Hello World,

Unlike many folks in the BLM and in the CLM intern program, I live in a place that basically doesn’t burn. Natural fires are extremely rare in the Chihuahuan Desert, although relatively common in the nearby mountains (mostly USFS lands) and occasionally dropping down to the higher, pinyon/juniper portions of the Las Cruces District Office. There are sometimes anthropogenic fires, particularly along the interstates, but these are generally quite small. Neighboring Fort Bliss occasionally starts unintentional fires in the Organ Mountains. We’ve done some prescribed burns, and can generally get a good blaze going up in the pinyon/juniper. Prescribed burns at the lower elevations, in the Chihuahuan Desert that makes up most of LCDO, haven’t been as successful. The more densely-vegetated draws can burn OK, but otherwise the landscape just doesn’t seem to have the fuel load to carry a fire. So far as I can tell, natural fires are basically unknown. We don’t know if they ever played an appreciable role in Chihuahuan Desert ecology or how the landscape reacts to a natural fire. Interestingly—and diametrically opposed to the prevailing view that fires reduce or exclude woody plants while promoting grasses—the few studies on the effects of prescribed burns in the Chihuahuan Desert indicate that the opposite is true. Our grasses are less resilient to fire than our shrubs. So all that’s the long way of saying that I was a bit excited when one of my interns and I drove out to a seed collection site at Aguirre Spring on the northeastern side of the Organ Mountains… and saw this on the way:

This is, to our understanding, a natural fire ignited by lightning. There was a big thunderstorm system on 3 Oct 2015, but this area did not receive rain. This fire burned a pretty small area, 70-80 acres, and went out when the rain arrived the next day. So far as I can recall, this is the only natural burn on LCDO land that I’ve seen in the 11 years I’ve been in Las Cruces. So, we postponed the seed festivities a bit and I got some photo points—that one above, and these two:

For each, I’ve got the photo and a list of all identifiable plants within a 10 m radius. Hopefully I’ll be able to revisit these over the next few years and see what happens. And, no, the third one didn’t burn. We can pretend it’s a control.

Here’s a view of the whole burn area, seen from the Aguirre Spring picnic area:

So that’s probably not too exciting to most of you: “Yup, that’s a little burn.” To me, though, it’s pretty awesome. I have a rare chance to watch the response to a natural fire in a place that basically doesn’t burn.

Once we got to poking around at seeds around Aguirre Spring, we found that one of my nemeses thus far, Setaria leucopila, actually had seeds. I mentioned in my last post that I’d checked multiple populations of this species that had well-developed, mature inflorescences, but no seeds that I could find (not “very few”, but “none”, “nada”, “zilch”, “bupkus”). Well, this one still had an unimpressive seed set rate, about 1 in 10 fertile florets actually contained a caryopsis. But there’s plenty of it up there, so we collected around 400,000 of those fertile florets and we should be OK. Here’s the collection site:

And here’s Setaria leucopila:

Fertile florets (top) and caryopses (bottom; grass terminology: a caryopsis is a fruit with a single seed and the ovary wall highly reduced and adherent to the seed; non-agrostologists usually just call the whole thing a “seed”):

I enjoy photography and particularly like having an excuse to take macro photographs of plant bits that we don’t usually see. So I’ve been appreciating the SOS dictum to take pictures of the seeds we collect. I probably go a bit overboard. Also, some of these grass caryopses are pretty hard to separate out from the fertile florets. It’s fun, though. Here are some of my other seed pictures:

Aristida adscensionis:

Bothriochloa barbinodis:

Bouteloua aristidoides:

Chloris virgata:

Pectis papposa:

Sphaeralcea emoryi:

I guess that’s about it. Seed collection is winding down here. We could probably do more of it, but we’ve met the 2015 collection target and made a few collections that go into fiscal year 2016. There’s one more I want to try for in a couple of weeks, but mostly we’ll be back to looking at Peniocereus greggii var. greggii until my interns leave at the beginning of November. I’ll leave you with a pair of photographs. The one on top is from the New Mexico State University archives, Oct 1912. I took the one on the bottom on 19 Sep 2015.

Hello!

The past month here at the Carlsbad, NM field office has kept me very busy. Most of my recent task has been focused on birds, which I have absolutely no complaints about! As I believe I mentioned in my post from last month, I developed and was preparing to implement a protocol for surveying scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) for future management of the species. As it is a game species, it is important for this field office to keep tabs on the populations so the natural resource can be shared with public land users under the paradigm of sustainability. What I didn’t say before but what I’ll admit now, is that I first thought of this task as a cinch, but I quickly discoverd how difficult it was to create your own protocol that will be unique to the environment, culture, and condition of the land you’re working with. I couldn’t just translate one protocol from one region to the next, and I also didn’t have the same resources to work with. Needless to say, after some discussions and adaptations I accomplished the task, and over the past few weeks I have been putting it in practice successfully.

Two weeks ago I was able to participate in the celebration that is Public Lands Day. I was fortunate enough to help out at the BLM’s booth at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park. It was my first time getting to explore the facility in full. Overall, I found it to be one of those gems you stumble upon while living out your busy life. I had no idea they had so much biodiversity there, so although all of the displays and exhibits were exemplary, they don’t get enough attention… Anyway, I helped out at the booth by explaining the SOS program and melding that with the idea of successful restoration and wildlife management to fit the culture of the local community.

This week the wildlife crew took a nice little mid-week field trip to the Milnesand Prairie Preserve near the border of Texas and eastern New Mexico. Oh, and by “nice” I mean early, and by “early” I mean waking up at 3:00am to drive 2 hours to our work site. Only joking, or at least… it was a very enjoyable trip despite the extremely early morning. Our goal for this trip was to shadow a biologist who performs regular roadside surveys for the Lesser Prairie Chicken [(Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) for now on LPC]. The LPC is a federally threatened species of grouse that inhabits the arid and shortgrass grasslands in the west. Its habitat over the past century has been extremely reduced, unfortunately, and the species population has suffered. After solidifying our understanding of the surveying methods, the biologist took us on a tour of the prairie preserve where we scouted out old lekking grounds for LPCs as well as observing the different management practices seen throughout the property. The biologist we worked with was so informational, too! I loved every minute of listening to her talk. She was a local of the area, and has been working there for the past decade, so no wonder she served as such an amazing encyclopedia.

Interesting fact: I recently learned that a month ago a federal judge vacated the federal protection of the species temporarily from its listing in 2014. For reasons that are far too complicated for myself to explain, let alone understand completely, this action was taken. I’m not going to muddle your mind with my biased opinions, aside from the openingly admitted fact that this news initially frustrated me deeply for understandable reasons. However, I think this is only a temporary halt in the species’ protection.

Aside from work, here are a few representative pictures of my recent adventures!

That’s all for now! I only have one more month left, so be prepared for my concluding post of my experience in November!

P.S. October has thus far been an incredibly wet month here in Carlsbad. Is it “normal”? Can’t say, but it’s keeping the desert flora pretty rich in greenery.

Armand Cann
Carlsbad NM Field Office, Bureau of Land Management

A population of Baileya multiradiata “desert marigold” of which we made two collections.

We have had a rather exciting month of plant collections.  Down here at the extreme southern end of that which constitutes BLM land, our ability to make collections probably tends to come much later in the year than for many of y’all folks in the northern lands.  This, coupled with the general weirdness of precipitation patterns down here in the deep Chihuahuan Desert, has resulted in unusual and often belated phonologies of our target species and sites.  It has also required of us that we be somewhat spontaneous in that we collect seeds of those species that are collectible, rather than what is necessarily on the collection target list submitted by our crew leader.  For example, we were able to collect Sanvitalia abertii, Verbesina encelioides, Machaeranthera bipinnatifida, and Panicum obtusum (syn. Hopia obtusa); most of which were on our original target list, but that are excellent candidate species for the stated goals of the Seeds of Success Program.  Sadly, we have been unable to collect some species from the target list that, for whatever reason, did not produce viable seed this year such as Bouteloua gracilis,  Bouteloua eriopoda, and Enneapogon desvauxii.  However, this morning we were able to complete a collection of Setaria leucopila, a hot target species that until last week we had practically given up on as a lost cause.  But then we checked one final population for it and found that it was setting seed.  It was doing so at a low rate, but nonetheless, a collection was achieved.

Although a few species on our target list weren’t collected, we did make a lot of collections and we were able to make more collections than our goal of 35 for the duration of the internship.  As October is our final month and our collections are winding down, Jeanne and I will be presenting our work with the Seeds of Success Program to the office around October 20^th.  Aside from the presentation we will be doing some Peniocereus greggii var. greggii monitoring and vegetation monitoring at the Jornada Test Range.  One cool thing we’ve discovered about P. greggii is that this species seems to have a tendency to die back completely to the tuberous root, only to resurrect later on.  This implies that it may be less rare than previously thought.

We went out for two days on a trip up the lower Gila River Box to get some time lapse photo points.  In the early 90’s, the area was excluded from grazing because the riparian habitat had been so heavily denuded.  It turns out that cows really like to eat baby cottonwoods, an apparently short lived tree species, so young plants weren’t ever given the chance to mature to replace the older dead or dying trees.  Now, almost 20 years after exclusion the cottonwoods and willows have returned full force.  It is beautiful to witness the resilience of nature.  Furthermore, we got to see some very cool Indian ruins and petroglyphs.

In addition to our other duties and endeavors we will be getting some much welcome training in ArcGIS and NEPA. We have had some really great experiences to be sure. We have seen so many rattlesnakes that I have long since lost count. One time we even found a pair in the throes of coitus. We stared for a minute and left them to their business.  Coyote song has often accompanied our field work.  Yeah, the desert does have its charm, if you can take the heat.  Until next time fellow naturalists.  I hope your adventures have been as fun and satisfying as ours.

Best wishes,

Dave Morin, Las Cruces District Office of the BLM

Petroglyphs from Lowe Gila Box

a granary from Lower Gila Box

An annoyed Western Diamondbac

Pectis papposa, a collection we made that smell and tastes quite lemony