I’m Cole and I’m from Vermont.  I studied Forestry at Paul Smith’s College, which is located in the Adirondack mountains of New York.  I have just finished my third week at the BLM office in Carson City, NV.  I assumed when I moved out here that I would not be seeing many large trees, and that assumption proved true, but I did not anticipate that I would know so few of the species.  The only plants that seem to be in both Nevada and Vermont are the invasives.  I have been trying to learn as many new genera and species as I can to turn that “sea of green” I see out the car window into something more recognizable.

We participated in an Earth Day event yesterday in Fallon.  The event was located on a Naval Air Station where Top Gun was filmed.  Although the crowd was kind of small, we had a diverse group of people from school teachers to archeologists to pilots ask us about the different aspects of the BLM. A lot of people out here have an interest in the BLM, which is exciting. We will be heading up to Reno this Sunday for a second Earth Day event.