We have turned the focus of our rare plant revisits from the very showy Fritillaria gentneri to the fairly inconspicuous Cypripedium fasciculatum. In Oregon, the BLM has Cypripedium fasciculatum (CYFA), commonly known as the clustered lady’s slipper, on its Sensitive Species list. A population viability model completed by the Institute for Applied Ecology for CYFA predicts that sites with 10 or fewer CYFA plants, especially those at low elevation (< 3000 feet), are more at risk for population decline. We are visiting a subset of the CYFA sites composed of 15 low elevation sites and 15 high elevation sites, all of which have 10 or fewer plants, in order to determine if what we find in the field agrees with what the model predicts.

Two especially droopy flowering Cypripedium fasciculatum

Another sad CYFA

We get to be more selective with our site choice for CYFA, so we have mostly been revisiting sites that are close to the road. For efficiency’s sake of course. The CYFA sites are often very lovely, with locations near drainages populated by Douglas-fir, madrone, mountain dogwood, western chestnut, canyon live oak, tanoak, and more. The clustered lady’s slipper can be incredibly small and easy to miss, so Lillie and I make sure to really take our time during our site visits.

While looking for CYFA, we have encountered some other cool Orchidaceae species, including two sites that have another rare lady’s slipper called Cypripedium montanum, or mountain lady’s slipper. This is an exciting find because it’s rarer and, in my opinion, more beautiful than the clustered lady’s slipper.

Cypripedium montanum

Cephalanthera austinae, the phantom orchid!

A closer look at the phantom orchid’s flower

Corallorhiza maculata

And a parasitic Ericaceae for good measure! Sarcodes sanguinea

Though most of our days involve searching for CYFA, we have also been able to get out and help with seed collecting. One day we collected seeds from Alopecurus geniculatus and Agoseris grandiflora on top of Upper Table Rock, which has got to be one of the prettier collection sites out there. Since I hadn’t collected seed before this internship, I was excited to get the opportunity to do so. My internship continues to offer new opportunities for growth, and even though I think the time is going by WAY too quickly, I’m happy that I look forward to each day of work as much as I do!

Until next time,

Kiki, Grants Pass, OR

Greetings!

I am happy to be reporting from the land of the midnight twilight where I have had a spectacular introduction to the Alaskan wilderness. I came here to work with plants, but with the impact of bear, moose, salmon and mosquitoes on life in Alaska, it appears my association with the animal kingdom is inevitable.

This summer I will be working for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park with the Exotic Plants Management Team. To shortly describe our summer activities, we will be focusing our efforts on surveying for the aquatic invasive Elodea spp., periodic management/surveying for newly discovered and prior existing invasive terrestrial plant populations, monitoring of aspen phenology and leaf miner damage, community outreach efforts and native seed collection for our restoration projects… We are certainly not void of projects. The last few weeks have been primarily focused on mandatory all-personal park training (aviation, bear and ATV training), and also specialized work training to get familiarized with navigating the NPS network drives and managing GPS and GIS data. It was a tremendously long process, but we are finally getting out into the field!

A glimpse of the Wrangell range from Willow Lake in the Copper River Basin. From left to right: Mt. Drum, Mt. Stanford and Mt. Wrangell.

The two most recently visited field sites happen to be accessed by the mere two roads into our park, Nabesna and McCarthy. Given that Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest park and preserve in the United States with 13,275,799 acres, this presents a bit of a problem. The answer? Aviation. This park is SO remote that we will be flying via bush planes/floatplanes with frequency to backcountry field sites inaccessible by The Nabesna and McCarthy Roads (I’m quite excited about this).

Nabesna Road was our first destination where we convoyed ATVs into the backcountry to the Copper Lake Trail-Crew Camp. The trail is undergoing a serious rerouting project and we were there to assess the habitat damage during its construction and map potential sites for restoration and re-vegetation on unused or expired off-road vehicle and equipment trails. We even got our hands dirty cleaning up light inhibiting debris that was successfully choking out vegetation on many of these trails (see before/after photos).

Mapping restoration plots on the Trimble GeoXT.

First stage restoration  – Before

First stage restoration – After

In Alaska, many environmental hazards exist that have the power to seriously harm or kill if unprepared. Whether it’s the wildlife or weather (rain and freezing temperatures), it seems that this rugged wilderness is always testing the most seasoned of outdoorsmen/women. Despite these challenges, I’m convinced that insanity driven by mosquitoes is the most daunting obstacle in Alaska.  Somehow the experience of 200+ tiny dipterans piercing their proboscises of 21 micrometers in diameter through a material layer and into the flesh causes folks to lose their cool. The DEET-less summer is going to be more difficult than I ever imagined.

After Nabesna area our team visited McCarthy and the Kennecott Mines to scout more potential restoration sites along with a manual treatment of a Leucanthemum Vulgare population. From the mine are phenomenal views of the Kennicott Glacier, Root Glacier and Stairway Icefall.

Looking through the trees to Kennicott Glacier.

Lateral rhizomatous sprouts of Leucanthemum Vulgare present quite the challenge for manual treatment.

In our spare time we have been busy botanizing, gardening, picking spruce tips and traveling outside the Copper River Basin. I arrived in Alaska during the pasque flower bloom and was lucky enough to stumble upon a calypso orchid my first week here.

A striking Calypso bulbosa growing in Sphagnum substrate of boreal forest understory in Copper River Basin, AK. Photo by Maura Shumacher.

Pulsatilla patens is an anxious spring wildflower. For it’s brief period of flowering in Wrangell-St. Elias we found it most commonly on river bluffs and open patches of woodlands. Photo by Maura Schumacher.

Life is sweet in Alaska and I am learning something new every day. Truly ecstatic to meet the other CLMs at training next week!

Hasta luego,

Jacob

Hiking 40 transects throughout the central Utah desert in 100 degree weather, getting chased and bitten by deer flies and counting cacti – this has been my fieldwork experience in a nutshell. Recently, my fellow intern and I have had the opportunity to work without the supervision of our mentor. Along with two other ACE interns, we have been collecting data for a Sclerocactus population study. In addition to the amazing adventures that being outdoors naturally brings into our lives, this project has been the most eye-opening experience thus far at this internship. Before this point I have always felt like I am really good at working in groups, mainly because I have no problem taking directions and going with the flow of other people’s decisions. These past three weeks I set myself the goal to contribute more to the execution and collection process of the study. I forced myself to speak up and be more assertive about how I feel the data should be collected. I think that practicing this sort of leadership has helped me be more decisive and confident as a field scientist and I am looking forward more than ever to what else this internship has in store for me.

Here are a few photos of the desert terrain and a cactus species we encounter on our hikes:

The beautiful, Echinocereus triglochidiatus.

Until next time,

Rayna

BLM Richfield Field Office

I have been working here in Idaho for just over a month now, and our crew is starting to really get rolling on our surveys. We are finishing up our work in the lower country just in time, this last week the heat started to set in and the plants are feeling it! The only thing harder than identifying plants that you aren’t familiar with is identifying plants that are unfamiliar AND dried up husks of their former selves. We will be moving up into higher country in the next few weeks which will allow us to work with some fresher specimens.

One of the things that is new to me being out west is the specter of fires. Many of the sites we have been working in have had a fire roll through them, and the lasting effects can be dramatic. We tagged along with the fuel monitoring crew for a field day travelling to different burn sites and seeing how the BLM restores the sites. It was neat to see how areas in different stages of restoration look differently, and hearing about the process was interesting. They do a mix of drill and aerial seeding to introduce native grasses and cover species back into the plots in an effort to stop the spread of invading annual grasses, cheat grass (Bromus tectorum) and medusa-head (Taeniatherum caput-medusae). These grasses can easily and densely colonize ground opened by fire disturbance. The kicker is that they mature and die quickly, which in turn increases the likelihood of fire breaking out again. Seeding select species, and treating weeds when necessary, can reduce the area these grasses can cover, as well as reintroducing diversity into the plots.

This site has been overrun with cheat grass, already turning brown and drying out.

This site hasn’t had a fire in a while, sagebrush and other species are present, and the open ground is covered with a biotic crust, which reduces the chance of invasive grasses moving in.

We also spent a day collecting seed for the Seeds of Success program. This program collects seed of native plant species for conservation purposes, as well as using them to re-seed sites hit by fire. The seeds we were looking for were false dandelion (Agoseris sp.) and false agoseris (Nothocalais troximoides). Yes, these plants are very similar. I was able to keep them straight thanks to guidance from our mentor, and once we learned the difference the collecting was pretty easy. I was literally paid to pick flowers for a day, and it was amazing.

Shoshone Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

At last!  A field partner!

The first month of my internship was, shall we say, eventful!  With over 3.5 million acres managed by the BLM Lakeview district office, I had a mind-boggling amount of potential locations to scout for seed collection.  My first month went by in a flash, doing recon, plant ID and even getting some experience with vegetation inventories.  I had a blast my first 4 weeks, with more learning compressed into those 16(!) days than I ever thought possible.  That said, I was ecstatic to get a field partner 2 weeks ago – just in time to get down to the real nitty-gritty!

With Kenyon’s arrival, as well as the timing of the early blooming plants, things went from 0 to 60 really fast.  Having made no collections during the first month, mostly due to phenology and some granivory, I was so stoked to start our first collection.  On his first day, no less!  My first week with a partner, we closed out 2 collections (Agoseris parviflora and Grayia spinosa).  Upon the end of our second week together, we are up to 5 collections total (add in Ionactis alpina, Erigeron bloomeri, and another of G. spinosa).  I couldn’t be more happy!  All that recon during my first month paid off immediately and should continue to do so.  We have so many collections coming up so quickly, my head is spinning.  It’s nice to have a crew mate, especially one I gel with so well.  I am really excited about our potential this field season.  We have some good months of collecting in front of us!

Work aside, I have really enjoyed being in Oregon during my time off.  I have been making new friends and reconnecting with family members I haven’t seen in a long time.  I’ve been getting out and about as much as possible, hiking, camping, and fishing (which is way easier here than in New Mexico!).  I’ve also been doing a lot of birding and I seem to add at least 1 lifer to my list every week!

Overall, I’m excited about what I have accomplished thus far, but even more excited about how much I have learned in such a short time.  My plant ID skills are immeasurably better than they were prior to this experience, and I have gotten a lot more comfortable planning and executing a field season – something that is far more difficult than I had originally expected.  I’m excited to see what comes in the months ahead!

• Brennan Davis, BLM – Lakeview, OR

As a Kentucky native, I have primarily remained on the eastern side of the US, and have never gone past the 90th meridian west, basically Chicago, IL. Before embarking on my journey to Oregon, I read up on the west, but nothing I read truly prepared me for the breath taking topography and abundant flora I have encountered. The most aberrant changes for me have been the lack of trees within the sagebrush habitat, the aridity, and high elevation.

Working with the BLM here in Vale, OR has been amazing so far and am already very familiar with the local flora. My first week on the job we did some range and riparian assessments to get a feel for the area in which I’ll be working for the next 5 months. Now, the other interns and I are going to be focusing on sagebrush habitat that has burned in the last 5 years and assess it for whether or not there needs to be an intervention with sagebrush plantings or if they should allow it to recover on its own. We also are looking at lek sites in the area that Sage-Grouse have used in the past to see whether or not they are suitable for the bird.

I have really enjoyed my time here in Oregon. I cannot wait to continue moving forward with this internship and experience all of the wonderful opportunities it has in store.

BLM Vale, OR

I have never been a particularly athletic person. I sweat a lot, pant a lot, and can’t do a push-up to save my life. Though I ran track and cross country in high school, it was always clear that I wasn’t really built for it, and though I tried my best, I wasn’t exactly competitive. (In my book, a win meant not coming in last place.) I never imagined that one day, I would be climbing 600 foot hills on a daily basis for my job! If someone had told me back in March how physically demanding this internship would be, I would have been terrified. But here’s the thing–after a week of weed mapping in 90 degree weather in some of the hilliest terrain I’ve worked in so far, I’ve realized that against all odds, I love it! Despite the general discomfort, there’s something incredibly satisfying about getting home each night covered in dust, sunscreen and sweat, sore from head to toe, and knowing that I gave my all to collect good data. Getting in the best shape of my life wasn’t on my agenda for this summer, but I guess it’s just part of the CLM package. This internship is challenging me in so many ways, and I couldn’t be happier.

In addition to the weed mapping we’ve been doing this past week, we’ve had some interesting educational experiences. Last Thursday, we drove down to Baker City, OR for a workshop about resistance and resilience of plant communities. We learned how different factors such as temperature regime, plant community composition, precipitation, and soil depth and texture can have profound effects on the way a site will respond to disturbance. We visited three different sites and calculated resistance and resilience scores using these factors. For me, the workshop highlighted the complexity of ecological interactions and reinforced the fact that climate and soil play just as important a role as the biotic community when it comes to land health.

One of the beautiful sites we visited near Baker City

Last Wednesday, we were lucky enough to be invited on a tour with Benson Farms, a native seed producer out of Moses Lake, WA. We visited five restoration sites, starting with one that had been seeded only a couple years ago and ending with one that had been seeded twelve years ago. It was interesting to track the progress of ecological restoration this way, and to see how, given enough time, native species will outcompete invasive species to reclaim an area. All it takes is some patience!

Penstemon species, seen at one of the restoration sites. So cool!

Chaenactis douglasii (Dusty maiden)

Because we’ve been working 10 hour days, we’ve had plenty of time off to take advantage of all the recreational opportunities the Pacific Northwest has to offer. On Memorial Day weekend, I took a trip with a friend to the Lochsa River in Idaho to go whitewater rafting (another thing I never imagined I could do!), and despite being flipped out of the boat into rapids and believing momentarily that I was doomed, I loved every minute of it. Then last weekend, we combated the intense heat wave by heading up to the beautiful Lake Chelan to spend a relaxing day at the beach. I have a feeling that with 100 degree weather already teasing, that lake is going to become a haven for us in the very near future.

Suited up and pumped up for whitewater rafting!

This is what relaxation looks like.

Next week is going to be a big change of pace–we’re going to be training at the Chicago Botanic Garden! Midwest, I’m coming for you!

Katherine Schneider, BLM, Wenatchee WA Field Office

Hi there,

After weeks and weeks of training, shadowing, and traveling we’re finally getting to the point where we can go out on our own and get some valuable work done. We’ve fledged and have wondered from our nest. We’re mostly working in areas that were burned in the last couple of years. How it works: most of these areas have been treated in some sort of way ranging from aerial seeding/mulching to weed treatments. Our job is to basically go in each area and check out the progress. How the natives are doing and what the weeds are doing. We bring some field topo maps created via ArcMap to sketch anything out or just figure out where we are in the burned area. ArcPad has also become one of our best friends though it seems to be easily offended if we load too much at once. I find myself occasionally trying to sweet talk this inanimate object in the field to do what I want. And I think it may actually work…

We’ve just about completed 2 burned areas so far. Monument Hill and the South Douglas Complex burn. It’s really neat to see how life has just sprung back into these areas that burned only a year ago. Life always finds a way it would seem. And with it, so do weeds. The first obvious one that anyone could guess would be cheatgrass. It’s easily the first species to pop up after a disturbance such as fire, so it’s kinda everywhere at first. Along with cheatgrass, bulbous bluegrass is another invasive that can sometimes be just as pervasive. In fact, sometimes it’s even more dense than cheat and other times it’s only in small scattered patches. I had never even heard of this poa before this internship and am curious to know why it isn’t being discussed more. Anyways, other more common weeds we find include tall tumble mustard, prickly lettuce, thistle, whitetop, and knapweed. It’s funny how I never really noticed these species before I knew what they were and looked like. But now I see them everywhere! A little gravel area we have behind the house we live in has a diverse community of only invasives, several of which I just mentioned. Despite being unwanted and hated by most environmentalists, ya gotta admire how tenacious these suckers are. Popping up in areas most natives turn their noses up to. And I suppose their presence is the reason I’m working in this position so small shout out to the exotics, just kidding.

On another positive note, a lot of these places require hiking on foot to reach and I can feel myself getting in better shape with each passing week. My coworker and I came up with the saying “a hill a day keeps the doctor away”. I think that’s even her blog title this week hehe. We came up with some other chants about keeping rattle snakes away too since hiking up rocky areas this time a year is prime rattle snake territory. In fact we had a close call the other day, a coworker just about stepped on one in some thick grass. But fortunately the little guy gave a quick warning rattle before slithering on his way under a trough.

In other news, between mapping we got to go help the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife do some Pygmy Rabbit trapping. Listed as critically endangered, these extremely adorable little fluff balls are kept in a breeding exclosure in sagebrush steppe. The goal is to release the younger ones in the wild each year in an attempt to establish colonies. In order to do this, the rabbits need to be captured in the exclosures and this is done by ‘rabbit herding’. As in standing in a line and herding rabbits to a corner where a cage is placed for them to flee into. The whole experience was rewarding and entertaining!

My coworker returning a rabbit to its container

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a pic of us ‘herding’ the rabbits. It was rather funny because we had an empty pillow case in each hand and had to wildly flap our arms as we walked forward in a line to scare rabbits from under the sagebrush. The sad part was that my arms were sore the next day….

Until next time,

Kat

Beautiful Buffalo, Wyoming, where the elevation is greater than the population.

Buffalo, Wy

While Montana may have the title of “Big Sky Country,” my time spent here so far has caused me to believe that Wyoming is certainly giving them a run for their money. Whether it has been from the early morning sunrises while out helping with bird watching in the ocean of sagebrush, the mid afternoon hikes noticing the clouds roll in, or escaping to the mountains and watching the immeasurable amount of stars glide across the night, Wyoming too has some big skies.

Wyoming Sunrise

Weston Hills

Wyoming Nightlights

So far – trainings aside – I have been learning about the Buffalo Field Office’s style of management and ways in which it collaborates with the local region in regards to the resources it is charged with. Through the course of this program I will be spending my time aiding with recreation planning and management, as well as providing help when possible to the wildlife portion of the resources department. This has included reading up on and visiting specific sections and trails, as well as learning the routes commonly used to access these areas.

Additionally, I am able to return to using a long lost friend, which comes in the form of ArcGIS. While it has been awhile since I have been afforded the opportunity to use this formidable software, it is a chance that I hope to make the best of.

Here are a few of the specific things I have been up:

• Building out a list of attributes and other data points to gather while out in the field, which will later be pulled into ArcGIS, to work within the scope and guidelines of a Travel and Transportation Management Plan.
• Creating and refining lesson plans to aid in the outreach and education of summer camps/classes.
• Inventorying wildlife habitat, specifically: Sagebrush obligate bird species.

So far the past couple weeks have been a very welcomed change of pace from my previous work experiences. I can’t wait to see what the rest of this internship has in store.

D. Erf

BFO BLM