Howdy Howdy!
I have been living in the good ol’ desert of Roswell, New Mexico now for a little over two months and the whole experience (my position within the BLM and my newer Western location) is getting even better! As for the BLM portion, the whole gang is finally here now (as the two last interns arrived a couple of weeks ago) and so we are well underway! We are a self-sufficient team that can choose, prepare, and complete range health assessments (RHAs), perform 1, 2, or 3 line monitoring along with annual production, and all the while fill out compliance checks! It is very rewarding to be able to perform the tasks that are needed! Our week consists mostly of going into the field and performing the tasks listed above which is always fun because you can never guess what is going to happen which makes every day interesting! Since my last post so many things have happened that it would be difficult to tell you all of them so instead I figured I would just show you some of the moments and experiences I captured by means of pictures!

A Great Horned Owl we saw in the field!

A grasshopper on Thistle!

Dove eggs we found underneath some Choia!

As for the daily living in Roswell, it is going splendid! This last weekend was one to remember, as it was the annual UFO Festival!!! It was great, Kelder (CLM intern from Carlsbad) came up and joined in the fun! On Saturday morning I ran in my first ever 5K called the Alien Chase whose profit benefited a local charity!  Then later that evening was the UFO Parade! I had heard so much about this and how festive everyone can get that we ran out to the store and bought some items to create our alien costumes! After 2 hours of alien costume preparations, we walked to the festival to find that we are the only people dressed up who are not in the parade! Although this did not bring us down, instead we had a BLAST taking pictures with people and by joining in at the end of the parade! And as promised I have attached some pictures of that too!

All three of us at the UFO Parade!!!

So overall, so far so good!!!
-Stephanie Burkhardt
BLM Roswell Office