Five full moons for me

in this western wild basin: this dusty shrubby sagebrush country

of bunchgrass and saltgrass, saltbush and greasewood, rabbitbrush and winterfat,

of purple sage, black sage, silver sage, big sage.

Tucked among these glaucous shrubs

you just might find plants so scarce, so rare,

they exist nowhere

but here.

Speak softly, step lightly, don’t turn them into ghosts.

Feel the life

of a Wild thing

emerging from cracked clay, gravelled sand, saline playas.

Tiny leaves opening sunward, shy blooms twirling outward,

fuzzy stems,

reaching.

Sit long enough. Soon,

every flower will fade,

crumble to crisp, brown husks,

yield to wind and release, let go,

snag on mammal fur and bird feathers, whisk away.

A few handfulls I will coax

into paper bags,

rustle on gentle screens with gentle hands,

tuck goodnight into artificial winter held fast at 10 degrees.

Saving seed

for another spring.

The sagebrush steppe of western North America is vast. Some have called it “the big empty,” though from the perspective of an ecologist (or any local critter), the terrain is teeming with life. Once extending across 320 million acres, today the sea of sagebrush is fragmented by human industry and agriculture, occupying only half its historic range.

Sagebrush Country

Within the western rim of sagebrush country, the Oregon BLM Vale District manages 5.1 million acres of public lands. I am a migrant mammal here, calling this sagebrush basin home for the next 5 months. My primary duty is to collect seeds from the 70-80 state-listed sensitive plant species of eastern Oregon. While I’ve been waiting for these rare flowers to bloom, I’ve had opportunities to assist with other BLM duties: surveys of Golden Eagle nests and Sage-Grouse mating leks and a visit to Lucky Peak Forest Service nursery.

One early-blooming rare species: Big-Head Clover (Trifolium macrocephalum)

Herbarium explorations

Enjoyable reading: the National Seed Strategy for the next 5 years

The first field outing I took was with a wildlife biologist to survey Golden Eagle nests along the Owyhee River canyon. This giant raptor constructs nests high up on clifftops and rocky outcrops. Mating pairs may build several nests and use a different one each year. Although we confirmed locations of several nests, we could not determine if any are actively being used this spring.

More endemic to sagebrush than Golden Eagles are the Greater Sage-Grouse. These ground-nesting birds are entirely dependent on open expanses of sagebrush habitat. As the habitat has declined, so have the sage grouse. Conservation of this classic sagebrush species is a top management priority for BLM. To learn more about sagebrush ecosystem and life history of the sage grouse, I highly recommend watching the 1-hour PBS documentary The Sagebrush Sea. 

Surveying a Sage Grouse Lek

In the pre-dawn light, I found myself bumping over deep, dusty divets in a tiny utility-terrain vehicle. I hiked through the scrub in a pair of borrowed puffy coveralls to keep the biting wind from my bones, heading through uplands to a historic sage grouse lek. Straight ahead to the west, a magnificent full moon was setting over the Steens Mountains. The snow-covered slopes gradually grew brighter as the sun, in all its scarlet-gold morning hue, rose in the eastern sky behind. As we hiked, my ears ached from the cold wind and my torso dripped with sweat inside the insulated coveralls. We approached slowly, whispering quietly, listening. No sage grouse. That particular lek site has not revealed birds in years.

Another lek site yielded better results. The hike in was littered with two types of sage grouse “sign” (meaning poop): the grassy pellets typical of non-mating sage grouse and the black-tarry patches indicative of active mating (a good “sign”!). As we got closer, I could hear a soft boing-ing tapping and drumming sound. Soon, I spotted a flash of white in the distance. I pressed binoculars to my eyes and began counting: 40 sage grouse in total, mostly males in full display, strutting around, inflating their white-feathered chest air-sacs, slapping them empty, with erect, fan-shaped arrays of white-spotted tail feathers. Around and around they strutted, small tussles breaking out between competing males, a few more birds joining.

The sage grouse mating lek is a courtship ritual of male display and female selection. Typically, only the few “most attractive” males will be selected by the females. Most males will strut to no success. Such is the life of sage grouse. Most leks, including the one I saw, are situated on upland open meadows without tall shrubs or trees.

Visit to Lucky Peak Nursery – U.S. Forest Service

An innovative botany project of the Vale District is the creation of a sagebrush seed orchard. Through a public-private partnership, BLM will be germinate wild-collected Wyoming Big Sagebrush seed (Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis) and grow the shrubs into a 15-acre “orchard” where seeds will be collected for post-fire restoration. The project will compare two sagebrush restoration methods: planting seeds and planting seedling plugs grown by Lucky Peak Nursery. The Lucky Peak Nursery grows thousands of sagebrush seedlings each year for restoration projects across the Northern Great Basin.

Why so much sagebrush? In recent years, massive wildfires fueled by highly flammable invasive grasses like Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and Medusahead Rye (Taeniatherum asperum) have decimated hundreds of thousands of acres of sagebrush habitat, leaving bare soil that is quickly recolonized by invasives. Sagebrush seedlings are in high demand by managers seeking to restore these post-fire landscapes. Sagebrush is a slow-growing, wind-pollinated shrub that acts as a nurse plant for other native forbs and grasses. Historic wildfires were small and infrequent; bare soil patches of biotic crusts throughout the steppe prevent spread of fire and most of the native shrubs are slightly fire-resistant. Invasive grass that fuels wildfire is a major land management challenge and a severe threat to all species that depend on sagebrush habitat.

Bouquet of early April bloomers

Field lunch spot along this early spring rain-fed stream

Elk shed found in the field, displayed upon my head

Mickey Hot Springs: the kind of hot spring that boils the occasional cow

Stand of native Aspen

Ephemeral desert stream supporting macroinvertebrates like mayflies and caddisflies

Whimsical sprout of wild onion

Mountain snow storms moving in

Alkaline lake

Alkaline playa plant community

Lauren Bansbach

Bureau of Land Management

Vale, Oregon

— BLM Needles Field Office —

Having spent my life living in northern Illinois where the few hills occur along river courses or areas of glacial deposits, working in Utah has been a mind-blowing change.  I had pursued a CLM internship in hopes of learning about the plants and ecology of a different area of the country and boy is Utah different!

Factory Butte Area

Unlike back home, Utah’s geology is laid bare to inspire and expose the earth’s power to shift and change over vast timescales.  Although it seems to take a long time to get anywhere, driving is great because the landscape gives an ever shifting visual show.  With each terrain shift and turn new formations take center stage and shifting light brings the many color variations to focus.

View of San Rafael Swell

In my two weeks assisting with population monitoring of some listed Sclerocactus and Pediocactus species, I have quickly learned the geology here is not only breathtaking, but is a key component in plants distributions.  Needless to say, I am looking forward to learning more about the region’s geology in the weeks to come and enjoying the geologic show along the way.

The petite Pediocactus despainii

Sclerocactus wrightiae

Cassie Heredia

Bureau of Land Management

Richfield, Utah

The past two weeks have been filled with training, traveling, and wildflowers! The Wenatchee foothills are bursting with color, and it’s all I can do to keep up with learning the new flower species as they start to bloom. Luckily, I’ve already met some great botanists who are willing to let me pester them with questions out in the field, and I’m taking full advantage of their knowledge!

Last week, two of my fellow CLM interns and I drove down to Prineville, OR for a GeoBOB (Geographic Biotic Observations) mobile training course. Although our “field practice” with taking GPS data on our Trimble units ended up happening in the office parking lot, and all of our “observations” were purely fictional, I learned a lot, and I feel much more confident with the protocols of checking data in and out of the GeoBOB database and recording observations than I did before the training. However, the most educational part of the trip ended up happening outside of training, when my fellow interns and I decided to go for a hike at Chimney Rock after class and two botanists decided to come along! It was slow going, what with us stopping every time we saw a new plant, but the views were incredible and I learned so much.

We finally made it to Chimney Rock!

We had another memorable experience earlier this week when we traveled out east to join the Spokane tribe for their annual Root Day event. Over 450 people showed up, many of them schoolchildren, to take part in some traditional digging of Lomatium canbyi roots. These plants are known as biscuitroot, and their tuberous roots are edible (although the raw ones I tried smelled and tasted a bit like diesel fuel!). We spent a couple hours scouring the ground for the coveted plants, and after collecting some roots for the tribe elders, we filled our pockets with our own and are planning to roast them to see if that helps their flavor at all. After the digging, we drove over to Twin Lakes for a barbecue, where I tried salmon for the very first time!

Super excited about my root 🙂

This week we were also introduced to the AIM (Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring) and IRH (Indicators of Rangeland Health) protocols by our supervisor, Erik. It was great being out in the field, especially because the weather has cooled off a bit from the week before. The sites we visited all seemed relatively healthy, and therefore were easy to evaluate, but I’m sure we’ll see a greater range of conditions sooner or later. With AIM training in Prineville next week, and IRH training in Reno the week after that, we’ll be experts at these protocols soon enough!

This site looked like the opening scene in The Sound Of Music!

Katherine Schneider, BLM, Wenatchee WA field office

Spring is finally here on the Caddo National Grasslands. The flowers are blooming and butterflies are arriving. The botanical work is finally picking up in pace. Spring has also brought in many visitors to the Caddo for camping, fishing, and hunting. The crappie have begun to bite on Coffeemill Lake and eastern turkey season has begun. There has been many sightings of eastern turkeys within the last two weeks.

As of today 185 asclepias have been recorded on the Caddo on three different units. Most of the occurrences have been A. viridis. 4 monarch butterflies have been observed as well. No caterpillars or pupae have been observed.

I will post more info and some pictures soon.

Keagan

Hey folks,

It always blows my mind how quickly spring hits. We did a week of training in Prineville, Oregon last week to learn the ways of GeoBOB mobile. When we left, the local flora wasn’t in bloom and didn’t seem to have a mind to for at least a few weeks but when we returned, BAM, flowers everywhere! Everywhere you look it is green and colorful. We were told that the warm weather we have been having recently is unusual for this time of year and has induced an earlier flowering period for many species. Which isn’t necessarily a great thing since temperatures could easily still drop to below freezing at night, dooming young plants and some seeds.

We did IRH assessment at this plot, it was covered in balsamroot as shown above. Lomatium was also present along with buckwheat, prairie-star, lupine, sagebrush, blue-eyed Mary, and more.

As mentioned previously, we did a week of training in Prineville, Oregon last week. The class was an introductory training to using GeoBOB (Geographic Biotic Observations) in the field. Basically, we import desired information on flora/fauna from a giant geo-database into Arc map, and then export it into a Trimble unit. We can then have data when we go into the field that can be edited or added to. Data collecting has never been so easy! On the first day after the class was over, my co-workers and I got to go on a hike with some other classmates from different field offices. Two were botanists, so the hike turned into a plant walk, which was extremely helpful. Trying to learn the local plants is much easier in person than reading about them in a book.

Anyways, this week we were mostly in the field helping out with some line transects and getting our first taste of the 17 Indicators of Rangeland Health. My favorite day of the week by far was Root Day, an annual event that involves digging up roots with a Native American tribe. About 4 or 5 hundred people show up (mostly youths) to partake in this tradition. The root is from Lomatium canbyi  and is used for many different food purposes. A curved metal rod with a handle is used to stick in the ground under the plant and lift it up. It’s tradition for the first few roots each person digs up to be offered to the tribe elders. The roots aren’t particularly big but with 400 people, each offering 3 or 4 roots, it adds up quickly.

A good sized root. Fun fact, they smell like diesel. I ate one at the site, not terrible, not much flavor. We took a few home and are going to roast them, I’ll let you know how that goes.

Me trying to dig up a root. Half the time the root is broken off accidently while digging and trying to find it in the ground is darn near impossible.

The next few weeks are going to be trainings out of town so we got in the field as much as possible while we were here this week!

A beautiful drive through some sagebrush habitat to reach a plot. Not much of a view as you can see…

View into the Wenatchee valley from a plot we did an IRH assessment at. The slope was steep and we hiked a ways down to get to it. Hiking back up was a work out that almost ended with me throwing up.

After a little bit of discussion, we determined this to be oval-leaf desert buckwheat.

Until next time,

Katherine

My first two weeks at the BLM in Prineville have been a whirlwind of activity.  The first day I entered, I was nervously waiting for somebody to guide me around the office and explain the ins and outs of the job.  However, by the time I left that day, I was confident and ready to face all of the challenges that the next days would bring.  My experience started out with lots of training and paperwork.  My training varied from four wheel drive training to First Aid and CPR.  Shortly after this training I was able to go out into the field to look at wildlife.  (I am a wildlife intern instead of the typically botanical intern).  We headed up to northern Oregon in search of the elusive Washington Ground Squirrel (yes they are found in Oregon as well, despite the name).  We managed to find the colonies easily and the burrows, but with great difficulty we managed to locate an individual.  Then we helped survey additional habitat for the Washington Ground Squirrel and stumbled upon a Short-eared Owl, a once in a lifetime experience for an avid birder such as myself.

The next week started early at 4am in search of Greater Sage Grouse leks.  Instead of being tired, I was full of excitement and energy.  Seeing lekking birds has been on my birding bucket list, and I could not wait to finally see them.  We drove out in the pitch black, and after what seemed like an eternity we arrived as the sun was rising at the lek.  We got out the scope and started to count the birds and to watch their behavior.  Shortly after we arrived, a golden eagle flew over and flushed the grouse.  Four more individuals popped up that we could not see and they began to fly towards us.  Their wingbeats over out head captivated us and formed a memory that will last a lifetime.  Since then I have had the opportunity to view leks on other occasions, but every time the experience is as wonderful and new as the first time.

Greater Sage Grouse displaying at lek.

Being from Ohio, Oregon is a very different atmosphere, but I find that I am adapting very well.  Although the abundance of pick-ups, country music, and conversations about hunting may take some time to adjust to, I feel that I surely will.  I am so grateful to all of my coworkers for all of the time they have taken out of their busy schedule to answer questions and to make me feel included in the office.  I cannot wait to continue my work in Prineville and to explore all of the natural beauty in the course of my five months of work.

In late March I uprooted from my soggy and abundantly verdant home in Portland, OR and headed south to Klamath Falls, a place where snow still clung to northeaster slopes and buds were still small and closed. Not only was I headed toward a new experience, but I was going to get an opportunity to experience spring a second time. Klamath Falls, a town small in population but large in commerce as it supplies the large rural area around it, is nestled between the expansive upper Klamath Lake and the much smaller lake Ewauna to the south. The Link River, the United States’ shortest river, cascades past town and bridges the one mile between lakes.

On a weekend trip to the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge I saw my first Avocet! I have also added the white faced ibis, black-necked stilt, and a variety of duck species to my life list.

As an intern with the US Fish and Wildlife Service I get the opportunity to immerse myself in this ecologically, politically, and culturally complicated basin. Our work will mainly focus on species listed as threatened or endangered: the lost river and short nose suckers and Oregon spotted frog so far. Over the past two weeks we have surveyed for Oregon spotted frog egg masses at the Klamath Marsh Wildlife Refuge and property owned by the Nature Conservancy.

A congregation of three egg masses. The Oregon spotted frog generally lays eggs in shallow marsh where the water is warm enough that the eggs will hatch within a few weeks.

Oregon spotted frog tadpoles in a cluster after hatching.

The Klamath Marsh Wildlife Refuge is a great place for bird watching during frog surveys.

We are also helping with the recovery of two species of endangered sucker. This has involved using trammel nets to catch suckers with the Bureau of Reclamation in lake Ewauna. Once we catch fish we process them (insert a PIT tag if they don’t already have one, measure the fish, and inspect for damage or parasites) before they are transported to a river at the north end of Upper Klamath lake to be released. We will likely use eggs and sperm from some of these fish to start a reservoir population in ponds south of the lakes.

Inserting a PIT tag into a short-nose sucker.

Preparing to release a female ruddy duck that got tangled in our net.

Each day has been full of unexpected experiences and opportunities to expand my knowledge and perspective. I look forward to the months ahead full of fish, frogs, feathers, and more!

Molly Hayes, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Klamath Falls, OR

I imagined all of Nevada looking like Las Vegas; flat, dry, rocky, brown and dusty..with some mountains in the distance. Nevada’s elbow proves to be quite different. We spent the past two days hiking through the green rolling hills that surround Pyramid lake. We pushed our way through thick groves of Woods’ rose (Rosa woodsi) and black cottonwood(Populus trichocarpa). We drove through mountains covered in Utah juniper(Juniperus osteosperma) and we camped between Big sagebrush(Artemisia tridentata), rubber rabbitbrush(Ericameria nauseosa), and desert peach(Prunus andersonii). Everything is in bloom. Everything smells good. The sunsets are jaw dropping.

Our assignment was to collect stubble height data from grazing springs that are important Lek areas for the Greater Sage-Grouse. The measurements we gather will provide a baseline analysis for our range department to determine if the areas should be grazed.

In my mind, we were grass hunting.

Tomorrow I’m spending my day planting trees. I can’t wait.

cows grazing at Flanigan’s Allotment

Tufa towers at Pyramid Lake

view of a playa from the top of Rock Canyon

hills looking South from Rock Canyon

grass hunting

camping at Flanigan’s Allotment

sunset in the hills

hiking at Rock Canyon

Sam and Alec hiking back to camp during sunset

Monique Gil

Carson City, Nevada

SFFO Carson City BLM

Since my last blog, I’ve been continuing on with field work and maintaining the greenhouse. A couple of notable projects are discussed here:

LYTLE CREEK NURSERY
I have been working off and on at the Lytle Creek Nursery, which is at the Front Country Ranger Station about an hour and a half from the Mountaintop Ranger Station in Fawnskin, CA. Not much has been going on lately at Lytle Creek, so most of what I have been doing down there is cleanup work. Mary (FS Biotech) and I weeded the planting beds, checked the water system, set up the shade cloth, and began sorting the pots to get rid of any that were breaking apart. Two weeks ago we also planted two species of milkweed (Asclepias eriocarpa and A. fasiculatum) in the hopes of bulking the seed. I set up a weeper hose system for the beds. Nothing emerging so far!

Before: beds where we seeded milkweed.

After.

WORKING WITH AMERICORPS
I had a fun and busy day up at the Mountaintop Greenhouse transplanting with the Americorps Crew last Thursday. We transplanted over 250 plants in one day, as well as cleaning and building all the pots for them and mixing about twelve loads of new soil. I worked for a couple of youth corps when I was younger, so it was pretty neat to be on the other side organizing and directing their work. They’re a good group!

SEEDING MILKWEED
One day a few weeks ago I went out to seed Milkweed in the field with Mary and my supervisor, Dev. This work is part of the Monarch Habitat grant where the Restoration Program is maintaining and improving monarch habitat. These seeds were collected last year, and this year we planted them in areas close to milkweed occurrences that could use more plants. We used a circular quadrat and seeded two seeds in each quarter. The hope is that at least one plant will emerge from each quadrat. I also got a tour of where previous milkweed seed was collected. Some of these areas need more surveying to record the full extent of the population.

Quadrat used to seed Asclepias.

First spring emergence of Asclepias fascicularis.

VISITING THE PEBBLE PLAIN
I was lucky to tag along on a trip to the Pebble Plain with Mountaintop Botanist, Scott. This habitat occurs only in Big Bear and Holcomb Valley nearby. The pebble plain is critical plant habitat and contains many rare endemic plant species. Scott was able to point out many of these while he himself took photographs for a talk about the Pebble Plain. Enjoy the photos below!

View of the pebble plain.

Eriogonum kennedyi var austomontanum (Southern Mountain Buckwheat)

Castilleja cinerea (Ash gray paintbrush) parasitizing Eriogonum