It is August in Lander, and the west is on fire. Heavy spring rainfall resulted in high grass production, but the summer months have been very dry – causing all that grass to dry up and become great fuel for fires. The Lander Field Office area has seen 68 smaller wildfires this season, but nothing too major. However, huge wildfires have been burning in Washington, Oregon, and Southern California and sending their smoke here. For the past week Lander has been in a smokey haze. The smoke is so thick it is hard to even see the mountains we live right next to. I drove through Grand Teton National Park last weekend and wasn’t even able to see the Teton’s at all. The smoke burns your eyes and has been making my throat sore. The amount of smoke in the air has helped me visualize the enormity of the wildfires currently burning in the western states.
At work, we have been doing a little bit of seed collection here and there. Most of the forbs are done blooming for the season, and we are currently waiting on some of the shrubs to go into seed this fall.
We have been working on more rangeland monitoring work, and we have also been doing some utilization studies. This involves us measuring grazed vs. ungrazed plants in an area to see how much of the plant is being utilized on average in a pasture. We also have been helping a bit with compliance monitoring, which pretty much means “make sure the cows are in the right pastures”. As part of compliance monitoring, we got to hike through the Sweetwater Canyon to check for cows. The canyon walls are too steep for a car to get down, so you have to hike the canyon. The whole canyon is about eight miles long, so it took us a full day to hike. The canyon was beautiful, and we saw many deer, elk, and a coyote. We thankfully didn’t see any cows or overgrazed areas in the canyon.
Sweetwater canyon hike to check for cows
One of the most exciting things we have done this month was collaring sage grouse. Emma and I went out with our wildlife specialist and a couple of grad students to help them with their Ph.D project. The students were tracking the nesting success and survival rates of the sage grouse. To be able to track these things, the birds are fitted with VHS collars. I got to help with the collaring stage. To catch the sage grouse we went out in the middle of the night, because the birds are roosting and it is easier to catch them that way. We used spotlights from the truck to locate the sage grouse. When some were spotted, we would grab long nets and run through the sagebrush at them, while keeping the spotlight on them to cause confusion. Once netted, we would grab them out of the net and fit them with a collar. We stayed out until 2 AM, but unfortunately didn’t catch as many as we were hoping for. The experience was still a lot of fun, and we may help out again in the fall.
Caught a sage grouse!
This month some of my college friends took a road trip out to Wyoming to come to visit me. We went to Yellowstone and had a great time, even though it was freezing! It got down into the 30’s overnight, which made for some cold nights in the tent. I love the fact that I live so close to Yellowstone National Park, I have already been there twice- and I have plans to go again soon!
Yellowstone National Park – Hot spring
Yellowstone National Park- Porcelain Basin
Yellowstone National Park- Mammoth Hot Springs
Yellowstone National Park- Mammoth Hot Springs
Since the seed collecting season is winding down, Emma and I are going to be starting wild horse monitoring. I am very excited about this next project!
Until next time,
Erin, Lander Field Office, BLM- Wyoming