This month I took some personal time off from the preserve for a fire assignment with the Folsom Lake Veterans Crew from the BLM Mother Lode Office. I spent almost a good three weeks in Wyoming with the crew so this month’s to-do list was not as loaded as the previous. Lots of stories to tell, but I suppose this isn’t the right place to share. 🙂
Upon my return, I assisted our wildlife biologist with water work which involved sending water to some of our wetland ponds in addition to fixing any visible leaks within our “dams”. Another assignment of mine was to supervise the habitat restoration team (HRT) crew for a day. Around this year, the HRT crew manage the weeds around the ponds so that our biologists can manage the water without having to trek through weeds to find our water control structures that hold back the water. We also trimmed down the Atriplex, which we use as hedge row to prevent trash from Highway 99 blowing in.
Some of the trails needed maintenance as well since they are prone to erosion due to the seasonal flooding. As a result, we ordered some gravel from Galt Rock and used the Kubota tractor to scrape it evenly among the road. It was a fun experience driving the tractor. My goal is to be able to drive the big tractor to disc to ponds by the end of this internship. Baby steps.
We had a small fire recently within a portion of the preserve’s property. As of result, it exposed a lot of the trash that accumulated over the years. I was recently put in charge of leading 30 high school kids to clean up the burn area on the 2nd of September.
Since I have some (Geographic Information Experience) GIS experience, I’ve been in the office more often lately. We are putting together a grant proposal to restore some habitat for the listed giant garter snake and I was tasked with creating a map of the proposed restoration area for the grant. We went over numerous edits and I really enjoyed the map making process. I was also tasked with creating the literature cited page and the peers edit process as well.
Until next time…
Chau