Hello,  just a week new in Lander, WY, but it hasn’t lacked excitement. Freezing temperatures in May, 168% of the normal snow pack, and a warm, sunny first week of June have sent Lander, and half a dozen other towns in Fremont County, scrambling to battle flooding rivers. What did they do? First, they called in a stream survey intern.

I arrived the first day of the mayhem. Within two days, National Guard and Air Guard had joined BLM, Forest Service, volunteers, and other organizations, filling and placing sandbags, sand piles, retaining walls, and rebuilding bridges. By mid-week the rivers had receded slightly. Rain set in Friday, and lasted through the weekend. 3-6 feet of snow fell in the Wind River Mountains west of town, meaning in all likelihood, the whole process will repeat this week with the warming temperatures.

I’ll leave it at that as to not sound too much like a weatherman or incident commander, but it has been a fascinating & unique week to begin an internship in which my primary duty is to locate road crossings of streams and assess the crossing quality with respect to fish passage. Only two days of field work to this point, but that’s been enough to know what driving dirt (mud) roads is like after heavy rainfall.

Best of luck to all of you. I look forward to meeting whichever of you I do. Talk to you soon.

Tyler Stuart

Lander, WY

Bureau of Land Management