I arrived in Lander, Wyoming a little less than two weeks ago to work for the Rangeland section of the Bureau of Land Management. I was hired to monitor the effects of grazing animals on grasslands in south-central Wyoming. With an interest in grasslands and wildfire, a love of being outside, and training in geology, I was extremely excited to begin work! These first two weeks have definitely been busy and interesting and full of adjusting to a new place, job and people.

Driving into Lander, the first thing I noticed was the vastness of the landscape and the beauty of the rocks. Huge uplifted red, orange and yellow layered sand and mudstone lined the highways; the perfect frame for a town, the perfect home for a Mesozoic fossil. The sense of space is a lot different from the crowded city corridor of the East Coast, where I grew up and went to college. Driving through the country to Lander was like driving through above an ocean; awe-inspiring, immense, and of-another-world. The landscape and altitude were two of the first things I adjusted to, or, am adjusting to, since coming to Wyoming.

During the first two weeks of work I’ve been learning more about the areas we’re working in, the animals we’re working with, and the people we’re working with. The work is very interesting; we’re monitoring grazed and non-grazed grasslands in order to study the effect of cattle, antelope, sheep and wild horses on the important sagebrush-steppe ecosystem. One of the perks of the job is getting to be outside all day in an incredibly beautiful landscape; there’s no shortage of sagebrush, antelope, or mountains. Another perk is that I’ve gotten to meet people who are doing very interesting work at the BLM, those working on everything from wildfire fighting to wild horse management, archeology to recreation planning! Everyone has been very friendly and excited to talk about their work.

Grazing cows with the Wind River Mountains in the background

Noting illegal cows on a Trimble

Examining brands on calves to determine their owners

There was a huge learning curve the first week, but I’m starting to feel more and more comfortable. I can now tell the difference between several allotments and cattle pastures, a handful of cow brands, and various western flora and grasses. I’m excited to see how much more I’ll know, and how much more adjusted I’ll be, in the next two weeks!

Indian Paintbrush!

We found a field of Shooting Star flowers

–Bureau of Land Management, Lander Field Office, Wyoming–

Greetings again from Rawlins, WY!

The weather has finally warmed up here, which means that camping season has begun. Being a recreation intern means that it is my co-intern and I’s responsibility to get the campgrounds up to snuff, which has meant a lot of painting. We repainted most of the bathrooms either due to graffiti that needed to be covered up or just general updates. We also have been replacing and repainting many of the picnic tables at our campsites. Some picnic tables either needed tops or benches replaces while some just needed a sanding and to be repainted. We have also been working on getting bear-proof trash cans installed at one of our campgrounds, as there has been signs of bears digging through the trash.

Area where the bear trash cans will be installed

Example of picnic table needed to be fixed

Another thing that we have been working on is replacing many of the road/information signs in our field office. Many of our signs have become faded and hard to read. We have many signs that had been ordered before we arrived and we are hoping to get them put up. We are also working on finding other signs that need replacing that we might not know about.

I am hoping in the coming weeks we can start to work on some monitoring of our Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs).

During the holiday break my co-intern and I had the opportunity to go to Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. I had been to Arches in January, but I only had half a day to spend there. This trip I was able to go on some of the longer hikes that I was not able to do in January. Being my first trip to Canyonlands it was neat to see how different the two parks were even though they are only about 25 miles apart. One of my favorite parts of the trip was the guided tour through Fiery Furnace. Our tour guide was amazing and so knowledgeable.

Landscape Arch at Arches National Park

A blooming cactus in Arches National Park

Canyonlands National Park

Fiery Furnace

So long for now,

AZ

Rawlins BLM Field Office

My first two weeks up in Alaska have been an adventure. Most of my time so far has been general exotic plant management training (in Anchorage) and some additional training (ATV and bear safety training whoo!) at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where I will be working for the rest of the season.

My first view of a glacier! Spotted along the Glenn Hwy during my trip from Anchorage to Wrangell-St. Elias Park

Most of my job will consist of surveying exotic plants in the park. Though we haven’t done much fieldwork yet, I have been learning to identify the various invasive plants and getting to use my plant ID skills! One of the most common invasive plants here is Taraxacum officinale, known more affectionately as the common dandelion. We just found a native dandelion near the office, which looks very similar to the invasive dandelion, so we have to be pretty careful when we are removing the invasive plants.

Native dandelion (Taraxacum ceratophorum)

Invasive dandelion (Taraxacum offinale)

Two other main invasive plants at the park are Melilotus albus (white sweetclover) and Crepis tectorum (narrowleaf hawksbeard). During training in Anchorage we also learned how to survey for an invasive aquatic plant, Elodea spp. They are trying very hard to control populations of Elodea in Alaska, as it has become an invasive species in many bodies of water, due to dumping of household aquariums into nearby ponds and streams.

Another long-term project that me and my fellow CLM intern, Jacob, will be working on this season is mounting and organizing collections of specimens from the park. Most of the specimens were collected and dried over 10 years ago by botanists at Wrangell-St. Elias, so we are now going through and mounting these specimens and recording them into the park’s database. This project has fulfilled a personal lifelong dream of getting to try herbarium work. It involves a lot of artistic detail in organizing the specimens on the mounting paper, and is a very careful process. I am having so much fun mounting these plants! Not only the creative aspect of it, but I get to learn about the various (and potentially rare) plants that have been found in the park. I have found it to be a very orienting experience, as it in part allows me to familiarize myself with the park and with the plant species in Alaska.

One particularly cool specimen that I mounted was Pinguicula villosa, also known as hairy butterwort. Butterworts obtain much of their diet through the ingestion of insects and other small invertebrates. I have never seen a butterwort in person, and didn’t know they they consumed insects, so getting to not only see this specimen, but learn about it as well, was a unique introduction to some of the interesting plants that this park has to offer.

In summary, my time in Alaska has so far been amazing – how can you not fall in love with Alaska? I am looking forward to be able to get out and do some more field work and survey for invasive species and getting to see more of the hidden gems in Wrangell-St. Elias.

Cheers,

Natalie

Exotic Plant Management Intern, Wrangell-St. Elias Park

Hello all,

Although I still have a year left in my oddball 3-year CLM internship, I’m leaving early. On June 13th I’ll be starting a permanent BLM position with Las Cruces District Office, doing the same thing I’m doing now, more or less, and in the same cubicle. I don’t think I could have gotten here without CLM, and I’m very happy to be transitioning to a “real” job. Maybe I can finally cancel my daily emails from USAJOBS!

Here are a few photos from March, for no particular reason.

First, Echinomastus intertextus:

Phrynosoma modestum:

The edge of Carrizozo Malpais:

Near Kilbourne Hole, in an area with abnormally sparse vegetation and low plant diversity. Justin Van Zee of the Jornada Experimental Range informs me that this area has very shallow concretions of basaltic sand held together with calcium carbonate. These concretions are platy in texture, rather like shale, and although easily broken by hand appear to be hard & impermeable enough to give plants a hard time.

So soon we’ll be headed north for a bird survey. Though the schedule will be on the birds’ time and the hours long it should be a fun trip. Not many things beat listening to bird songs in the mountains.
Daylight is still increasing at about six minutes every day  (over 20 hours of daylight now) and will help not just for visibility’s sake but also in keeping us alert. Its easy to forget that though you might be ready to head out, the clock on the wall says 9:00 p.m. not a.m.

Here’s how it should go : We’ll take a charter flight north and drive the highway stopping at regular intervals to get out, listen for a few minutes record which birds were seen or heard, jump back in the car drive a mile-ish and do it all over again. Intense, busy, but once there’s a rhythm to the process, very and even happily doable. Few people who enjoy nature especially in the north take things like bird songs, sunlight and warmth for granted. They are precious, and short lived so every moment is savored!

– T.Hill      CYFO BLM Fairbanks, AK

Hello all.

Only two weeks in, I am impressed by the wide variety of projects we have been a part of. One day we are assessing the quality of a reclamation site at an oil pad, the next we are surveying for raptor nests and using telemetry to track grouse. We even had the opportunity to work with the Game and Fish Department to collect data for and survey an aspen stand that would be treated the following day.

The staff at the BLM office are exceptionally friendly, welcoming, and always willing to take us along for the ride on their field projects and answer any questions that we have. In addition to the first aid, UTV and four-wheel drive training, they have dedicated a lot of their time to show us around the field office and explain how their systems work. I have enjoyed getting to know them and the other interns, and look forward to working with them for the next few months.

Osprey

Osprey perched on nest on a spruce snag

Phlox hoodii

Mule Deer

the diversity of lichen out here is astounding!

Two young fox came out of their den to explore

Lupinus argenteus

Yellow Warbler

“Half Moon Lake”

Blue Grouse

Ruffed Grouse