The past four weeks went by crazy fast! Most of the time comprised of training and getting my bearings in my new job. I am an SOS intern placed in New Mexico along the edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Being from the upper mid-west, the region I am interning in is both very different and yet somewhat similar to where I lived. I’ve noticed that Northern New Mexico shares quite a few plant species as the upper Mid-West, with lots of new ones to learn.

New Mexico is beautiful with its mountains, dry shrubland, and desert grasslands. I love the diversity of species here. My favorite plant in this area so far is a Cholla (Cylindropuntia sp.). From the road, it looks like an unearthly spiny shrub, but up close it is a jointed, tallish cactus with pink flowers and yellow, semi-star shaped looking fruits.

Cylindropuntia sp.

After a week of orientation, lectures, and hands-on training at the Chicago Botanic Garden – we spent a week attending an SOS training geared toward all the New Mexico SOS interns. During the first few days of the Santa Fe training, the instructors covered what a day in the field would look like, data management, field safety, and the target species on our list. We ended the week by camping at a ranch about 3.5 hrs away from Santa Fe where we made a supervised SOS collection of wooly plantain, (Plantago patagonica).The last day at the ranch, we drove into the nearby mountains. At each spot we stopped, we keyed plants using New Mexico keys and field guides.The gravel roads we drove on in this area were rugged with sharp edged rocks which probably caused the flats a couple of vehicles experienced during the trip.

I think my favorite parts of the training in Santa Fe was the section on pressing plants in the field and the University of New Mexico (UNM) Herbarium tour. I have done a fair amount of pressing, but not in the field. Pressing attractively arranged plants that display the necessary features for identifying the plant is not easy in the wind. The instructor for this section did a great job giving us some tips and tricks for pressing our vouchers effectively in the field. The UNM Herbarium is amazing! Phil Tonne (the Senior Collection Manager) set out examples of well-pressed specimens for us to admire.

Echinocereus coccineus – Photo credit: Sierra Carey

They were all lovely! One of my favorites is above. Preparing and pressing cacti is no cakewalk, and this specimen was beautifully done. Almost nothing warms my heart more than attractively pressed specimens with all the identifying characters. During the tour, he told us that once the FBI came to the UNM Herbarium with a bloody plant fragment for them to identify. The FBI wanted to know the species because they could use the habitat to narrow their search area. How cool is that!

We have started scouting potential collection sites within this last week. “We,” being another CLM intern and myself. The rough, rocky roads made me appreciate the large 4×4 truck we use for work. Thanks to a heads up from a botanist in our office, we found a population of Bottlebrush Squirreltail (Elymus elymoidies) that was more than large enough for us to make our first collection without supervision. We also a found large population of Scarlet Globemallow (Sphaeralcea coccinea) that will make an excellent collection once the seeds ripen. Although, we didn’t know whether it would make a good collection at first. While walking around, I saw that there was a group of Sphaeralcea plants that looked the same, but with larger flowers. One of the challenges of collecting seeds in nature is making sure you are collecting all the same species. Sounds easy, unless there happen to be two species that look almost the same within the same area. With this in mind, we brought both plant types to the office for our supervisor to examine. It turned out that the plants were the same species.

The morphological difference in flower size was probably the result of genetic variation in the population. However, if the two plants were different species – we would not have been able to consider the Sphaeralcea for collection. Telling the plants apart once they had gone to seed would have been impossible.

– Bureau of Land Management (Taos Field Office)

Just another intern making the jump from the East to the West – from Virginia to Wyoming to be exact. I am a part of a smaller group of interns that were lucky enough to land wildlife positions.

When offered the position in Lander I was beyond excited! I have always wanted to live near Yellowstone National Park and study the wildlife in the area. Nothing like checking two things off your bucket list at once! I can say with confidence that this position is helping me to build a strong foundation for my future career. Working with CBG and the BLM has really helped me figure out my path and I am starting to think I am right where I need to be.

Not only do I hike every day for work but I do it on the weekends as well! Lander is a beautiful town with so many things to do I could easily do something different every weekend. My favorite place to adventure near town is Sinks Canyon. You can hike to the waterfall at the top and see a lot of really cool birds on the way. Rock climbing is popular here as well. Recently they opened the Loop Road allowing access to lakes at the top of the mountains.

The falls at Sinks Canyon

The “sink’ at Sinks Canyon

Another place near town is Johnny Behind the Rocks (JBR for short). There are a plethora of hiking and biking trails at JBR. I think I have been to JBR more for work than I have on my own time. But I can’t complain when I work in a place like this.

Johnny Behind the Rocks

Part of my training included a nature walk with the botanist to help me learn the common plants. Many people have this misconception that wildlife people only need to know the wild creatures in an area; this is not the case we also have to know what they like to eat. That meant I had to familiarize myself with all of the grasses, forbs, and woody plants that are commonly eaten by wildlife. JBR is great for wildlife viewing, the trails take you far enough out that you are guaranteed to encounter some wild things.

I am so thankful to be living and working in such a beautiful area of the country. There’s nothing better than being in a field where every day seems less like work and more like a grand adventure.

Hey Y’all!

I suppose since this is my first blog post I should do a quick Bio on myself and my newly appointed position with the BLM. My name is Hank Carlson and I hail from Minneapolis Minnesota where I have lived, recreated and schooled for my entire life. After graduation in the spring of 2016 I worked as a community outreach coordinator with the YMCA helping to bridge sustainable connections between under served youth and nearby nature. While this was satisfying work I heard the mountains calling and eventually ended up with a placement in Cody, Wyoming as a Recreation Manager.

My first week of work actually happened to take place in Chicago at the workshop where I met many of you devoted, intelligent kinsmen. Many of you had already begun your internships and hearing your stories got me pumped up!

After arriving in Cody nearly a week later I was ready to start and despite all of the arduous and non-too speedy training I settled in real nice. One of my biggest worries in moving out here was actually getting along with the people that live here. With my perceived conflict in political and idealistic views about the world, I expected it would be hard to co-exist with locals (ranchers, rec planners, business owners etc.), but I found this to be completely false. As I began to meet those in the office as well as my neighbors and people around town, I was approached with kindness and genuine interest. I’d like to say I’m starting to feel right at home!

After settling in the first few days I began to pick out what exactly I’ll be doing here for the next few months. Fortunately my supervisors seem to be very flexible and are willing to support any personal projects I would like to pursue in the future. For now, Melissa (the other rec intern) and myself are going through a massive sign inventory and replacement of signs in our district. This entails marking way points of all our signs (hundreds) and recording information about them. While it can get tedious, I’m really starting to get to know the area very well! I’m also learning how much people like to shoot things owned by the government out here. To supplement this inventory we are going to further replace and update any outdated signs and make note of any undesignated trails that seem to be used anyway. We have been briefed on other projects we will be working on but for now this is the priority.

Mine?

As for free time I’ve been lucky enough to hike and explore a lot of the surrounding area. My first Saturday here was spent in Yellowstone checking off many of the main sights. I expect I’ll be revisiting several more times.  I brought a fishing pole as well and have met some locals who want to show me some of their favorite spots out here and I’m jacked to catch some trout.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

All in all it’s been a fantastic time and as usual not in any way what I was expecting in the first place. Hope y’all are diggin your placements as well and if you plan on visiting Yellowstone at all in the near future holla at ya boy.

Heart Mountain Peak

My fellow interns and I have been living and working in Carson City for four months now — and though that may mean we are halfway through our internship, we are definitely not halfway through our seed collections! We started off the season with trainings, noxious weed mapping, rare plant surveying, and some outreach activities, but now it’s time to buckle down to reach the almost inconceivable goal of 100 SOS collections. So far, we’re only at fifteen!

Though we attempt to harvest at least 20,000 viable seeds from each population, that can equate to very different amounts of effort based on which species we’re collecting. It almost feels like cheating to collect grasses like Elymus elymoides or Poa secunda, for which we spend a mere hour or two pulling entire stalks and stuffing them in our paper bags. Even easier is Grayia spinosa, a shrub whose papery seeds fall off the plant and into the bag by the hundreds with the slightest nudge. Other species, like Pushia tridentata, test our patience, heat tolerance, and ability to keep track of our pencils as we tally up groups of 50 seeds that we pick one by one for hours on end. Yesterday, I made the mistake of trying to peel an orange after picking Purshia for several hours, and was compelled to spit out my first bite — it’s called bitterbrush for a reason.

So far, my favorite collection has been Cercocarpus ledifolius, a mountain mahogany. I’m familiar with other species of this genus, from college classes on the Mogollon Rim of Arizona, but I never anticipated finding a species that was so tall and treelike. They grow on steep slopes and hilltops in harsh soils, and as someone who grew up in the desert, I can’t help but favor the hardiest plants that grow in the most inhospitable places. I’ve always been fascinated by Cercocarpus fruits; their long, plumose awns make the entire plant look almost fuzzy from a distance. Little did I know those awns inflict an incredibly annoying itching sensation on exposed skin. You would never guess after picking just a few fruits, but the tickle of several thousand left us all squirming awkwardly in our seats on the car ride back to the office. This species also takes awhile to collect, but it is such an awesome plant that I don’t mind that or the itching. I think it is a great candidate for a restoration species and I hope our collections can be put to good use in the future!

We have been able to start collecting in new areas as the snow has melted, including the foothills of the Sierras. I love the open landscapes of the great basin, but there’s nothing like the rocky peaks and glassy hidden lakes of the Sierra Nevada. A six hour seed collection is nothing to complain about when it’s on the edge of a lake with bald eagles circling overhead, or halfway up a craggy mountain pass. Of course, every weekend entails more trips to Lake Tahoe (only 20 minutes away!), which is rimmed by those magical mountains. Weekly activities include mountain biking, birding, hiking, and swimming — hopefully soon to be accompanied by outdoor bouldering, backpacking, and maybe even some paddleboarding!

After long uphill bike ride from Carson City up to the Tahoe Rim, I was rewarded with snowy peaks and lake views.

Frenchman Lake, nestled into the lower Sierras just an hour away from our house.

Britney, Carson City BLM

As I munch on goldfish at my desk

In this cramped office cubicle

I think how painful it is to be inside

Like a slightly torn back cuticle.

This is reality for a majority of people

Their work lives confined to a box

While I am privileged to make SOS collections

Gathering mahogany, juniper and phlox

Time really flies, so don’t close your eyes

Or you’ll be in for a surprise by the time you realize

That it is already July

Almost half way through summer

And when this internship ends

It will be a real bummer

So while I can, I will take it all in

The grace and allure of the west

The mountains, the valleys, the birds and the trees

A plethora of beauty to digest

I’m not a poet and I surely know it

So don’t give too much critique

I just wanted to make a blog post with creativity

That would be somewhat unique

Hey People!

I’ve been out here in the Vale Office for a few months now and have really found myself enjoying my time out here. I’ve faced some pretty cool challenges and am proud to say that I have come out on top … until a couple week ago, where I suffered a pretty terrible loss.

STORY TIME!

Back during my first week of work, I went to a workshop for S1 Mobile  for Android Training. S1 Mobile is this really interesting GPS app that might become a big deal in the future for federal agencies like BLM and FS. It puts you in mind of Collector. Anyway, my mentor asked me to learn all that I could about this app, from downloading data, to collecting it, to making maps for the app, uploading and sharing. She wanted me to learn about each step in the process, so I could help others in the future. It was, and still is a pretty big challenge. Naturally, everything doesn’t go as smoothly when you’re exploring something new on your own, compared to doing it in class where only the basics are covered in detail, but I could handle it and took pride in my growing knowledge of this application.

Fast-forward to June, and I finally think I have a good understanding of most of the important concepts and techniques with using S1 Mobile for Android. It was good timing too because, the office just received a ton of new mobile devices that I was told to prepare for both general and GPS use. Set up involved, updating the devices, downloading S1 mobile, installing SIM cards, putting on their cases … and their screen protectors. Easy enough, right?

Installing those screen protectors was a literal nightmare. No matter what I did, or what method I used, perfectly installing these screen protectors on 10.1″ screens was impossible for me, so I settled for installing them with as few bubbles as possible. I mean who cares if there are one or two small bubbles in the corner, but NO, some of these literally have dozens of small bubbles ALL OVER the screen.

I’ve never felt like such a failure. It was terrible, defeated by flimsy screen protectors. My only saving grace was that no one else in the GIS office, seemed to be able to do a great job with it either, though it was clear that the worst of the worst screen protector installations were done by myself.

                  Burns, a small town of roughly 3,000 Oregonians, lies tucked in between miles of ranch land and sage-brush near the eastern border of the Beaver state. Make no mistake though, this is no ordinary small town. Burns, a city originally built around the practices of logging and cattle grazing, now serves as a spring-board for any and every outdoor activity imaginable. With 3.4 million surrounding acres owned and operated by the Burns-Hine’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the possibilities for outdoor recreation are infinite.

                  A little over a month ago, I began an internship for the Chicago Botanic Garden as a contractible employee, able to serve and work for various government agencies (I like to think of it as a mercenary internship). When hired, I was offered a position as an Outdoor Recreation Intern for the BLM office in Burns-Hines, OR. Looking back now, I could not be more grateful to have accepted the offer.

                  This place is extremely different from where I grew up, in the North-West suburbs of Chicago. I was born and raised to be a city-boy; however, this is the land of hunters, cowboys, and mountaineers. The cultural difference between my home-town and here was almost tangible on my first day. Although, as I am writing this, I find myself leaning more into the way of life out here and am beginning to see the bliss found in an area of such natural beauty and solitude. I am eager to see what else this town can teach me.

                  Speaking of learning, my partner (a Twin-Cities, Minnesota suburbanite) and I have been presented with many new challenges and adventures. The BLM has had us go on hikes in the local Steen’s Mountains in order to monitor campsites, help scout out a new trail, and assess Wilderness areas. We’ve also begun to utilize ATVs in order to traverse some of the more rugged landscape. The work here can be long and physically draining, but we always manage to come home proud of the job we did.

                  Camping season is upon us and we will be spending more nights out “in the field” in order to work on some more long term projects. Updates and more pictures to come in future posts.

-Carter Cranberg out of Burns-Hines Bureau of Land Management

Alvord Desert: Looking forward to doing some R&R in a tent out here

Fog on The Steen’s: One of the my favorite moments so far – standing near the top of the Steen’s as a cloud rolled over us

A Gorgeous Gorge

Hello,

I am on the last month of my internship and cannot believe how fast it has gone by! The past month I have learned some basic GIS skills, such as drawing polygons. We have also conducted some monitoring of our pupfish ponds to check populations as well as remove the plethora of invasive that find their way into these ponds.

Pesky crawfish in pupfish habitat.

I am also working on the finishing touches for SOS collections; picture uploads, herbarium labels and shipping vouchers. In addition, I have begun the process of uploading herbarium specimen pictures from the plants we have collected and identified this season.

Eschscholzia parishii herbarium voucher

We also went to check out the aftermath of a fire that went through part of Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. It had gone right through a riparian area that is home to two birds of concern so plans for restoring the area are now under way.

Aftermath of a small fire in Big Morongo Canyon Preserve

Palm Springs, CA

Wasn’t it just last month I was saying that roads were flooded, we were concerned with getting stuck in mud, etc? Well, that was short lived. With the close of May, came the start of fire season. It wasn’t much longer after that the fire crew started on and reminders about how not to start wildfires were sent out. “Summer” is here.

While fires aren’t ideal, the drier weather means that the road I’ve been so (im)patiently awaiting to open is accessible! After 3 months of being flooded, I can now cross Telford Road to explore the northern half of our land! It is such a contrast to Telford South! South is more of a scabland like habitat.

The North Telford Road landscape is still dry, but it gets more water – as you can imagine, seeing as the road was flooded the first 3 months of my internship! The first day I got out there to explore I was so happy. Sticky geranium was everywhere, and there were more Rocky Mountain Irises, so you’d either find a bright pink or a deep purple depending where you were looking. I found a trail and decided to follow it to see where it would lead, hopefully not to the cattle, which were on a grazing rotation in a nearby allotment. Along the trail, I was pleasantly surprised with a gorgeous Penstemon which I had seen scarcely scattered along Telford South, but was growing in abundance in the Northern half. I brought it back to the office to ID. After giving it a go, I keyed it out to Penstemon gairdneri, Gairdner’s Penstemon. I took it over to my mentor’s cube and had her verify; she was pretty surprised that I had found it. She told me that as far as she had been aware, this species wasn’t known to be in the area (score another one for the budding botanist)!! It has been an unusually wet spring/summer for the northwest, and the last 10+ years have been decently dry, so it’s a great time to be an intern out here. I knew I’d be returning to Telford North plenty of times this season. I found thin-leafed owl clover (Orthocarpus tenuifolius), another one of my target collection plants out there, as well as a ton of ragged robin (Clarkia pulchella), which I’ve grown quite fond of as of late.

Ragged Robin (Clarkia pulchella)

After the workshop, I returned to summertime Spokane. Temperatures are nearing or in the 90s every day, and fires have broken out in central Washington. Hoping all the firefighting crews and red-card volunteers stay safe out there! For all my fellow interns – don’t forget to stay hydrated. Heat stroke can happen very quickly and isn’t any fun!

After getting caught up on my emails and going ons in the office, I went back out to collect seed just to make sure my first collection would be sufficient (and hopefully enough to request excess back to use for sagegrouse habitat) I stumbled upon a moose! Yes, you read that correctly, I found a moose in Spokane in July walking amongst the sage! I was ecstatic because I love moose and it was the first one I’d seen in person – they’re definitely not a part of the Indiana landscape! I attempted to snag a decent picture but I was too far away for it.

That same week, I returned to the location of my moose sighting to scout for new plants and found another surprise! This time it was one of the botanical nature! I found poppies growing naturally in Eastern Washington! Another unusual find! I brought the sample of Blindeyes (Papvera dubium) back to the office to show my mentor. After talking it with her, she thinks the poppies are either part of an old homestead (likely the Miller Ranch that is on our land) that has stuck around. Even though they’re introduced and uncommon, it was a cool find.

Blindeyes (Papaver dubium)

Until next time,

V Cancino

My name is Mira and I’m one of the BLM Botany Interns in Roseburg, Oregon. My partner in crime/seed collection/field exploration is fellow intern, Aleah, and we’ve started the season helping with a project underway to collect native grass seed to eventually plant along roadways throughout Douglas County. As we’ve learned and observed extensively from getting to know the BLM land in the Roseburg district, roadways tend to be conduits for nonnative and often undesirable plants to form monocultures. While manual and chemical treatments can reduce these populations, a more ideal solution would be replacing them with robust populations of native grasses.

To find these populations, we’ve been using an old dataset from past seed collectors (including the CLM interns from our site that were here 5 years ago!) These past collectors recorded geospatial data with population estimates across a number of sites in the patchwork of BLM land in both the Swiftwater and South River Regions. This data has been extremely helpful, as most of these populations are still present in the same areas.

We took this photo at the North Bank Habitat Management Area while looking for populations of Achnatherum lemonii and Melica harfordii…originally documented by past CLM interns. We did eventually find them!

We’re also working on scoping out new sites, with the help of our supervisor, and the two botanists from the South River and Swiftwater regions. An unguided, exhausted manual search of all the BLM land would be impossible–there is an enormous amount of BLM land in the South River and Swiftwater regions of the Roseburg district, and much of it is difficult to access. Instead, one strategy we have been using is to overlay layers showing different features (stream, rock outcrop, etc) along with LIDAR data showing tree canopy in order to find likely sites where grass populations may be. We can further look at these potential openings in different ecoregions and classify these ecoregions by their temperature and rainfall in order to approximate what types of plants might be ready for collection.

Here’s a spot we hiked up to based on a GIS overlay…you can’t tell from the road that there is even an opening here, much less that it happens to have a number of native grass populations ready to be documented and collected.

With our (usually) trusty GPS and seemingly unstoppable truck, we’ve been driving out to sites we’ve identified as well as revisiting sites from past CLM interns and other BLM employees. Needless to say, fellow CLM intern Aleah Querns and I are now expert 4-wheel truck drivers and we’re certainly better at hiking up and down ridge lines. So far the four main species we’ve collected are Elymus glaucus (Blue wild rye), Festuca roemerii (Roemer’s fescue), Danthonia californica (California oat grass), and Bromus carinatus (California brome).

In the coming weeks, we will continue to scope out and collect grasses, as well as process them to be ready for the Bend Seed Extractory, where we will send them. And as we survey grass populations, we’re also keeping a lookout for a number of native species that attract pollinators, which may be our next project.

We’re also just keeping a lookout in general…we’re both new to the Pacific Northwest and every day in the field really is a treat for us. Here’s one last parting photo of the beautiful landscape we somehow managed to find ourselves working in!