This blog marks the end of my fourth (!!) week working as a Botany Intern for the Needles, CA BLM Field Office. The majority of my time so far has been spent wrapping my mind around our field office– a whopping 3.2 million acres. On top of that, a large portion of the field office has just been designated as Mojave Trails National Monument by President Obama, and I feel fortunate to be here in a time of such dynamic transition.

I have found (as I had suspected) that the desert is often mischaracterized in places outside of the desert. I’ve spent the majority of my life in the green of the Midwest, and the perception of the desert around those parts is that it is bleak, void of life. I’m here to tell you, readers, that this is not so.

Myself and my fellow intern, Jessica, will be working on sensitive and invasive plant monitoring, so we have been familiarizing ourselves with the plant families of the Mojave and the species we will be looking for. I have also been becoming reacquainted with GIS, which I am very excited to use a lot throughout my internship. This past week, I helped digitize a trail in our field office, and created a trail map and brochure for future hikers visiting the Turtle Mountains. I hope to continue to develop my GIS skills in the next few months.

The past couple weeks, Jessica and I have been able to get out in the field and start looking for sensitive plants. It’s a bit challenging right now, as we are still familiarizing ourselves with the plant communities of the Needles Field Office, but we’ve already had a few successes. So far, we have recorded populations of Saguaro (Carnegia gigantea), Hairy Blazingstar (Mentzelia hirsutissima), and multiple populations of Desert Senna (Senna covesii) and Desert Pincushion (Coryphantha chlorantha).

One of the highlights of the past few weeks was a trip out to the Turtle Mountains Wilderness to spend time with a service trip from the Sierra Club. Many of the participants have been involved with the Sierra Club for upwards of 40 years, and have been in conservation even longer. It was inspiring to hear their stories and accomplishments, especially from the women who have paved the way for women in conservation like myself and my fellow interns. One participant shared a quote from David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club: “Polite conservationists leave no mark save the scars upon the Earth that could have been prevented had they stood their ground.” This is something I am thinking about.

Happy trails,

Kate Sinnott

Needles Field Office

Bureau of Land Management