As of this past week I have officially reached the halfway point in my position here in Safford, AZ. Primarily most of the work I have been doing focuses on the native fish in the area. In the Gila Box Riparian National Conservation area, which is right outside of town, there are two species of endangered fish (Gila Chub, Gila Topminnow) swimming in our project area. Unfortunately for those fellas, there are two invasive and piscivorous fish (Green Sunfish, Yellow Bullhead Catfish) in the creek to join them. You can see where the problem exists. My job is to help remedy that problem by manually removing the bad fish, so the good ones can survive. In order to do this we set up and bait nets every Monday and check them the following mornings throughout the week. The Green Sunfish is our main concern and when I first arrived in May we were pulling out something like five to six hundred a week. We would check nets Tuesday and get something like three hundred and throughout the week we would lower that number to around a hundred or so, which had me feeling like we were making good progress. That mirage was shattered when we would check the next week and have the number jump back up to over three hundred. This had me thinking that this task was going to be impossible, like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill. Well, let me tell ya what, we kept at it and sure enough throughout the following month or so we eventually dipped into double digits and kept getting lower and lower and sure enough last week we had our first doughnut on the scoreboard. We are going to keep monitoring the situation to catch any stragglers that weren’t hungry at the time, but man, seeing that zero was such a rewarding experience. Working so hard to produce visible results really put into perspective what the purpose of a life in the field is like. This job is not only one where we are rewarded with invaluable experience, we are working on real life projects to try and retain valuable parts of this planet. Seeing results like that and feeling like a part of a solution is an incredible feeling, which I hope the rest of you interns also have the chance to feel doing whatever it is you are working on.
With monsoon season upon us here (Monsoons in the deserts? Huh? My thoughts too, don’t worry) we can only go out into the field sporadically for fear of flash floods, but the office time is giving me a plethora of different opportunities that are also valuable. Last week I got to go to Patagonia, AZ about 30 miles north of the border to Mexico to be the BLM representative at a meeting about improving wildlife corridors. Patagonia is a really little town. I expected it to be something straight out of a 1960’s western movie. I was shocked when a little artsy eclectic community in lush mountains greeted me. The meeting was focused on maintaining a corridor to ensure proper movement opportunities among animals in the incredibly impressive biodiverse region (home of the only Jaguar in the states, aptly named El Jefe). I have also gotten the chance to write up an Environmental Assessment, which has been a great way to learn about the office oriented side of this type of work. It also brings everything full circle and shows why we need things done like vegetation monitoring and wildlife surveys.
Hope everyone else is doing well,
Taylor
Major road flooding after a monsoon. Puts into perspective the effects of overgrazing and the importance of riparian vegetation.
Found this dude wandering in the desert. I Looked for a while, but no sign of Shrek.