Hello there!

This past month has been a busy one for the New England Seeds of Success team, we have just reached 140 seed collections! These marks puts us at 70% of the way done to reaching our goal of 200 collections by the end of November. In order to reach this point we have been on the move traveling to collection sites up and down the coast from Maine to Rhode Island. We have been spending a lot of time in the salt marshes and are starting to smell like one too.

In the process of organizing and drying the large amount of seed collections

Monarch Caterpillar feeding on a Milkweed leaf

Monarch butterfly eggs on the underside of a Milkweed leaf

Last month we had the opportunity to be interviewed by Sam Evans-Brown with the New Hampshire Public Radio. We spent the morning with Sam at the Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge collecting the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and explaining the goals and collection procedure of the Seeds of Success Program. For more information about our interview check out the following link. http://nhpr.org/post/why-common-nh-plant-seeds-are-being-socked-away-vault

As you can imagine, we have collected seeds from a variety of plant species so far and each different plant requires a unique method of collection. For example, the spice bush (Lindera benzoin) requires the pluck method, salt marsh cordgrass (Spartian alterniflora) involves the use of a sickle, where as most sedges and grasses require a grab and pull method. My personal favorite seed to collect is from the switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), due to the easiness and state of satisfaction you receive when pulling seed off of it’s panicle inflorescence. Before making a collection we first have to take a closer look at the seed to determine if it is ripe. In this process I enjoy observing the minute details of each seed and have realized there is amazing diversity of seed design among each species.

Windy day at Plum Island National WIldlife Refuge, Newburyport MA

It has been nice and warm in New England through out the month of September. As the month of October has come, the temperatures have become much colder with rainy conditions. This may be the point in time we trade in our t-shirts for hoodies and jackets.

Cheers to the Fall!

Josh

As with many life experiences, I’m sure it will take some time to recognize all the learning that has taken place over the last few months, but there are a few things that I can point to now, knowing that they are significantly changed from when I arrived in Wyoming. For one thing, I have a much fuller understanding of what it means to manage land period, let alone manage it for multiple uses. Land management has always seemed an abstraction discussed in college courses or job descriptions, but now I have a close up picture and have hours spent fulfilling various duties required to manage land. First, it entails knowing what is present on the land – vegetation, soil, livestock, wildlife, abiotic and biotic processes. This, when you’re talking about a field office of 2.5 million acres, requires lots of driving and gathering of data – and still there are places that won’t see a soul for years. Then, after the data gathering, comes decision making and consequential implementation of those decisions. From my observations of this process, decision making has appeared formal at times and yet less formal than I imagined when working for the federal government. Meetings in the field for example are often relaxed without a huge sense of urgency or debate. Many times evaluations are subjective and the outcome rests on a casual conversation about the state of things and possibilities for the future. In our field office the decisions being made affect the content of permits given to ranchers for grazing cattle, the fate of wild horses from year to year, the prescribed treatment plan for dwindling stands of aspen.

Monitoring: Erin measuring stubble height in a riparian area.

Recently, Erin and I had the opportunity to observe a bit of interagency collaboration between Wyoming Game & Fish, the Forest Service, and the BLM. Decisions had already been made about how to manage the areas of land that included both national forest and BLM by the time Erin and I entered the picture, but it was still very interesting to finally see how collaboration between agencies works and who is involved. We had a team of four wildlife biologists (including one from each agency) as well as several ecologists on hand to look at old growth aspens stands that were being encroached upon by more competitive conifers. The Game and Fish department had mapped sections of the aspen stands for us to flag the perimeter of for easy visibility by contractors when they come in next year to cut the conifers.

Another land management issue that Erin and I have been working on is the hot topic of wild horse management. We’ve spent the majority of our time lately chasing down wild horses within the northern “horse management areas” (HMAs) in our field office. Despite many hours spent in the truck, this has been a rewarding endeavor. The horses are enchanting. Many times, when we get close enough and the horses have adjusted to our presence, Erin and I will spend our lunch break just sitting and watching them from a short distance. We’ve begun to pick up on key elements of their behavior and look for trends in when and where they are spending their time.

Some herds are less concerned with human presence than others.

A lone paint stud, healthy and strong

There are close to 50,000 horses currently on BLM land in the western US and a comparable number in holding. The Appropriate Management Level (AML) as stated by the BLM is ~26,000. Controversy on the topic lies in management of public land for multiple uses. While environmentalists advocate for the horses’ rights to life, health and freedom, the ranching community would like their numbers to be kept much lower for preservation of rangeland health for their cattle. Erin and I monitor the horses by visual counts, recording location, behavior, and health and taking photographs. Monitoring should allow BLM staff to make more accurate estimates of horse numbers and track their behavior in certain areas to make decisions about when to round up horses and remove them from the HMAs.

We’ve learned how to earn the horses’ trust and what will make them run.

Our SOS season is winding down quickly. There are still a few collections left to be made, but it is no longer taking the majority of our time. We are waiting for four species of sagebrush seed to be ready to collect, as well as a population of winterfat. All of this, including the processing of all of our SOS data, should take us right up until the end of our season in two months!

Summer has come and gone, and what do we have to show for it? Well, the SOS team at the NC Botanical Garden has over 100 collections of native seed!

In anticipation of the Emerald Ash Borer, we helped collect pumpkin ash, Fraxinus profunda, at Dyke Marsh in Alexandria, VA. Little did we know that Pope-a-polooza was upon us! Wading through the traffic, we made it to our field site and finally got to collect on a boat!

Collecting Fraxinus profunda.

The most recent update for the east coast is Hurricane Joaquin. While it looks like he’ll be avoiding landfall with the U.S., we are getting a lot of rain and wind. We moved off of the NC Outer Banks and onto the mainland in Virginia to wait out some of the weather before resuming our seed collection.

I’ll leave you with some photos of our beautiful collection sites.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, MD

Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, NC

Blue mistflower, Conoclinium coelestinum, at Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge, NC

Jockeys Ridge State Park, NC

Saludos!

Lauren

Hi all,

Things have been busy, busy, busy here at the Lockeford PMC so this, regrettably, will be a shorter post (but I will come back to edit and add pictures when I get the time)! This week was very cool for many reasons. First, Jeff and I started herbiciding the invasive blackberries (Rubus armeniacus) in our restoration area. On Tuesday we spot sprayed in the more woody areas with backpacks, while today (Thursday), we used a large Case tractor with a tank to get the large areas. I genuinely dislike herbicides, but they are useful for managing invasives during the site-prep stage of a restoration project. I personally believe they should be phased out during maintenance if a restoration is performed correctly.

Another thing I have been working on is preparing for our cover crop adaptation trial. Jeff and I figured out seeding rates for different cover crops, weighed out the seed, created a randomized design and organized our seed packets so everything will go very smoothly when we start planting, which should be very soon.

This Tuesday, Dr. David Morell from the Sonoma Ecology Center came to the PMC to discuss with Margaret the possibility of holding biochar trials at the PMC. I was fortunate enough to be invited to that meeting, which was a great learning experience in seeing the thought process that goes into making management decisions, and also learning more about biochar, which is very interesting thing.

Again, I hope to post pictures soon. I have two weeks left with the NRCS and I expect them to be very hectic. Cheers!

Michal

USDA-NRCS, California

Blog

The fall is firmly here, leaves are changing and the workload is tapering down.  I got to spend a week in the Big Horns working on a timber sale.  It was a great experience, as we got to see some of the issues facing forests elsewhere.  The Big Horns have a lot of diversity when it comes to their tree species.  Trees like douglas-fir, limber pine, ponderosa pine, subalpine fir, and lodgepole pine and exists in very close proximity, all with different needs and issues.  While in the Black Hills the predominate tree species, by far, is ponderosa pine.  Ponderosas in the Black Hills have been hit hard by mountain pine beetle while the Big Horns has been largely spared this fate.

Seeing how a mixed conifer forest is managed, balancing different light tolerances and regeneration levels reminds me of the issues facing Eastern forests.  One thing that I had not anticipated is the destruction being caused by white pine blister rust.  Limber pine is a white pine, generally having five needled, and there was not one stand that we saw which was not infected.  As such, there have been a lot of sanitation harvests to stimulate regeneration and reduce fuel loads.  This is one of the main purposes behind the timber sale we worked on, improving the health of the forest.  The douglas-fir are showing their age as well as some massive lodge pole pine; these trees are reaching the end of their natural life and instead of creating excessive down woody debris a useful product can be created.

Besides the fun new trees to look at there was so much wildlife.  Just driving to our work site we saw a huge bull moose eating some willow.  It’s amazing just how big they are.  There was also amazing raptors present; we saw countless hawks as well as a bald, golden eagle and a northern harrier.

A great place to spend the week in the Big Horns

Our final day in the Big Horns, a great view of Cloud Peak. Checking out a burn site and firewood sale. Such a great ending to a great week.

While in the Big Horns we were able to go to a Society of American Foresters meeting.  This is a great organization that provides a lot of information on what is happening within the forestry arena.  We met at and got a tour of the Tensleep Nature Conservancy Preserve.  This is a great place to visit, amazing views and an abundance of petroglyphs. If you are in the area it is worth a stop.

Back in the Black Hills the end of the tourist season finally came and with it the last hurrahs of many of the places that have been so much fun over the summer.  Custer State Park, home of one of the largest bison herds, has an annual roundup where they collect the bison and preform health checkups and have an auction.  It was amazing seeing 25 people on horseback trying to corral wild animals, at times the bison were very uncooperative. I just can’t believe that the summer is almost over and I have to go back to real life.

Bull Moose eating willow

Hazelton Peaks, this is just some of the great views and settings that I get to experience.