At the end of September, month six of my CLM Internship, I am still loving the diversity of the work I get to do. I have been working on some of the same projects for a while now and have mentioned them in previous blog posts: raptor surveys, maintaining insect traps, picking up trash, finding and pulling weeds, and of course seed collections. The last raptor survey of the year at Cosumnes River Preserve is completed, but waterfowl surveys are just beginning. As for some projects, the work might be the same, but the people and places can change. I recently led a large group of enthusiastic, hardworking, geocaching volunteers to clean up a large dump site on a newly acquired parcel of Pine Hill Preserve. They were trying to persuade me to start geocaching with them, and I told them I get out in the field plenty hunting for plants. Speaking of…I have completed a couple more seed collections in the last month: one not so common Navarretia filicaulis and one very common Epilobium brachycarpum.
A project which I had looked forward to through September happened last week. There are now two ephemeral ponds on BLM lands near Michigan Bluff, CA, constructed by a small but strong group of people from our BLM field office and the US Forest Service, led by a wetland designer and the wildlife biologist at our office. Yeah, the excavator did a lot of the heaving lifting, but it was tough work for us too. The ponds might not look like much now, but with the rains coming, soon they’ll hold a couple feet of water and hopefully some endangered California red-legged frogs! The ponds were constructed to increase the habit of red-legged frogs, which live on private land about a mile from these new ponds and are otherwise scarce in the Sierra Nevada. Being that the ponds are ephemeral, they will provide habitat for the endangered species while excluding bullfrogs and fish that decrease populations. A PVC liner will be responsible for holding the water because adequate clay was not present there and could not be economically sourced from nearby to create an impermeable wetland. I may have the opportunity to help collect seeds from local wetlands to plant along the margins of the constructed ponds, providing nice places to hide, mate, and lay eggs. Come on frogs!
John Woodruff
BLM Mother Lode Field Office