Hello everyone!

For the past four weeks I have been working as a range intern at the BLM office in Lakeview, Oregon. Lakeview is a small town in southeastern Oregon, about 14 miles from the California border and not much farther from the Nevada border. This BLM district is huge, which means I am seeing new sights everyday! So what does a range intern do? Well, so far I have been going out to different allotments and checking on the vegetation in the pastures. I do what is called a utilization study to determine how grazed the pasture is, and basically its overall health. Later on, when more CLM interns join me, I’ll also being doing trend studies.

For this job I’ve had to learn to identify grasses and some sagebrush. That was a change of pace for me since I am from the east coast and I’ve always done better identifying trees. But it’s actually been pretty easy, since I only have to know about six types of grasses and several types of sagebrush. I’m enjoying learning about the flora of the high desert. And it helps that several people that I work with are very knowledgeable about the vegetation around here. Now if only I could start remembering the names of the local forbes.

Some highlights from the past month were: ATV training, going out in the field with different range cons, and learning so much about the local plants. Some lessons I’ve learned are: don’t forget your GPS, and don’t assume your truck can drive through anything (I got my truck stuck in the mud the other day. But I’m proud to say that I got it out all by myself.).

I’m looking forward to the exciting adventures I’ll have to write about next month!

Allyson Schaeffer

Lakeview, Oregon, BLM