What an incredible opportunity to be able to work and live in the Great Basin! My name is Ethan Hughes and I am working out of the Carson City Field Office of the BLM as a botany intern. The vastness of this area is pretty amazing and I am very excited about getting to learn many new species of plants and animals. Carson City is a nice little town nestled on the edge of the eastern front of the Sierra Nevada range. What beautiful mountains they are indeed!

Today was our first opportunity for field work and we were able to look at the utilization rates of certain plant species by cattle. This field work took us to two really neat places on BLM land. Both were riparian zones and we were able to see Salix exigua, Populus fremontii and other interesting species of plants. The second riparian zone was very cool because it was higher up in Pinyon-juniper woodlands with Juniperus osteosperma, Rosa woodsii, Artemesia tridentata, Elymus elymoides and other species of plants that were very interesting, such as Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum. We also saw a White-tailed antelope squirrel (Ammospermophilus leucurus) and a coyote, which ran across the highway to test his legs!

I am very much looking forward to the great experiences that will be had here and the knowledge gained from this exciting new adventure!

Great Views