I can’t believe that it is the end of my internship. So much has happened and I have learned so much and experienced things that I will remember for a lifetime. Spending time in the Black Hills and working with everyone in the Newcastle Field Office has been great. Getting to know the area and feeling like I have accomplished something is a great feeling.

It is starting to get cold with temperatures down in the teens, I would not want to have to work in it for long, so it is good that I have reached the end of the internship. The fall colors have been spectacular, and yes I was very surprised to find out that the Black Hills does have a peak season for fall foliage. The aspens and cottonwoods turned vibrant golds and yellows. Fall is also the the time for elk.

These are the things that I will miss, the constant views, the amazing wildlife and the vast open spaces. I just hope that my next destination will be as great as my summer in the Black Hills was.

Wildlife Tech, Matt Fountain, setting up camera traps for bobcats… he’s becoming the cat

Fisheries Intern, Cacey Sylvester, in his natural habitat among the fishes

Wildlife tech, Quentin Parker, as we hiked the northern portion of The Lost Coast booting hikers off the trail during a wildfire

Fellow CLM intern, Kate McGrath, on The Lost Coast as we surveyed for rare plant species

Ready for whatever is next!

I have been lucky enough to have many great internship experiences, both at school and since graduating. But none can compare to the experience I have had here at the Arcata Field Office. When I first found out that I was California bound, I was extremely nervous about the culture I would find. I was nervous about the fact that despite being hired as a Forestry Intern, I had taken no forestry classes and had no experience with forestry techniques. Luckily though, all of my fears were completely unfounded, for in Arcata I found not only a supportive community but also a supportive and quite frankly epically awesome work environment.

I have learned so much during my time here in Arcata! When I interviewed with my mentor, Dan Wooden, he had said that he really encourages his interns to go out and take on as many new learning opportunities that come and boy, did a lot come! From forestry to fisheries, from botany to wildlife I was all over the place, helping and contributing to projects small and large! This internship has been unlike any other for this reason, for while I focused on the forestry projects my mentor assigned I was able to simultaneously branch out and learn about the management of other resources.

While working for the Arcata FO I monitored a prairie restoration project, flagged and marked a unit for a commercial timber sale and Sudden Oak Death mitigation treatment, and initiated the transfer of over 3,000 forest stand data entries– from FORVIS a stand information system– to Excel so that now the information can be easily accessed and related into ArcMap. I helped the office prepare and execute a visit from the Secretary of the Interior and hiked the entirety of The Lost Coast while mapping rare/ invasive plants and when I had to as backpackers to leave the trail during the Horse fire. I hooted for spotted owls in Headwaters Reserve and collaborated with an HSU student on a bobcat inventory and identification project. I dove for steelhead along the Mattole River and helped remove pampas grass in the dunes. Every opportunity to learn I have grasped with eager and enthusiastic hands and with the support of my mentor and the rest of the Arcata team!

I leave this internship knowing that I have gained experiences that will better prepare me for whatever may come next (hopefully graduate school!) and that I have more than met the expectations of my mentor and peers. I have made many friends here in Arcata and it is through these friendships that I have had such a great experience!

Thank you to all of the people who allowed me to have such an enriching learning experience and to all who are thinking about applying to the Chicago Botanic Garden Conservation and Land Management Internship Program, DO IT!

All the best to my fellow CLM’ers and best of luck to future interns!

Till next time,

Stephanie B.

Cooler weather has finally arrived in Lander, WY. Many of our coworkers have been commenting on how unusual this fall weather has been. Apparently, by this time of the year there usually is 2-4 feet of snow! However, I am glad the snow has held off. This means we have the opportunity to do more field work and less office work. I enjoy field work very much, but with all of the field projects we are working on, our Seeds of Success data processing is getting put on the back burner. Emma and I have been antsy all of October to start getting SOS data processed and seeds sent out to the seed cleaning facility. Our Seeds of Success program has been a little hectic because our mentor took a job in Cheyenne earlier this month. She was promoted to the position of Wyoming state botanist, and we are very happy for her! So Emma and I are figuring things out on our own, with the help of our mentor’s very detailed instructions. We just started data processing this week, and we are realizing that it will be much more time consuming than we originally thought. Nevertheless, we are up for the challenge and enjoy being busy.

This month we completed three SOS collections. Fringed sage (Artemisia frigida), Wyoming Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp.wyomingensis), and Mountain Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp.vaseyana). The seeds from each of these three species were tiny, which made our seed counts a little time consuming. We were excited to find that we collected about 400,000 seeds from Wyoming Big Sagebrush, which far exceeds our minimum goal of 20,000.

Enjoying the view on the way out to collect Mountain Big Sagebrush. It’s amazing to see how fast the landscape changes

We are still working on wild horse monitoring in the field office. This month we finished the entire north complex, which consists of four HMAs (horse monitoring areas). In November we will start on the south complex and monitor there until we get snowed out. Horse monitoring has been one of my favorite activities. This month we stumbled upon a herd of more than 100 wild horses while monitoring, it was incredibly cool to see. We also got snowed on for the first time while we were horse monitoring at some higher elevations. The snow covered horses were really beautiful.

Scanning for horses with my binoculars

Horses in the snow in the Crooks Mountain HMA

We always make sure to wear our orange for safety during hunting season!

GPS mapping the aspen stands.

Another project we are still working on is aspen stand delineation near South Pass. This is another project that needs to be finished before the snow flies, especially because this project area is at a higher elevation. So Emma and I continue to flag aspen stands and record the area and locations with our GPS. The work up here is pretty cold, but there are amazing views.

We are also working a little bit with the archeologists at Castle Gardens petroglyph site. Castle Gardens is an area in our field office where ancient native people etched petroglyph drawings into the soft rock. The BLM wants people to respect and understand this ancient site. To help with this, the BLM is installing gravel walking paths and interpretive signs. The hope is that once people can see and understand the importance and history of sites like these, there will not be as much vandalism. The Castle Gardens site previously had been vandalized in many places, but the BLM hired a rock art expert to fix much of the vandalism.  Emma and I are helping write some of the interpretive signs dealing with botany. We will have a sign identifying common plants in the area depending on season, and a sign explaining how native people used the plants in the past.

Castle Gardens Site

Petroglyph at Castle Gardens. This one is called “The Lightning Man”.

Only one more month to go in the Lander Field Office! We still have 2 seed collections left to make, and many other projects to finish up. November is going to be a busy month, but I’m excited. We’ll see how much we can get done before the snow.

Until next time,

Erin, Lander Field Office, BLM- Wyoming