work itself, my favorite part of this internship is spending everyday out in the beautiful field office. It is amazing how one day we can see for miles, and the next day be surrounded by thick smoke from the surrounding wildfires.

Cheers to lunch with a view!

Of course the job does have its down sides…

You think LA traffic is bad? Try the Eagle Lake field office! We have been caught in numerous traffic jams.

We certainly enjoy our weekend adventures, both local and afar.

I recently visited McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park for a full day of hiking. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through the park, and I was lucky to meet some thru-hikers who have been going strong for 1,418 miles so far. I’ve been inspired to attempt the trail myself someday!

The beautiful Burney Falls

Other adventures include Yosemite National Park, Lassen National Park, and Lake Tahoe. I certainly do not like wasting a single weekend in such an awesome part of the country!

Cheers,

Rachael

Hello everyone!

August was a pretty exciting month! I was able to pair up with the local DNR office and assist in some of their prairie dog projects. Part of the week, I participated in the capture and relocation program. Since the Utah prairie dog is federally listed as a threatened species, how “problem” populations are handled is a delicate process. The DNR has been trying to work with property owners who find the animals troublesome or undesirable and relocate them, so that more drastic measures by the land owners can be avoided.  This process allows the animals to form a new colony at the relocation site, where they can thrive, and relieves some of the tensions that human-prairie dog interactions can cause.

I was also able to participate in a slyvatic plague research study. This allowed me to get a little bit more hands on experience with the prairie dogs. Essentially, we set traps in a location where the SPV (sylvatic plague vaccine) was distributed a week earlier (using sugar cube baits) and collected data from the individuals that were captured. Once caught, there are several steps to processing them, a few examples are: checking for fleas (which can carry the plague), collecting a fur sample (which will contain a biomarker for the vaccine if it’s been ingested), and marking them with pit and ear tags (in order to identify them in future years). For a little bit of information about Sylvatic plague and the work being done to immunize populations of ferrets and prairie dogs, read this brief article by the USGS.

A colony of Utah prairie dogs near our SPV site.

Although the prairie dog work was the highlight of the month (maybe even the internship), I have been keeping busy helping the range technicians finish up some of their trends, check riparian fencing, fix said fencing if needed, visit future prairie dog relocation sites and collect vegetation data, and participate in PFC (proper functioning condition) assessments of a few riparian areas. Next week we’re going to start helping with the rangeland health assessments.

During one of our riparian PFC assessments we came upon a stand of ponderosa pines. This was my first up close encounter with this wonderful tree. If you sniff the bark it smells kind of like cream soda or caramel. It’s pretty wonderful, and I highly recommend it!

This is my co-intern Zach and I with Mike and Lindsey from the range crew.

In my free time, I’ve gotten to explore a bit and see more of Utah and the National Parks (NP). I think in this month alone, I’ve visited Kolob Canyon, Zion NP, Capitol Reef NP, Bryce Canyon NP, and the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Being a midwesterner, I’m really trying to make the most of my time in the southwest!

Looking out at Capitol Reef National Park from the trail. It was quite a view!

I’ll leave you with this gem. Burrowing owls are often found in close proximity to prairie dogs, because the owls will utilize old mammal burrows for nesting sites. I’ve been dying to see a burrowing owl all summer, and as a result of this behavior and my work with the DNR crew, I was able to visit a spot and see an entire family of owls. It was a pretty amazing sighting! I believe there were 5 present during my visit.

One of the burrowing owls.

This past month has seen a variety of efforts here at the office, field season is still in full swing and we have been busy! We have been trapping fish in Tule Lake just across the border from California. We have had a little bit of success, but we were largely catching small fish and have not found suckers in the lake. We moved our traps to the deepest part of the lake, which was more successful. We managed to catch larger fish, mostly chub species. We also caught the largest sucker we have caught all season, most likely a short nosed sucker. Unfortunately we are having problems with our boat, so we may be unable to set traps for the rest of the season.

Short nose Sucker caught in Tule Lake

We have also been trapping at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. We have caught three suckers so far in the largest pond, the only pond where we are supposed to have fish. We were able to get a pit tag ID on the last two suckers. They were placed in the pond last year and have doubled in size over the winter. This is really good data to have because it suggests that we can take salvage fish to be reared to a more hearty size in a relatively quick manner.

Sucker of unknown species caught at Lower Klamath National Wildlife National Refuge

This past week the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) needed help conducting sampling at the Fish Evaluation Station (FES). FES is a way of estimating how many fish, with an emphasis on suckers, get entrained in irrigation canals throughout the season. In the past the BOR has sampled for 24 hours, they found that fish rates were higher at night, so they began sampling from 8pm to 2am for intervals in 30 minutes, pulling the trap net every half hour on the hour. Suckers are measured and weighed and evaluated for physical abnormalities. The number of other species caught is also estimated.

This year we wanted to figure out if 1) the fish we are catching are all unique individuals or if the same individuals are getting recycled 2) if we can keep suckers and rear them to a more hearty size and then rerelease them. To figure out if the same fish were getting captured in the trap net we VIE tagged sculpin and chub. These species were chosen because they are showing up in a manageable number; the sculpin was also chosen because its life history is similar to the suckers. We conducted the experiment through August, when we stopped because of low fish numbers. We are still analyzing the data from this experiment, but we think it will give us really valuable data that will help us better determine the number of fish that are being entrained in the irrigation canals each year.

We also held half the suckers from each pull to help determine if we can rear suckers caught in the FES trapping effort. We held suckers in tanks for the week and took the survivors to net pens in Upper Klamath Lake. We were unsure how well this experiment would work because the suckers coming through were believed to already be in bad health. While the data is still being analyzed from observation, it appears that as the sampling went on we were able to hold less suckers because less were coming through the traps. However, it looks like a greater percentage survived. It will be interesting to see if this holds to be true after the data is analyzed statistically. We conducted this experiment through August as well and stopped because of low sucker capture.

This past week I helped BOR conduct the sampling because they were short staffed. While we did not continue the recirculation study, we did try and hold suckers. However there was a low fish catch which included suckers. We caught just seven suckers all week and were only able to hold one. We are unsure why the fish capture is so low this year, though there are several theories including bad water quality and that it was a low spawning year.

Trap net at the Fish Evaluation Station

Sucker holding tanks at Fish Evaluation Station

My internship is wrapping up, as I have about a month left. That means that it is final report time! I am analyzing the data for the monitoring at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. I am really excited to see what the data can tell me. I am especially excited to do some analysis with Geographic Information Systems. I have a lot of GPS points for predator evidence and I am interested to see if it there is a pattern to where predator activity is occurring. I am also getting to write a field note for the project, which will be a great chance to work on public outreach. The last month should be busy but rewarding.