Interning in Alturas, CA + pictures!

My time at the BLM field office in Alturas, CA, totaling about 2.5 weeks, has been great. Alturas is a very small and quiet town, with a population just under 3,000, and, oddly enough, it is the most populated city in the county. Since westerners came to the area in the late 1800’s and began suppressing the natural fire regime, juniper trees (although native) have gradually gained status as an invasive plant, thus a lot of the work done here at the field office is focused on juniper eradication and sagebrush steppe restoration. We will do some sagebrush restoration fieldwork during the internship – presumably, this will mostly be planting propagated sagebrush in areas that have recently experienced wildfire or large-scale juniper eradication. We will also assist other staff members on various projects including archeological surveys and raptor surveys.

Thus far, the work rate has not been terribly high, largely due to the bloom period for many of the SOS target species, and a lot of my time has been spent in the office doing training and reading field guides and dichotomous keys to familiarize myself with the local flora and the SOS target species. We are beginning to spend a lot more time in the field as of late, which is pleasing. Some of the more exciting days have been spent in the southern allotments, scouting the area for blue oaks to determine where the northernmost individuals of the population/subpopulation are. We’ve also spent some time scouting a grazing allotment to monitor several rare and threatened plant species that grow there. We recently visited a large riparian area to which we will return and collect an inventory of the plant species growing in the area. Much of the work done during the duration of my internship will be collecting seeds for the SOS program, monitoring rare/threatened plant species, and conducting plant inventories.