Over the course of six weeks, I progressed the Mt. Pinos Ranger District initiative of creating a pollinator friendly garden at the Chuchupate Ranger Station. I surveyed Milkweed populations for evidence of Monarch reproduction, and made incidental observations about Monarchs and native pollinator and native plant interactions.
For the pollinator garden, activities included removing the noxious pepperweed (Lepidium sp.), researching planting and propagation methods for candidate plants in the garden, collecting seeds of native plants, and watering and measuring success of milkweed plants in the greenhouse. For the pepperweed, I performed one half day of removal on the property, filling a trash bag. However, the plant was back in full force within three weeks. I recommend aggressive removal and monitoring every two weeks. Collecting native seeds involved identifying healthy populations (>10 individuals) of pollinator-friendly, local plants, attempting to focus on those plants planned for the garden. In total, I collected 4,273 seeds, 2,204 of which are planned in the xeriscape garden (Seed Collection.xlsx). Seeds were collected in paper bags, counted in the office, and accessioned in a spreadsheet according to the quadrangle in which they were collected. Three times a week I watered the milkweed seedlings in the greenhouse at Frazier Mountain High School, measuring germination success at the beginning of each week. As of the end of July 2016, 44.1% of the seedlings have germinated and survived, 14% of the seedlings produced more than one shoot. I designed a straightforward data sheet for continued measuring of seedling success, corresponding to the layout of the greenhouse.
In addition to seed collection, I made observations of pollinator-plant interactions, Monarch adults, recorded milkweed populations, and surveyed for Monarch reproduction on Milkweed. I made 44 observations of pollinators, 25 of which included pollinated plants, and 22 of which were Monarch adults. I recorded the location, number, and behavior of Monarchs (Pollinators MPRD.xlsx). Milkweed observations were made incidentally within Mt. Pinos Ranger District (Milkweed MPRD.xlsx, Sheet 1). Each data point corresponds to a 1 m2 presence of one of three species of milkweed (Asclepias eriocarpa, Asclepias fascicularis, and Asclepias californica). Within the data sheet I included known populations of milkweed that were not recorded for GPS coordinates, elevation, and flowering status data. These locations may be visited at a later data for observations, field collection, or Monarch surveys (Milkweed MPRD.xlsx, Sheet 2). Four locations on the Mt. Pinos Ranger District were visited for Monarch surveys, following the protocol on mlmp.org, measuring the total area, estimate or count of milkweed plants, number of sampled plants, and number of Monarch eggs, instars, or chrysalis’. I designed a datasheet for these surveys. Over the four locations and five survey days (one site was surveyed twice) we observed 5 Monarch instars. Results of the surveys are located on “Monarch Data.xlsx” and are able to be registered on the mlmp.org but have not been registered at this time. The monarch survey results file also contains a sheet of all incidental observations of adults on the MPRD.
Other duties of the internship included removing cliff swallow nests surveys and removal to prevent avian window injury, designing and posting fire closure signs, surveying springs for water flow and use, collecting herbarium vouchers (Herbarium collections.xlsx), writing native plant newsletters for education and distribution in the MPRD, identifying and referring seed collection sites for an AT&T restoration project, and editing and participating in the production of a rare plants field guide for Mt. Pinos Ranger District by local botanist, Pam De Vries.
My recommendations for the pollinator initiative at MPRD are 1) Create a restoration-like plan for planting pollinator plants. Ideally, it would look like a hybrid of the AT&T Frazier Park to Pine Mountain Telecommunications Project: Habitat Restoration Plan and the USDA Technical Note: Plants for Pollinators in the Inland Northwest. The plan would apply to all candidate sites within the MPRD 2) Design a sampling method for population density of milkweed on the MPRD. 3) Design a sampling method for population density of Monarchs on the MPRD. Every year, record the first and last observations of Monarchs and make estimates of density. 4) Create an insect collection with an emphasis on pollinating insects, taking perfect note of the pollinated plants.
