Hello again,

First of all, I am sorry to those who have sent me messages that I have not replied. I do not even know how.

This is only my second post and so much has happened since the first. It would take pages to explain so I will be brief. Rose and I have busted out the seed collections and are at 42 collections with 4 specimens vouchered; we are now slowing down. The field season is sadly drawing to a close, but we are happy that we’re no longer rushing about to collect seeds and voucher specimens on time. We are so caught up on our collections and data that we are finding other things to do. Yesterday, we started mounting our ~200 voucher specimens for the Herbarium we are creating in the Lander Field Office. That was fun. Arts and crafts time!

There is still alot of ArcMap work to be done – polygons to draw, data to organize so that it can be accessible to others in the office, etc. We have scheduled a meeting with the GIS specialist in the office to learn how to go about doing this. Sounds like I know what October and November looks like!

I have gotten a chance to do some different work around the area. A few weeks ago I helped out the Fish and Game department in Lander during their five year fish population assessment of the Sweetwater River. To do this we electroshocked a section of the river to stun the fish so they were easy to spot and catch with a net. At the end of the run, we weighed, measured, and identified the fish to species. Although it was a little un-nerving to be standing in water (with rubber waders on) while sending out an electrical current, we had a blast. The Fish and Game guys are good people, and it was nice to get my hands messy with some wildlife.

This week I am helping out a PHD student from the University of Wyoming. He is doing a sage grouse study and I will be helping him pull all-nighters spotlighting, catching, and radio collaring sagegrouse. I am excited to be a part of someone’s graduate study and to gain some wisdom and inspiration.

Well, I will stop here. Cheers to all of you beautiful CLM interns and I hope your summers have been fabulous!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Stern