From the hum of spring, into the midnight sun the field season at BLM in the Fairbanks district office is concentrated into 3 short months.

 

This week I headed down to NCTC in West Virginia for a GIS class and learned tons!

This next week I’ll be heading back up the Dalton highway to initiate AIM vegetation monitoring on few mining sites.

I’ll update more after next month once the season slows 🙂

After two months of monitoring rare cacti, my fellow botanists and I have moved on to collecting native seeds for the Seeds of Success program. We began collecting in Great Basin of Western Utah, where we captured a few species of Penstemon just in time before the heat of the sun dried up all of the forbs and turned them into a crisp. Now, it is hard to come by a target species in the low elevations due to the high temperature and dry climate, so, fortunately for us, this means we get to trek through the higher elevations in search for more collections. This has been a bonus for multiple reasons, but mainly because there are trees! When driving on the backroads of the Great Basin the only trees you’ll find were brought there by humans, you know miles ahead when you are about to approach a town because of the random patches of Populous fremontii. Lonely ranchers have expanded the range of P. fremontii into the west desert by providing them with ample water around their homes and agricultural fields. Up in the mountains, it has been refreshing to see trees in their natural habitat and also to have the luxury of keying out plants and eating lunch in the shade.

Every time I work in the field I see a plant that I have never seen before. This week, one of the plants that I fell in love with was Corallorhiza maculata. While collecting Packera multilobata seeds in the Dixie National Forest this Orchid luckily caught the corner of my eye. This plant is easy to miss because it blends in nicely with the dried leaves on the forest floor but it’s hard not to give it your full attention once you have found it. Its red stems and purple-spotted labellum make this plant very unique and adorable. C. maculata also has a special way of obtaining its nutrients, it is mycoheterotrophic. It’s clear that this plant does not photosynthesize because of the lack of chlorophyll in the stems and scale-like leaves. Instead, it parasitizes mycorrhizal fungi. The fungus in a situation like this end up being the middle man in the transfer of carbon from one plant (the host tree) to another plant (C. maculata).

Now it’s time for me to hit the field and collect some more seeds! Thanks for stopping by.

All the best,

Rayna

Richfield BLM

After some large collections in the past several weeks the seed collection has slowed as we wait for the last of our lower elevation target species to reach the dispersal stage. At the moment my days are filled with driving from site to site, checking phenology, and on occasion getting a little lost. If I learn anything in this internship it ought to be using a map to get back where I am supposed to be.  In this down time I have taken on a GIS project to identify sites for potential sagebrush seed collection. While it is frustrating at times it is nice to apply the skills I learned in a classroom setting, and that feeling of satisfaction when something works is more than worth it. Hopefully when I go out to verify these sites I find that it was a successful project.

Last week we were able to go visit another field office to see the process for planning for juniper treatments. The juniper trees have been spreading from their historic habitat into Sage Grouse habitat due to fire suppression and historic land use. We got to see sections that have not been treated, and then went to treated sites to observe how the recovery was progressing. It was interesting to see the decision making process on what type of treatment should be done where, especially since I had had the opportunity to read about the effects these treatments have on the native plant community. There is so much thought that has to go into the treatments and how to coordinate their completion that it is amazing that these plans are able to come together. I am excited that this internship gives me the opportunity to experience what goes into making rehabilitation and management plans. It is something I am extremely interested in, and I am hoping that after this summer I will know if it is something I wish to do in the future.

As seed collection comes to an end I am starting to learn about some of the projects I will be tackling in the upcoming weeks. I am excited to start sagebrush mapping and vegetation clearances, and to get acquainted with some new plants!

 

 

These are the days of summer on the North Coast. Often unpredictable – bookended by fog in morning and evening some days; on others morning fog gives way to wind strewn and pellucid evenings. Thirty miles or so to the East temperatures are high and the summer receives its thought-of heat, that awakens elevated flowers and splits to seed the lowland inhabitants. Summer is shifty: drifting between comfortable sensuous inaction and a leap in the metabolic movement of a life.

Here at the inner bark of summer – halfway through July – a turning reflection: I am more than halfway through my CLM internship!

My last day will be September 23^rd, a date readily approaching at the speed of life we know to be expectedly incongruous. The next adventure is decided, a return to Patagonia to work on a ranch I visited on my last foray to the South – Estancia Ranqilco. More on this in my final reflective post – today, a hopefully halfway reflective check-in from the land of Redwood, salt-breeze and changing fog!

I have been working mainly on collecting for Seeds of Success since my last blog post, enjoying greatly the cycles of phenology monitoring, seed collection, and packaging, data completion, the final sending off to the Bend Seed Extractory.

Being the one and only CLM intern at my field office, the joy of well-chosen companions in the field is not lost on me, and I have had a plenitude of this special joy over the past several weeks. Wildlife technicians, forest ecologists, and even the assistant field manager of the Arcata BLM Field Office have joined me on my seed collection missions! We build powerful connections not only to the people we work with but also to the work of others when we can take the time to commit to some inter-discipline-inner-office-cross-training. We are afforded respect, understanding and wholesome interrelation with those we share an organization with day in and day out. We are also gifted someone to help us with our multitude of tasks, and reciprocally are confirmed in our ability to be of use outside our particular expertise, happy to provide the gift of a little of our energy to another. This seems a crucial and fulfilling step, too often we are trapped myopically in our disciplines and resource areas. Trade a day with someone doing something very different from you in your office – it won’t be wasted time in any sort of way.

At another intersection, seed collection connects us to the more-than-human world in a way that is practical, physical, and ancestral. We have all been seed collectors. Regardless of race, gender, or personal beliefs, when we gather we enter into a nutritive relationship based on mutual respect for the creatures from which we gather. Rather than extoll the personal, ecological, institutional and spiritual benefits of seed collection – I will encourage CLM interns to collect with intention, career-minded adults to advocate for seed collecting/banking/saving and all to pursue opportunities to collect seed! In the beautiful words of Hope Jahren (author of the lucid book Lab Girl): “A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year old oak tree that towers over it.” May we be fully alive while we collect and may the simple act of collection make us more alive.

Along this same rivulet is another experience I have gratefully accepted through the past weeks as a CLM intern. BLM recently donated a large old growth log that had been sitting in a parking lot to the Wiyot Tribe. An elder from the Yurok tribe agreed to help in the re-learning of the traditional skills of plank-making and dug-out canoe carving. I had the great opportunity to help swing the hammer with both my hands and drive the wedges that split this great 600 year-old log. An experience readily compared to a deep, cool well-spring where water is inimitably needed.

In the coming weeks – I will be working on Seeds of Success, monitoring grazing allotments, writing drafts of the Headwaters Forest Reserve Resource Management Plan Amendment, feverishly working on mounting and cataloging my herbarium specimens, preparing a butterfly field guide for the Arcata BLM office, and working alongside US Fish and Wildlife on a project monitoring coastal dune geomorphology and vegetation in response to a changing climate.

When I am not on the clock as a CLM Intern these days, I have been venturing away from Arcata most weekends, enjoying all the richness of Northern California.

Notably, the Trinity Alps have taken me in as a sojourner; their granite as much thrust to the West from the mother pluton of the Sierra Nevada as I have been. If one thing can be said certainly about the Trinity Alps, it is that it is a range with illustrious botanical wealth. Spring has arrived in the subalpine – and I had the special privilege to hike one of the steepest trails in the Trinity Alps with my Jepson Manual for an overnight botanical backpacking bonanza. Keep up with a few of the wonders here (or better yet take a walk!): Kaleb’s iNaturalist observations!

In this way, the unique landscapes in which we are placed give their ripe and ready interplay with our work as CLM interns. We do not simply halt our training and inclinations as naturalists, ecologists, conservationists, curious humans when we leave the field office. On the contrary, these skills shine bright after-hours in myriad ways, my anecdote above being just one of them. Because of this, we lead a holistic and wholesome existence in which the false dichotomy between work and play is enthusiastically and passionately eclipsed.

To summarize these past months and intensify my intentions for the rest of my CLM internship:

I have been beside the water, in large part, as we tend to be with summer coming complete, from the Pacific Ocean and Humboldt Bay to the Mad River, Van Duzen River, Trinity River, Stoney Creek, Echo Lake…

Why? For practice and the pertinence of permeability. To practice patient, longing listening — the melody of the greatest symphony; river, stone, air and sun. I come to practice the olfactory and audible — sweet subtle summer Redwood and Fir. To test remembrance: March storms, birdsong, flowers now gone to seed.

I come to practice my passive permeability. Our simple debt to water makes us naturally osmotic beings — shifting gradients — essentially terrestrial sponges. And so we come alongside the river, the mountains, the sea. Our openness defines what we are — and we must practice and guard our permeability.

Yours,

Kaleb Goff

Arcata BLM Field Office, California

When I close my eyes I see seeds. I reach for them, feeling out the iterative estimation outlined in the Seeds of Success protocol: I am training my eyes and hands to confirm that I am collecting 25% of a population of at least 50 individuals. I find seeds in my socks, stuck inside my pockets, even one currently embedded beneath the skin of my pinky (thank you needle and thread grass, Hesperostipa comata). Although the few that follow me home and creep into my dreams do not reach their ultimate destination designated by Seeds of Success, the remaining 10,000 plus seeds make their way to a processing facility before reaching their final home outside again, put to work to restore ecosystems.

Sometimes I feel like I am just taking, destroying, smashing tiny plants under my big-foot sized feet. I spend all day grabbing seeds, at a buffet where I can take 25% of whatever is there that day. While collecting seeds requires a second by second mentality, my attention span focusing on one handful at a time, this frame of reference is limited. I frequently remind myself that my taking will turn into giving. Idioms about stealing run through my head daily: Am I “robbing Peter to pay Paul” (except in this instance Peter is a sagebrush ecosystem and Paul is a future ecosystem in need of genetically appropriate, native seed).

While bats, ants, butterflies, and birds are traditional pollinators; in the Seeds of Success system, people are pollinators with a purpose, taking native seeds and spreading them to landscapes in need of restoration. At the end of long days, when I arrive home encrusted in dirt and salt from my sweat, I bend over to unlace my shoes and find dozens of seeds stuck to my socks. Through this daily ritual, I have realized that I have always been a pollinator, collecting seeds unwittingly wherever I go. The seeds I carry with me are not necessarily the ones I have been assigned to collect. They are often seeds of weeds, clinging to my feet in the hopes of spreading their range. These persistent seeds are like a comet’s tail, debris latching on to whatever comet happens to pass by.

It is through these incidental, unofficial Seeds of Success collections that I become aware of how connected my movement and actions are to the landscapes I move through. Every step I take contributes to the accumulation of both intentional and unintentional seeds. Each week when I mail our Taos seed collections to the cleaning and storage facility I can grasp the tangible magnitude of our daily actions. Assembling 100,000 seeds on one table prior to packing reminds me what humans have the power to do when we put our minds to it. In addition to assessing the intentional fruits of our labor, I wish there was a way I could regularly assemble and assess all of the unintentional impacts, both positive and negative, that I have on plants, places, and people. How many seeds have I transported through my shoes and introduced to new places? What didn’t I see at a collection site that I should have?

In light of recent events that have studded my time with the Chicago Botanic Garden (Orlando shootings the week of my Chicago training; Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and Dallas the week of my blog post), I must also ask how my actions as a scientist, intentional and unintentional, contribute to or dismantle systems of oppression. While I collect seeds I have time to listen to the news and podcasts. While collecting Hesperostipa neomexicana, a fuzzy grass, I listened to first-hand accounts of civil rights activists through the BBC Witness Series. As much as Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, and Asa Grey inform my work as botanist, listening to Franklin McCain of the Greensboro Four and Gwendolyn Webb, a child hero of the Children’s Crusade, influences my work as a scientist.

At a time when the dissonance between my daily routine of collecting seeds in scenic places as a white scientist and the routine violence experienced by people of color in America could not be more extreme, I must seek connections between the voices I hear through my headphones and the work I do while listening. The 100,000 seeds I have collected so far remind me that I have power to tangibly alter and influence the plants, places, and people around me and prompt me to ask myself and whomever reads this: what does this power look like when devoted to cultivating a community of actively anti-racist and anti-oppression scientists in addition to cultivating a community of native and genetically appropriate seeds?

Sophie Duncan–Taos Field Office, Bureau of Land Management

Hi All,

After a slow start to our seed collecting season, we are off at a sprint.  We have spent quite a bit of time out in the West Desert for our initial seed collecting.  Our recent excursions into the mountains have resulted in 10 possible collections and a wonderful escape from the heat.  And I must mention it was absolutely breathtaking!! While out collecting seed and hiking around looking for plants of interest, I am often struck by the realization that many people never get to have a job like this: driving around, hiking, exploring Utah’s natural areas, and botanizing.  Plus we’re getting paid for this, which so mind-blowing 🙂

Learning to recognize common native plants has been awesome.  I have come to enjoy trying to key out plants with the help of my fellow intern who, thankfully, was a botany major.  Coming up with a name for a species I don’t know is always so satisfying (especially when it’s one we can collect). I am definitely looking forward to our return trips to the mountains to collect more seed!!

Cassie Heredia

BLM

Richfield, Utah

The end of June was peaceful and beautiful. I celebrated the summer solstice with a gorgeous view!

This month has so far been a whirlwind – I am out doing field work in the back country pretty much every day of work this month. Two weeks ago I went on a backpacking excursion on a nearby trail to survey for invasive plants. I mapped invasive species that I observed on the trail (which were mostly dandelions), while singing a lot of middle school throwbacks with my field partner to keep the bears away (There might have been some R. Kelly and Dixie Chicks in the mix). Along the trail I saw some pretty cool plants, including this super beautiful orchid, Cypripedium passerinum, otherwise known as Sparrow-egg lady’s-slipper.

Last week, along with my fellow CLM intern, Jacob, I traveled to a different branch within the Wrangell-St. Elias park to a town called McCarthy. For the Fourth of July, we set up a booth in the town center. Our objective was to increase awareness of invasive species and educate people about specific plants that they should watch out for. It was a super positive experience – people were genuinely interested in learning about invasive species. We had a lot of people come up to us asking about plants on their property or garden. I met a lot of fascinating people from all over the world (who knew McCarthy, AK was such a destination for July 4th??) including the U.K. and Austria! There was even a parade that came through town, as well as a rather intense egg toss competition, which I participated in, but sadly, did not win.

The rest of last week consisted of surveying for Elodea spp. Elodea is an invasive aquatic plant that our team has been monitoring in bodies of water throughout the park. Jacob and I traveled to 3 different lakes on our way back from McCarthy. At each lake we used a double headed rake attached to a line which we tossed into the water and ran along the bottom of the lake, which is where the Elodea has been known to grow. Additionally, we took eDNA samples, as well as collected specimens to identify and keep for park records. We didn’t find any Elodea (yay!) but found some cool specimens, including a pond lily, Nuphar lutea.

I am looking forward to the trips we have planned for the rest of this month. We are sure to keep busy! The work never stops in the war against invasive plants!

-Natalie

 

If in my last post spring was swinging to summer; yesterday served as a ready iron gate sending spring clanging shut into summer.

Yesterday was a concurrent summer solstice and full moon: from what I am told it is known as a Strawberry Moon and the last was in the summer of 1967 — the summer of love. And I’m of the kind that feels we could use another summer of love. So here’s to a summer of compassion, gratitude, kindness, transparency and: love.

In the words of the great poet Kahil Gibran:

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,

and step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering hours turn to music…

We begin today by yielding to the difficulty of the chronicler — so much has occurred in the last month! I am full of respect for those that narrate the events unfolding before and within them — CLM Interns, mentors, scientists, naturalists, poets…!

Routing a trail through the life of this CLM intern over the past few weeks is one with all the necessary rocks, twists, turns, uphills, downhills and stunning vistas.

The work of a steward runs and flows on brilliantly, like a headwaters rivulet. Through this work we are afforded tiny glimpses of what we previously did not know or did not know was possible. This is called discovery. When the shrouds drop suddenly and we sense what was previously senseless, this is one of the great joys of the naturalist, steward and CLM intern.

The last month on the North Coast has yielded so many of these unveilings, beginning with a trip to botanize and better understand a little known Arcata BLM property with the fantastic mentor and botanist, Jennifer Wheeler. The important thing here is that this area was reported to us as a “moonscape,” which is a very suggestive and tantalizing prospect to a botanist, invoking dreams of new and unique edaphic endemics (plants that only grow on unique and harsh soils). The short is that it was an incredible day, but the “moonscape” was more likely due to slope aspect and very thin soils rather than ultramafic or otherwise unique soil. A few photos of our discoveries:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next exploration expedition I had the privilege of botanizing was out to a large BLM property Travis Ranch, where Jennifer and I monitored grazing leases and had the opportunity to make a few discoveries (along with the rest of the field office):

The very next day I was out in the King Range, my field offices’ most contiguous and best known diamond of discovery. We walked a trail that may some day be official, and Jennifer and I kept our noses to the ground in what can be a rather repetitious habitat type for a botanist — Mixed evergreen forest. We delighted in several of the fantastical mycotrophs — plants that parasitize fungi in order to gain the nutrients they need. These plants are highly ephemeral so it is a real treat to find several of them!

 

I was back in the King Range the very next week for a 4 day/3 night backpacking trip on the Lost Coast with BLM Partner and local conservation supergroup — Mattole Resoration Council. We set off to remove non-native and invasive species in the backcountry, and I gratefully left my camera at home. I spent my 23rd birthday beside the Pacific, camped amongst the driftwood on the beach — enjoying the joining place of mountains, Big Creek and Pacific Ocean.

I was at the office after this trip for a short and high octane week of work on my Seeds of Success collection targets and then was off to the CLM workshop in Chicago!

The CLM workshop and training was a nutritive whirlwind and truly special experience. The farthest East I have ever been — seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time from 37,000 feet — recognizing the beauty of the Midwest, juxtaposed by the fragmentation and lack of wild lands in that part of the country — seeing plainly my unique connection to California and the importance of place-based connection inherent in the CLM program. And this is all superseded by the learning, networking and engagement of the week. I am truly honored to be one small part of the CLM internship program.

The prevailing wind of these anecdotes is one of discovery — not just for the sake of joy (although a significant side effect), but in the vein of stewardship, cherishing, and comprehension. Without these three aspects we cannot hope to effectively manage the lands we are responsible for. Only with our feet firmly on the ground, our hundreds of senses open, and our minds hungry to connect the seemingly scattered can we give the land that lends so much to us what it deserves. Simple personal discovery is deeply rooted in this process, and it is the process and prowess of the naturalist. I should clarify by saying that almost everything can be ruled a discovery in my usage of this term, especially your meeting with a previously unrecognized organism and fellow member of our collective earth-bivouacking. Even a new day is a discovery — who can know with questionless certainty that it will come again? When we gather the ripening fruits of discovery from all around us, at every possible opportunity, we rise into the light of the lands around us.

Coming on down in the next month!? Continued Seeds of Success collecting, climate adaptation surveys on the coastal dunes, plant lists, herbarium work and mountain time on the weekends!

Kaleb Goff

Arcata BLM Field Office, Arcata, California.

 

 

We are still working on our amphibian habitat assessment project for our mentor, recently surveying excellent wetland habitat : natural streams, rivers and marshes. We have yet to find another toad since the first one spotted, but we have found many other forms of life — uncovering what hides underneath the willow thickets one site at a time.

There is an extraordinary abundance of wildflowers in sagebrush country — you will be able to identify many new families and species by the time your internship is over. I never appreciated botany in the way that I do now.

When I first arrived, one of the administrative staff members told me that there were moose everywhere, and that I was sure to see one soon.

Well, two months later, today I finally saw my first moose …

For the record, many of my co-workers have spotted moose (alive and well). I think I am just not doing something right.