Fall is upon us here in Idaho, and by fall I mean winter has come in full force. It seems like we had just one day of beautiful leaves changing color and then all of a sudden the frost hit hard.

The winter this week has given us snow up in our hills, the line being at about 6,500ft. And hitting us in the valley with no fun snow, but rather the less than stellar freezing temps of 30-40 degrees.

The weather turning has changed the way that we are starting to view the last little bit of our season. With these cool temps and precipitation the need to be properly prepared in the field is something that we are struggling with. So used to the hot summer temps that we are forgetting to add that extra layer, to pack those gloves, to trade our baseball hats for stocking caps

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But with the cold weather and snow brings some absolutely breathtaking views of the mountains. It seems like a fair trade off for the cold.

-Sierra Sampson

Salmon, Idaho BLM

At the end of September, month six of my CLM Internship, I am still loving the diversity of the work I get to do. I have been working on some of the same projects for a while now and have mentioned them in previous blog posts: raptor surveys, maintaining insect traps, picking up trash, finding and pulling weeds, and of course seed collections. The last raptor survey of the year at Cosumnes River Preserve is completed, but waterfowl surveys are just beginning. As for some projects, the work might be the same, but the people and places can change. I recently led a large group of enthusiastic, hardworking, geocaching volunteers to clean up a large dump site on a newly acquired parcel of Pine Hill Preserve. They were trying to persuade me to start geocaching with them, and I told them I get out in the field plenty hunting for plants. Speaking of…I have completed a couple more seed collections in the last month: one not so common Navarretia filicaulis and one very common Epilobium brachycarpum.

A project which I had looked forward to through September happened last week. There are now two ephemeral ponds on BLM lands near Michigan Bluff, CA, constructed by a small but strong group of people from our BLM field office and the US Forest Service, led by a wetland designer and the wildlife biologist at our office. Yeah, the excavator did a lot of the heaving lifting, but it was tough work for us too. The ponds might not look like much now, but with the rains coming, soon they’ll hold a couple feet of water and hopefully some endangered California red-legged frogs! The ponds were constructed to increase the habit of red-legged frogs, which live on private land about a mile from these new ponds and are otherwise scarce in the Sierra Nevada. Being that the ponds are ephemeral, they will provide habitat for the endangered species while excluding bullfrogs and fish that decrease populations. A PVC liner will be responsible for holding the water because adequate clay was not present there and could not be economically sourced from nearby to create an impermeable wetland. I may have the opportunity to help collect seeds from local wetlands to plant along the margins of the constructed ponds, providing nice places to hide, mate, and lay eggs. Come on frogs!

John Woodruff

BLM Mother Lode Field Office

As the Pokémon fans and SOS participants will tell you, “Got to clean ‘em all.” Cleaning seeds is important for storage, future use in restoration, and for qualitative/quantitative assessment. Nearly all the Seeds of Success (SOS) collections are sent to the Seed Extractory in Bend, Oregon for seed cleaning, but in Alaska we have a local facility for that. The Plant Materials Center (PMC) is primarily focused on agricultural research and services, but also partners with agencies like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for ecological projects. The PMC not only cleans SOS seeds, but also propagates plants from those seeds to determine the viability of cultivating these plants for even greater seed yields. The ultimate purpose of these efforts is for restoration projects on BLM lands for campgrounds, road ways, trail systems, and mining sites. As Conservation Land Management (CLM) interns, Samantha Snodgrass and I take part in this good, clean fun. The strategies for cleaning seeds varies by species and includes both hand and mechanical means. The stars of the show are brush machines, air machines, pans, and tumblers. We use the tools that fit the task in order to reduce loss and damage to the seed while of course maximizing the cleanliness. We then could examine the seed under the microscope to determine how healthy the seed appeared and anticipate their viability. While there, we primarily cleaned seeds in the Poaceae and Fabaceae families. Lubo Mahlev served as our guru guide in this science (and art) form and we even got to join forces with a former CLMer Jenn MacMillan.  In addition to cleaning seed, we also harvested some of the last seed from the PMC fields with handy sickles. It was incredible to experience these facilities (that includes a seed library!) and interact with the welcoming, knowledgeable staff.

Samantha Snodgrass expertly working the brush machine.

Kim Hack feeding Calamgrostis canadensis into the brush machine,

Beautiful lighting at the Plant Materials Center.

Examining seed in the microscope.

Samantha, Lubo, and Jenn harvesting the bounty.

Machine v. human, who yields more seed?

My these seed bags are soft.

Seed library!

Beautiful creatures.

Since my last post Brooke and I have been very busy collecting seed here in Carlsbad. After a lot of waiting, plants are finally beginning to seed left and right! One of our more interesting collections this month was that of prickly pear and cholla cactus. The thick gloves we had brought to collect with were immediately bombarded  with thousands of tiny glochids and the occasional spine, which often went right through our gloves.

Opuntia engelmannii var. engelmannii fruit we collected + prickly pear pads for pressing!

Cylindropuntia imbricata (cholla) fruit!

Pressing these cactus species for herbarium vouchers was an exciting and challenging task. In order for them to dry out enough, we had to cut the prickly pear and cholla in half, and essentially skin them. This is not easily done and involved glochids everywhere (I’m still finding them stuck to my backpack somehow) as well as several cactus spines to the finger despite our gloves.

Prickly pear ready to be pressed

Cholla!

As we round on our last month of the internship, we have a lot to do and will be mega busy collecting seeds!

-Meridith McClure

Carlsbad, New Mexico BLM

Fall is finally here in Colorado. The morning air is cool and crisp, the aspen are putting on a beautiful show, and the breweries are releasing stouts. When I first started my internship, the trees had not put on new leaves for the year. Now the leaves are turning yellow, signaling that summer is nearly over and winter is coming. Fall is the season for preparing for what comes next. The plants shed leaves and go dormant to try and survive the winter. The animals are trying to find every last calorie they can before the lean times of winter. Those who garden are canning and putting away the last of the seasons harvest. Fall is a season of review; what went well, what needs work, and what to do differently next year. With my internship winding down, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this past season and also the future.

This past summer has gone by in a whirlwind. I have been all around the wonderful state of Colorado and explored parts of it that I would have never taken the time to visit. I have met amazing people with a passion for conservation and managing our public lands. Most days were spent outdoors in the sunshine looking for the threatened and endangered plants of Colorado. It has been a great summer and I am so glad that I was able to explore the world of natural resource management and conservation. I got an up close look at how our public lands are managed and how much goes on behind the scenes. The world of resource management is vast and filled with so many great people working to preserve our awesome public lands.

The summer was not filled with just happy feelings and sunshine though. When my internship started I was very excited to travel around Colorado and get paid for it. Now that I have finished my internship, I have discovered that I really do not enjoy travelling for work. Staying away from home multiple days a week ended up being a huge inconvenience. I also have found that I am not a fan of commuting to a metro area. I originally thought my time spent going to work would be a great time to catch up on podcasts and listen to good music. While the music was great, sitting in traffic before and after work became soul crushing after a few months. Spending 2-3 hours a day to get to work and back was bad for life, and most importantly bad for the garden. Working and traveling all summer with a small crew pushed my social skills. I prefer silence and working alone, so working and traveling with people all summer was stressful at times for me. I was pushed to learn and grow this summer, personally and professionally.

I think that internships should be viewed as opportunities to explore yourself and figure out what works best for you as an individual. This summer has given me lots of time to think about where I can fit in with conservation efforts. As much as I enjoyed what I did this summer, I do not think this is what I would like to do with my life. I find myself being drawn to growing plants as a career path. I am not sure if that means growing vegetables locally, working at a botanic garden, or even growing native seed for Seeds of Success, but as long as I get to plant some seeds I will be happy.

It is always hard getting ready for change. Tomorrow will be my last day as a CLM intern and I am not really sure what the next few weeks and months will have in store for me. I am excited to see what comes next and what I can do for conservation. When the snow starts to fall this winter I have a feeling I will be longing for the days of this past summer, days spent sweating in the hot sun of the western slope of Colorado. Winter is coming, but thankfully spring always follows.

The halfway point of my internship came and went, and now I am only seven weeks out from finishing! After all of the anticipation for this internship during my last semester at Oberlin, it is hard to believe how fast it’s gone by. As always, we are keeping very busy out in the field and on the weekends. We have been continuing our schedule of the water rights inventory, juniper mapping, a few seed collections, tagging trees and some smaller projects that have come up along the way. As I update my resume for my current job search, it’s rewarding to see the number of skills I have gained while working here. We have been thrown into so many different situations, there is only time for us to figure it out as we go along. As someone who’s not the best and sometimes prefers not to plan, this generally works out fine. Lots of trial and error, but I am learning tons!

Cloudy day at Ft. Sage OHV area

Half Dome, Yosemite National Park

our Tahoe hikes have taken us on sections of the PCT!

Lake Tahoe views

Though the days have cooled off here in Susanville, CA, the fire heat hasn’t died down yet. A recent wildfire, the Willard fire, started over the weekend of September 10th just around 7 miles west of town and has now burned roughly 1,000 acres. I was not expecting to see a big plume of smoke while driving back after the weekend, but sure enough, the smoke was coming from just beyond Susanville! This is the closest I have ever been to a big wildfire, so it is a whole new experience for me. They are evacuating people along the Susan River now, and I’ve seen several planes flying overhead. The Willard fire is now 100% contained and burned a total of 2,575 acres. Structures destroyed include 2 houses and 5 other structures. The past month has been filled with water rights and juniper mapping. I’ve been able to explore so many roads at the Eagle Lake Field Office that are tucked in between 395 and 139. It is always a shock to emerge back on the highway after spending a day bumping along on the back roads. Being on the two track roads almost always makes time feel as though it passes more slowly. There is a very nice and relaxing element to the solitude of the places we visit. The marijuana growing activity has picked up since Lassen county passed a new ordinance allowing a limited number of plants to be grown for medical marijuana. Because it is harvest season, part of the field office has been closed off until things die down. Fall also marks the beginning of hunting seasons here. I am glad that my field shirt is red! Our seed collecting has been slowing down here since most things have died or the seed has gone already. We are already thinking about the possibility of driving the seed up to Bend later in October. With 6 weeks left, the thought of leaving is starting to set in a little. I really hope I get to experience some actual rain here before I leave. I don’t exactly wish to be stuck out in the field in a storm, but it would be an experience. I am also looking forward to seeing how I reflect on my time here after I leave. While taking the train back from San Francisco to Reno a few weeks ago, I was amazed by how the journey felt so different with a different vantage point. I am sure I will be processing my experiences here over many more miles of travel along new roads here and others leading to new places. The next few weekend plans include hiking around Tahoe and going up to Oregon. We are running out of weekends for adventures here in Nor Cal. The fall also means that there will probably be more office work soon. We are currently looking for sites to rake in Atriplex canescens seed, in addition to mapping upland exclosures. Last Thursday we woke up to snow on the local Diamond range, which marks the end of the Sierras. It’s pretty exciting to see snow so early. This past week it warmed up to 90 degrees during the days and felt like July again. Hopefully more snow will come soon!

Alia

Bureau of Land Management

Eagle Lake Field Office

This month I’ve been in the field half of the time and the other half in the office. Right now is time when birds from the north start migrating down to our preserve. It’s our job to prepare our wetlands so that these birds have the proper habitat they need to forage and rest. The typical preparation process starts with “resetting” the pond. What this mean is that we mow and disc “problem” areas within the pond before we flood it up. Areas with unwanted plants by birds are associated as “problem” spots. Once we reset the pond, we can start next step of pumping water into the ponds. Before we run the water pump, we check the water control structures (WCS) and make sure that it sealed tight before any water is added to the pond to prevent wasting water. We then open the valve associated with that pond and check other adjoining valves to see if they are closed since some are connected via underground piping. Once the proper valve(s) are opened, we initialize the connecting pump and double check that water is flowing out of the intended valve at the proper rate of speed. This process repeats approximately 43 more times by the middle of December since we have 44 ponds to manage.

During this time of the year, we also monitor the bird use within the ponds that we flood up. This means that as we flood additional ponds throughout the season, the workload increases as well. In addition to the new workload, we have to manage eight special ponds for the United States Geological Survey (USGS). USGS is conducting an experiment to test how well our wetlands absorb naturally occurring toxic methylmercury. Since these eight ponds are a part of the experiment, we have to treat them differently in accordance with USGS expectations. All eight ponds are to be filled up at the same time and specific instrumentations are to be placed within the WCSs.

Flooding up the ponds is my favorite part of this job. It allows all the plants and macroinvertebrates to thrive and with that an abundance of birds such as Canada geese, the popular sandhill crane, and black-necked stilts. Seeing these birds reminds me what kind of difference this job can have.

Another neat part of my job assignment this month is helping with grant proposals so that we can restore habitat for the federal-listed endangered giant garter snake (GGS). Since I have some GIS skills, I was tasked with creating maps to supplement the grant proposal text. The goal was to create a set of maps that could tell the entire story of what we were trying to accomplish with the money. It had to contain information such as proposed restoration sites, relevant habitat corridors, and urban infrastructures. The process of creating these maps took numerous edits and revisions; an important, but somewhat tedious task. I was also asked to create a literature cited page by using some existing sources from the previous Environmental Enhancement Fund (EEF) grant. Utilizing my previous education in engineering, we also calculated some dimensions of the proposed wetland restoration site. By helping our staff with this grant proposal process, I learn a lot about what applying for a grant entitles. It’s something I like to be more involved with later in the future of this internship, if possible.

Last Friday we spent the day at Ponkapoag Bog, a lovely spot just 20 minutes from Boston. Friday was one of the first days where it finally felt like Fall. The wind was blowing just right, and the colors were beginning to change–all four of us were happy campers! The day just got better as Ponkapoag is a magical spot. This bog is located just off of Interstate 93, in fact we could hear the interstate all day, but it is home to many endangered species (17 according to Backpacker Magazine…).

Scheuchzeria palustris, Pod-grass. An endangered species in Massachusetts.

The bog itself is one of the only kind in Massachusetts–hence all the rare and endangered species. Virtually untouched, it is a peaceful oasis amidst the hustle and bustle of Boston-life. The bog transported me back to Maine, where such lovely hideaway spots are common. Not only was the setting lovely, but we spent the day collecting Eriophorum virginicum, or cottongrass. A gorgeous plant that looks like pillows atop stalks.

Eriorphorum virginicum, Cottongrass

Until next time,

Julia Rogers, SOS Intern, New England Wild Flower Society