Hello All,

This past month has been all about the secretive Oregon spotted frog that we have been putting much effort into gathering data upon and monitoring. As some out West may know, the Oregon spotted frog is a candidate species for endangered species listing under the Endangered Species Act. I believe it is going to be listed as a threatened or endangered species in the near future. Historically, the Oregon spotted frog’s range included British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. Currently, it is estimated that about 78% of its former range has been lost and is found now only in small pockets within British Columbia, Washington & Oregon and is thought to be extirpated from California (http://www.fws.gov/oregonfwo/Species/Data/OregonSpottedFrog/).

This past week, my co-intern and I have been camping out in the Modoc National Forest in northern California searching for the Oregon spotted frog in what had been identified as suitable habitat in the previous year by the spotted frog biologist. We will be camping again this week for the second round of surveying. So far, we have found some great habitat in the Modoc National Forest, but sadly no frogs yet. After finding some prime habitat but no frogs it seems unlikely that we are going to find any there, but we will still try! It sure has been a beautiful place to be camping and hiking around in. We even saw some fresh black bear tracks this past week and found a snipe’s nest with eggs! There are so many great birds coming back for the breeding season as well, that are very exciting to see.

After this last week of frog surveying, we will be moving on to working with sucker fish that are native to the upper Klamath Basin, so many more exciting weeks to come!

One amusing lesson I learned this month is that Dodge Durangos may be large vehicles, but that doesn’t mean they have a high clearance. This lesson was learned after having gotten the vehicle stuck in snow on a back dirt road that wasn’t very deep at all. Luckily, our supervisor was with us so we had 3 hands on deck to get it out. On another amusing side-note, as I was pushing on the vehicle to help get it unstuck it started gaining momentum and my feet got hung up in the snow and I did a forward face plant in the snow! Definitely making for some memorable moments this month!

That’s all for now folks, here are some photos from this week! 🙂