The field season is getting rolling! Our schedule has Emma and I doing roughly three days a week doing vegetation monitoring and two days doing Seeds of Success seed collection work. The vegetation monitoring involves identifying key species and evaluating how grazing is affecting them. This is done by taking stubble height readings across a specific area and taking an average. From this information, we can decide how much grazing can continue in a certain area and when the cows need to be moved. We have a handful of sites that we visit in rotation every couple weeks. I enjoy visiting these sites because we travel on the ACTUAL Oregon trail to get to some of them. I think this is incredibly cool because the landscape in this area is unaltered and would have been exactly what the pioneers would have seen on their journey.
Our Seeds of Success work has just gotten off the ground. We are learning the target species list, and trying to find big enough populations of each plant in the field. For each seed collection we make we need at least 20,000 seeds, so we need to find fairly large populations. We also are only allowed to take 20% of the available seed so we don’t decimate the population. This week we found a large population of a Cryptantha species while monitoring, I think it will be perfect for a Seeds of Success collection!
We also went into the field one day to help our botanist search for a rare species, Dubois milkvetch (Astragalus giviflorus var. purpureus). It is a species that is endemic to Dubois, Wyoming and grows on steep hillsides. We actually found the plant without much trouble, and found a good sized healthy population.
The rare Dubois milkvetch!
We have seen much more wildlife in the field. I have seen many sage grouse, which are much bigger than I expected them to be! We have also started to see many baby pronghorn. My favorite, though, has been the wild horses. One day we saw a herd of about 100 horses, it was a very cool thing to see.
A few of the wild horses we saw in the field
This month also included our week long workshop week in Chicago. The workshop was held at Chicago Botanic Garden, which is absolutely beautiful. We attended classes such as botany of the west, inventory and monitoring methods, and S.O.S. instruction. We received career and graduate school advice, and attended a symposium on large scale restoration efforts. When not in session, we explored the 385 acre botanical garden and visited downtown Chicago. Overall it was a wonderful week, it got me really excited to be a part of the natural resource field.
The beautiful Chicago Botanic Garden
I have also been exploring the Lander area more extensively. The road into the mountains was just opened last week, and luckily my family was visiting this weekend. I took them up to the alpine lakes in the mountains, which were stunning. It is very nice that we are able to escape the heat by going up in elevation! I can’t wait to explore the mountains more.
One of the lakes we visited up in the mountains
A field of wildflowers in the mountains
Lander is a beautiful place to live, and it is pretty wonderful to be able to work amidst all this beauty. I feel pretty lucky to be able to call this place my office. Until next time!
– Erin Lander Field Office, BLM – Wyoming