Since my last blog, I’ve been trying to keep busy. My main task around this time of the year at the Cosumnes River Preserve is to manage the weeds that we have around the wetlands and the visitor center. However, there’s always something else new to work on. That’s what I like about this job, it can be unpredictable sometimes. Just today, we had someone from Wilderness Inquiry spot a possible mountain lion. The preserve manager, Harry, and I followed up on the lead and attempted to track the lion through dense oak woodland full of mosquitoes. When we were back from our search we started working on our plant identification. We saw Orgegon ash, box elder, curly dock, valley oaks, and blackberry bushes for sure. Afterwards, we set up a camera trap so see if we could get pictures of the cougar later on.

Also during this week, I assisted with showing 6th graders about the macroinvertebrates that are in the wetland ponds. It was nice to see the kids having fun at the canoemobile event. A part of their activities is the paddle down the Cosumnes River, an experience that many kids get to have for the first time.

I was able to help out with the specimen collection a couple of weeks ago down at the Merced River, the wildflower displays were gorgeous. We had Dave, a BLM employee who showed us where all the plant species were. It was a good experience get to know more about the SOS program and too bad we we’re only at the river for roughly two hours.