This CLM internship has been the most exciting and beneficial internship of my life. It has not only allowed me to dabble in many different areas but also has allowed me to excel in botany and wildlife. I work with the Bureau of Land Management in Redding, California. This field office is located in Northern California. Our field office works with 5 different counties, 248,159 acres, and includes ~ 5 ecoregions.
[Mt. Shasta]
[Northern California Landscape]
I work very closely with the Botanist/Rangeland Biologist and Wildlife/Fisheries Biologist but throughout my internship I have been able to work with the foresters, archeologist, recreation staff, and lands staff. It is hard for me to describe a typical day of work because there is no typical day. I have gotten to hoot for Spotted Owls (literally hike around the woods at night searching for spotted owls), survey streams looking for the Yellow Legged Frog and other amphibians, hike around the BLM lands collecting native plant seeds, work closely with river restoration programs helping them plan for projects, hike around completing vegetation surveys (I get to identify plants all day), hike around looking for Indian artifacts, hike around completing forest inventories, raft down the Trinity River mapping invasive plants, plan and plant hundreds of native plants for BLM restoration efforts, complete carnivore surveys, and SO much more!!!
[Community Planting Project: I have worked with kindergarteners, 8th grade, high school, and college students from local schools to help us plant natives.]
[Weed Surveys: I rafted 60 miles down the Trinity River mapping invasive plants]
[Carnivore Survey: I packed 20 lbs of meat into the mountains and set up a camera 20 feet away to collect data on the Pacific Fisher. I usually just got photos of bears 🙂 ]
[Carnivore Survey; Karley(my volunteer) and I setting up the carnivore camera!]
[Hedgerow Farms: A native plant nursery where we get many of our plants]
[ Aquatic Survey: I searched creeks for frogs, salamanders, fish, and quality habitat.]
[Sculpin collected during aquatic survey.]
[Surveying a BLM parcel on the Trinity Alps]
[California Natives]
[Post-Burn survey on highly erodible land where we collected data on erosion, plant cover, and mulch cover. ]
I love my job! I get excited to go to work each and every day because every day is a new adventure. I have also gained valuable experience working with many different federal, state, and non-profit agencies and make a lot of contacts in the Land Management field. My internship ends next week but I have gotten hired as a Biological Technician at the Redding Field Office where I will be working along with the CLM intern from 2007 (she could not seem to leave either)!! We are excited to see who joins us next!!!
THANK YOU KRISSA, MARIAN, and BLM!!!
Sara Copp
Bureau of Land Managment
Redding, CA