There’s nothing like living on the NorCal coast. It’s foggy just about every morning, but it all burns off by noon and it turns out to be a beautiful day. The Arcata field office also manages an amazingly diverse set of lands. Drive just an hour North East of the office and you’re in beautiful Lacks Creek, where the BLM is currently working on restoring prairies by clearing and pile burning encroaching douglas fir trees. In place of the trees, the BLM is planting native perennial grass plugs, from species such as Festuca californica. These prairies provide crucial habitat for elk, deer, and many rodents, which in turn are important sources of food for native raptor species.
I’ve spent days monitoring rangeland and even more days pulling invasive weeds. We generally focus on the brooms (all from Europe), which have the potential to completely invade grasslands and turn them into monocultures of broom. I buddied up with the Mattole Restoration Council and worked with them on treating invasive weeds in the King Range. There’s nothing like pulling weeds with sweeping views of the California coastline.
Johnny Jack Ridge in the King Range: One of the places where I have collected seed for SOS.
Sudden Oak Death (SOD) is a hot topic here in the Arcata Field Office. The fungus Phytopthera ramorum has been found on BLM lands in our office, and its spread is threatening to enter the Hoopa Indian Reservation. This is especially problematic for them as the disease kills nearly all of the infected Tan Oaks. Tanoak is a huge producer of acorns, which have huge cultural and nutritional value to the Hoopa Tribe. No effective treatments have been found to stop the spread of SOD, but there is serious pressure on the BLM from the Hoopa Tribe to slow the spread of the disease. While the foresters in our office are taking the lead on this project, it has been interesting to see how it is playing out. Given the challenging terrain and the limited success of other methods used to stop the spread of SOD, the BLM has elected to go with more of a forest health improvement approach. This method has been encouraged by one of the lead researchers on the topic at University of California at Davis. This thinning of tanoaks and bay laurels in forests that are generally overstocked with tanoak will take place later this year and into next year. I look forward to hearing what happens.
As a land manager, one of the best things you can do is get out on the land and see what’s there. This is exactly what I have done. I continue to visit new sites and properties, exploring for the presence of weeds, looking for rare plants/species of interest, and generally just seeing what’s going on. One of my new favorite spots is on Red Mountain, which is unique due to its serpentine soils, which host a whole suite of species that are endemic to that soil type, some endemic to Red Mountain.
Eriogonum kellogii, endemic to Red Mountain, state listed as endangered, and recognized federally as a species of concern.
On one of our trips up there we forgot the key to the gate, so we walked in from another direction that we wouldn’t normally go. On this different route, we found an old grow camp (1-2 years old), which was important to note; something we would not have seen had we remembered the key. This emphasizes the importance of getting out on the land, you never know what you might find.
View to the Northwest from the top of Red Mountain.