The day-to-day of my job monitoring riparian areas to analyze the effects of grazing for the rangelands section of the BLM in Lander, WY has been great thus far. I get to spend every day outside, learning a new landscape and wildlife. As summer sets in, I’m enjoying watching the changes within our study sites – less rain, less wildflowers, seeding grasses, more grazing, slightly older sage grouse and antelope fawns. I’m excited to see how the landscape changes as summer and fall progress. Despite the great day-to-day, my favorite part of the job thus far has been all of the opportunities to learn from other BLM employees.

A few weeks ago I went on a tour of the allotments I’ve been monitoring with the Cooperative Rangeland Management group – a team of people involving BLM and State lands employees, conservationists, ranching permitees, emeritus professors, and me. I learned about the land I’ve been working on from the experts – one of the rancher’s grandad moved there in 1919. For some perspective, that’s before the BLM even existed! It was so great to hear the open communication between those with such differing perspectives. The day truly drove home the idea of multi-use multi-value land. It is extremely difficult to have all of the values represented in each parcel of land, and often the values are competing, but I think the aim is admirable and it is possible.

Two weeks ago I got to go on a plant ID refresher field trip with our new field botanist (also a CLM graduate!) and a collection of others from the office. There were a few rangeland people, two fire guys, and some oil and gas folk. It was fascinating to hear the conversations between the different experts, and to see where their own experience lies. The rangeland people helped ID a lot of grasses and they all had different tips for recognizing them.  The fire guys were talking about the transitioning ecological systems post burn and what plants to look for there. The plant ID refresher was very helpful, but, even better, was getting to spend time with and being in the field with the pros.

The learning curve my first month here has been immense. It’s been full of learning many acronyms – HMA, CRM, NCS; driving on muddy two-tracks, remembering names and positions of those in the office, knowing which rock to turn left at, learning grass names. I’ve enjoyed learning the field office and getting better and faster at monitoring and my day-to-day work. It’s been such a privilege to work in an office where I can stray from my normal work and learn from the experts around me.

Abby

Bureau of Land Management

Lander Field Office

Lander, WY

It sure has been a busy summer so far, with a lot happening since CLM training in Chicago. Right after training ended my wife came to Chicago to visit for the weekend and we had a blast visiting the wonderful museums and enjoying the city. We were extremely lucky and managed to get a reservation at the world famous restaurant Alinea, one of the most innovative and exciting dining experiences in the world.

Onion flowers, garlic chips, and mint

Wife enjoying a strawberry balloon filled with helium.

Unfortunately life cant be filled with fine dining and exploring museums. After returning to the Colorado State Office, we have been extremely busy with threatened and endangered plant monitoring all along the western slope of Colorado. We spent a week in Canon City Colorado to monitor populations of Eriogonum brandegeei, a species of buckwheat that is only found in the Canon City area of Colorado. Most of our time was spent in the washes near the foothills that had significant populations of E. brandegeei. 

A view from the field

I was able to pull away from our research group at the state office for a week to do some scouting and seed collection in the Pawnee National Grasslands. I was amazed at the amount of diversity that the grasslands contain. The flowers were in peak bloom and the colors popping up among the grasses were a beautiful sight. I unfortunately left my bird identification book at home, which was a big mistake because the grasslands are known for their amazing species richness. Hopefully I will be able to make it back later in the year and try to ID some of the species.

Traffic jam in the grasslands

Coneflowers in bloom

My field vehicle in the beautiful plains

Population of Hesperostipa comata (needle and thread grass)

A small sampling of the H. comata seeds that were collected

This past week we joined a Field Botany course from the University of Northern Colorado to monitor populations of Astragalus osterhoutii. This was very exciting for me because taking the same course at UNC 2 years ago got me interested in a career doing field work. It was a great experience to interact with students new to field work, it is amazing to see how much I have grown personally and professionally in the last 2 years.

Penstemon penlandii

The crew doing field work

That is all for me, about to head back to the mountains and get some more work done.

Brennen

Hello Hello!

Alaska is known as a land of mystique and beauty and now having lived here, I can say that Alaska is indeed a land of mystique and beauty. Completing field work in Alaska has its own unique set of challenges because of the vastness, lack of accessibility, wildlife and terrain. One strategy to navigating these lands is to take to the air; on a recent trip to Unalakleet (Western Alaska, off of Norton Sound), we flew by helicopter to our field sites every day. The diversity of ecotypes included wind swept lichen alpine tundra to volcanic rocky rolling hills to willowy grasslands to sphagnum moss bogs to tussocky low shrubland to mixed spruce woodlands. This project in partnership with the National Resource Conservation Services (NRCS) focused on soil and vegetation mapping of Nulato Hills managed by BLM and is anticipated to take another five years. I was on the botany team and identifying woody plants, forbs, graminoids, lichens, and mosses as well as estimated cover. Where forest existed we also measured trees for canopy cover, size, age, and density. The beauty and diversity of plants and animals was unbelievable- lichens, tussocks, grizzly bears, o my! These surveys help to better understand the land and can be useful for making a range of management decisions including reindeer and caribou grazing strategies. In addition to gaining a scientific perspective, I enjoy a reflective approach through photography, poetry, and watercolor painting. Below is a poem from my time there and photos to give you a sense of that stunning place.

Irises blooming in Unalakleet, Alaska.

Carnivorous sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, in the tundra.

Fellow CLM intern, Monica Kopp, in good botany form.

Colorful sphagnum moss, lichens, sedges, and low shrubs in the tundra.

A bumble bee in the lichen.

Our field helicopter picking us up for the day.

Beaver dam from the air.

Norton Sound with fellow helicopter heading into the field.

Last year we didn’t manage to get out into the field to make seed collections until the second of week of July. Prior to that, we had the arduous task of applying for seed collection permits with the 75+ sites we intended to visit for SOS East. The application process was similar for most – they took forever to be approved.

This year, however, all of our permits were already in place for us. Most of them carried over from last year, some had to be renewed, and some were new. I took care of renewing and applying for new permits while I was waiting for this year’s internship to start. That allowed us to hit the ground running after our training here at the North Carolina Botanical Garden at the start of June.

Now, anyone that has any gardening or seed collecting experience can tell you that if you miss a collection time for any of your early summer fruits (the ones birds tend to really enjoy), you might as well hang up your hat and wait until next year. Maybe then you can be the early bird that gets the [fruit]. Anyway, that’s how last year started for us. We completely missed all but one Vaccinium collection in the whole of our range, as well as many of our other enticing fruit collections and early bloomers. Here’s the Vaccinium we were able to collect both last year and this year

Vaccinium fuscatum

So far we have been able to collect 9 species that we missed last year! A few were only just collected this year because we hadn’t found (or overlooked) populations large enough. Others were simply eaten or otherwise dispersed before we could collect them.

Our first was Acer rubrum (Red maple), whose natural period of dispersal is purported to end by July. My mentor, Amanda Faucette, and I took a trip in mid-April to the NC coast and made a collection at that time, after seeing that most Red maples had already disseminated their samaras.

Next we collected Salix nigra (Black willow), which, as with Acer rubrum, does it’s thing early in the year. We didn’t expect to make a collection at all, but we happened upon a fantastic population serendipitously.

We managed collections of Gaillardia pulchella and Rubus pensilvanicus shortly thereafter, and moved on to Viburnum dentatum, Sambucus canadensis, and Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani.

Rubus pensilvanicus

Viburnum dentatum

Sambucus canadensis (Sambucus nigra ssp. canadensis)

Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani

Our most recent collections were Danthonia spicata and Deschampsia flexuosa, which we were astonished to find in large enough populations, especially this late in the season.

One interesting plant I keep seeing time and time again is Platanthera lacera (Green fringed orchid). I hadn’t ever seen it before.  I first noticed it at Smallwood State Park in Maryland about 3 weeks ago. Since then I’ve seen it a couple more times. Here’s what it looks like

Platanthera lacera

And just in case anyone is under the impression that seed collecting is all sunshine and rainbows, here’s a photo of our crew right after we collected many thousands of Eleocharis fallax spikes at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge in the rain

We don’t look too bad after a torrential downpour!

But all joking aside, even in the rain when our boots are filling with water, our vests start stinking to high heaven, and we have trouble filling our seed collection bags, this is the most fun job I’ve ever had! I’ll let the others make their own judgements, but I’m sure they feel the same way.

Till next time.

Jake, North Carolina Botanical Garden, SOS East

One of my favorite parts of the CLM internship is being out in the field all day and having the opportunity to see an incredible diversity of birds.  Almost every day I drive past an Osprey nest, a Bald Eagle nest, and a Golden Eagle nest (alas they have already fledged).  I get to see birds on the road, from California Quail to Sandhill Crane.  Then, when I arrive at my site, I am in the sagebrush and I get the opportunity to see that whole suite of birds in this unique habitat.  Furthermore, since I am doing Juniper clearances, I have the opportunity to see a whole other set of birds.  For the juniper clearances, I am checking the trees for nests so that we can have contractors remove the trees from the landscape.  Due to the Migratory Bird Treaty we cannot remove trees with nests, so those trees will be taken down in the fall after all the birds have fledged.  Removing junipers has many benefits from returning water back into the soil, to improving sage grouse habitat by removing perching sites for raptors and ravens, which predate the sage grouse.

Ferruginous Hawk

Loggerhead Shrike

Lark Sparrow

Prairie Falcon

Recently, I got to see both an Eastern Kingbird and a Western Kingbird within miles of each other.  This may not seem to be too exciting, but this is the very farthest Western extent of the Eastern Kingbird, so it was quite surprising to see one out here.  When I went to enter it in eBird, I got a message that it was a rare bird and that I have to enter additional information about the sighting.  Luckily, I had snapped some photos, so I was able to enter those and have the sighting confirmed without a problem.

Rare Eastern Kingbird at the western edge of its range.

In my time searching for nests, I have found plenty of unoccupied nests, but I have also found some really cool nests.  I have gotten to see Red-tailed hawk nests, Ferruginous Hawk nests, Northern Flicker nests and Prairie Falcon nests (these guys nest on cliffs, so not technically under my purview of juniper nests).

Red-tailed Hawk nest with chick.

Red-tailed Hawk on nest.

Ferruginous Hawk Nest with chick (center white blob)

Having a job where I am paid essentially to bird is a dream come true.  Sometimes the birding becomes routine, one can only hear and see so many Vesper sparrows before they start to go crazy.  However, every day has its surprises from Dusky Flycatchers to Ash-throated Flycatchers.  I cannot wait to see what the coming days and months will bring and I will continue to share these birding experiences from the High Desert of Central Oregon.

Ash-throated Flycatcher

After about a month and a half of scouting out sites, meeting with landowners, and learning a LOT of plants, we finally completed our first seed collection this past Thursday! On Wednesday, we went to Harwichport on Cape Cod, to a 40+ acre backyard complete with a bog, some streams, some woods, and a large family of very protective ospreys right in the middle of prime collection area. Clearly they haven’t been filled in about our conservation efforts and still think that the five hippies tromping around the bog are trying to steal their babies…

Alas, nothing to be collected at this site yet. Many species will be ready here in about a week or two. We camped nearby, and Thursday morning went to a Mass Audubon site on the Cape called Longpasture. We made our way down to the saltmarsh, and spread out across the beach to test capsules of Juncus gerardii (commonly called black grass, although it is actually a sedge and not a grass at all). Sampling for ripeness mainly involves breaking open the capsules to reveal the tiny speck-sized seeds inside, and checking out the color. In this species, we are looking for dark brown to black seeds, whereas yellow to orange seeds are not yet ready.

The TINY specks surrounding the pile of capsules are the actual seeds – DON’T SNEEZE! Their dark brown/black color means they are ripe and ready for collection!

We spread out along the beach, and zig-zagged back and forth in our sections, collecting from every third or so plant. Once I go into a rhythm, it was really enjoyable and therapeutic. I didn’t make the connection until I was out in the field pulling up seed, but it’s the same summertime feel as going berry-picking – you just have to keep count (and we can’t eat them…) Needless to say, I am so happy to be doing this for the next five months!

The patches of the more brown-tinted grass-like plants are the Juncus gerardii. It is more of a high marsh species, hence it is not growing closer to the water. (Also, what a view!)

For each collection, we have three main protocols to keep in mind: 1. Collect from at least 50 individual plants, 2. Collect no more than 20% of the population, and 3. Collect at least 10,000 seeds. This seems like a large number of seeds, however each individual plant sends up a few stems with capsules, each stem has many capsules on it, and each capsule has many seeds inside. So after all the math was said and done, between the five of us we wound up with approximately 630,000 seeds. Go team go!

Bag full o’ seeds. First collection was quite a success!

Krista Heilmann

Seeds of Success Intern

New England Wild Flower Society, Framingham, MA

I’m pretty sure it’s physically impossible for a month to pass so quickly, but here I am!  I’m pretty sure I blinked about twice before July was upon me.  I’ve had a quick, somewhat stressful, and really rewarding month.

My crew mate and I haven’t slowed down one bit, having just completed our 22nd collection (which takes us well over the halfway point to our target number)!  We’ve gotten a ton of good forb species, as well as some grasses and shrubs.  Things are just starting to slow down, with the desert turning brown and crispy.  Some of the later blooming asters and buckwheats will round out our forb collections, and the grasses are starting to seed out like crazy.  I think we will have a strong couple of months ahead of us!

Aside from seed collecting, my crew mate and I are also performing botanical clearances for proposed developments (troughs, water pipelines, etc.) on BLM land.  Essentially, we take a species-level inventory of the flora present at the project site.  The presence of special status species or noxious weeds at the site then informs how the project is implemented; if either are present, mitigation may be deemed necessary before the project can take place.  These clearances have really helped me brush up on my ID skills and they have helped us discover good collection sites as well.

Calochortus macrocarpus – sagebrush mariposa lily

With so many populations seeding out between several sites, I’m sure I will have an equally busy, wild, and wonderful month before my next post!  I’m still astounded at how much I’ve learned in such a short time.  This experience is exactly what I needed, and I’m excited to see what it keeps bringing!

Smith Rock, outside of Bend, OR

Brennan Davis, BLM – Lakeview, OR

Hello again,

Vernal in July, like most places in this part of the country, has been very hot and very dry. Fortunately, we got to spend this past week rafting on the white river! But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m going to rewind back to 4th of July weekend when I met up with some of my fellow CLM interns in Lander, WY. It was so nice to be able to take advantage of our awesome network. We camped and went to a rodeo and had a killer BBQ. Lander, WY, great place for the 4th of July! Below is a picture of our epic BBQ grocery shopping spree:

We also spent a lot of time last week collecting Oenothera species for Krissa’s research! We were able to find Oenothera acutissima, cespitosa, howardii and pallida. Our search brought us up into the mountains to see some big and beautiful Ponderosa Pines. 

Last week we scouted more populations and did some more seed collecting. Up on Blue Mountain we found Lomatium triternatum and Lupinus argeneus. When we’re not in the mountains, we spend most of our days at work near drill pads and evaporation ponds, but in the evening we get to escape and explore the beautiful hidden gems of northeast Utah. One evening last week we hiked up to Moonshine Arch . You can’t find this stuff on the East Coast.

But now back to our latest excursion. We spent this week on the White River doing some invasive species monitoring, specifically Russian Olive and Tamarisk, which are both huge problems here in Vernal and all over this part of the country. I wish we had a machete with us, cause this bush is nuts! The BLM has already done some weed removal work along the White River, but it has barely made a dent and it has already cost millions of dollars. Even the areas that have been treated have a significant number of resprouts and new seedlings. Invasive species removal is no easy task. It is costly and requires a lot of attention. The field office here does not have enough time, money, or staff to come back year after year to treat and retreat these invasives, but if nothing is done we will lose our cottonwoods and our native understory completely. Though, this trip was a bit of a depressing reality check we had a lot of fun, rafting, kayaking and camping and of course eating. This is a picture of us trying to fit all of our gear, but mostly our food, on our raft:

More exciting Vernal, UT adventures next time. Thanks for tuning in.

Hannah

There is a myriad of Latin binomials swirling through my head. My hands are callused from digging soil pits and my elegant farmer’s tan has made a strong comeback. It’s official, field season is really here. We got a late start here in Meeker, CO, doing AIM monitoring for the Bureau of Land Management, but are surely making up for lost time. There has been a plethora of exciting experiences my first few weeks, and I will do my best to highlight a few.

Big skies and pinyon pines (Pinus edulis)

This ecosystem is arid, hot and at times unforgiving, at least to us humans. Yet all sorts of flora and fauna are uniquely adapted to such challenges and make life here look easy. The majority of our plots are in sagebrush, wherein we collect supplemental vegetation data to assess habitat for Greater Sage-Grouse. At various elevations, different subspecies of sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, are dominant. Luckily, we also get to experience working in pinyon juniper, quaking aspen, cottonwood forests, and salt-desert shrub lands. It’s remarkable to see the diversity of ecosystems in such an immense range of this beautiful state. The greatest challenge of this position has undoubtedly been learning all the plants. Since vegetation monitoring means identifying any species we may encounter on a transect, there has been a pretty steep learning curve getting started.

Common sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) in a recently burned meadow

The vast openness and big skies of Northwest Colorado have stolen my heart. Having never lived West of the Mississippi, almost everything is alien to me here, but I am quickly acclimating. The plants (of which there is an overwhelming diversity), the birds, and mammals are all slowing revealing themselves. To live in a place where you can drive for hours in any direction and see predominantly wilderness is a true privilege. Sometimes when approaching a plot, we are hit with the strong scent of sagebrush as we hop out of the truck. Just yesterday, I saw my first Golden Eagle on the wing, graciously allowing us a peak at her power and beauty. In my experience, it is these tiny moments of sensory pleasure that make being a field biologist the greatest job in the world.

A typical day in the field may wind down with a pitched tent and some stellar scenery

Cheers,

Coryna Hebert

BLM, Meeker, CO