Well I’m a little over halfway into my internship here in Cedar City, Utah, and it’s been quite a ride so far! Aside from performing habitat assessments and using radio telemetry to locate greater sage-grouse in the challenging desert environment, I’ve also been fortunate enough to help with prairie dog trappings for plague studies, conduct Mexican Spotted Owl and nightjar surveys in beautiful canyons, assist with avian mist-netting in Santa Clara, learn how to band hummingbirds in Bryce Canyon, become ATV-certified, and attend the amazing CLM Workshop at the Grand Canyon! The lessons I learned and the experiences I shared at the workshop are ones that I will always remember 🙂 A BIG THANKS needs to go out to everyone who helped organize that trip, especially to Krissa and Marian! It was great meeting some of my fellow interns and getting to see such beautiful places. I felt like I grew a lot during that week and am truly honored to have been a part of it.
Sometimes it's just easier riding out to preferred locations for our telemetry assignments 🙂
Banding birds in Santa Clara!
A group of us interns on Shoshone Point in the Grand Canyon! A brief storm had rolled in & left us with that stunning rainbow.
During my time here at the BLM Cedar City Field Office I’ve really enjoyed the variety of tasks involved with this position. My co-worker, Michelle Downey, and I have helped other field groups with their project clearance evaluations, vegetation transects and prairie dog surveys. It’s great to see the other project areas and get a feel for the different aspects associated with this job. Having a broader understanding of the research that goes into saving our wildlife is one of the best things I could take away from this journey. I’ve always been a firm believer in preserving natural resources and working towards species survival, but now I’m learning the more productive ways of achieving those goals.
Coming up in the next couple months, Michelle and I will collaborate with other BLM employees and complete Riparian Proper Functioning Condition assessments [PFC] among other assignments. I really like doing PFC assessments since we get to spend our days admiring beautiful streams and monitoring their form and function. We’ll also get to work with rangeland health teams and check out soil trends and keep track of the wildlife use on such lands. Carrying out Little Creek Fisheries stream surveys, where we’ll be tracking perennial streams and fish populations, is also on our agenda. Later this week we’ll be volunteering with the Cedar City Wild Horse Adoption and I’m super excited about spending time with such gorgeous animals! I hope many become adopted and live amazing lives…I love that I could have something to do with making that happen. Eventually we could also be performing pygmy rabbit surveys which I think would be so much fun! As you can tell, I’m really embracing every opportunity that has come my way out here in the beautiful West!
Best,
Brittany Stanglewicz
Seasonal Wildlife Technician
BLM – Cedar City Field Office