As the seed-collecting season winds down, the SOS team of Rawlins is once again on the hunt for treasure. As it turns out, Penstemon haydenii was only the beginning.
Colorado Butterfly Plant, one of the most exquisite blooms I’ve seen all summer!
In mid-August, I accompanied a team to the Laramie area to find Ute’s ladies-tresses, a threatened orchid with very particular tastes in habitat. This little monocot prefers the sunny peripheries of gravel bars in shallow streams (sans riparian shrubs), an environment that is extremely few and far between in southern Wyoming. Unsurprisingly, we did not find the orchid. However, we did stumble upon something just as exciting: a new population of Colorado butterfly plant. There are only a few populations of this species left in the Rockies, and our discovery was the westernmost yet. It was terribly exciting to be a part of a groundbreaking discovery such as this!
Hours of searching are finally rewarded!
Besides these precious stones of the south-central Wyoming plant kingdom, I got to work with two “BLM sensitive” species. Penstemon gibbensii, Gibbon’s penstemon, is greener and less showy than its dune-dwelling congener, and prefers soils with a bit more stability. A long, tiring day of trekking 100-foot clay dunes was rewarded with a lot of new experience with line transects, but only two flowering individuals.
Intrepid biologists in search of P. gibbensii.
The alkai Chain Lakes of southern Wyoming, A. diversifolius‘ preferred habitat.
Astragalus diversifolius, a milkvetch with an unusual growth form and a penchant for alkali lakes, was another that was difficult to find. I suspect that many of these “sensitive” species are ones that are poor competitors and are highly picky about their habitat. Unfortunately for them, this combination is not a recipe for biological success.
The crown jewel of my Wyoming T/E monitoring was not a plant at all, but the famous Wyoming toad, Bufo baxteri – the most endangered amphibian in America. Like many aquatic species around the world, Wyoming toads are suffering from Chytrid fungus. Keratinized amphibians, like toads, are particularly susceptible to fungal infection, and the limited range of this species doesn’t help its chances of survival. Reintroduction efforts are underway, and annual surveys are crucial to determining the success of this program.
A juvenile specimen of B. baxteri.
Bufo baxteri’s preferred haunt.
For two weeks, we patrolled the shores of lakes that lay in the the shadow of the picturesque Snowy Range. I came to appreciate a valuable skill of wildlife work: the ability to spot tiny creatures in thick vegetation. My eyes, being trained to spot cues of color and shape rather than movement, had a hard time distinguishing thumbnail-sized toads from grasshoppers, voles, and spiders. Every accurate ID felt like a victory. For all the toads we caught, we would take their measurements and note the colored pit-tags on the bottoms of their legs. The larger toads would be examined for signs of Bd, swabbed with cotton, and photographed. My favorites were the adult males, who chirp and vibrate when threatened. Amphibians are amazingly endearing when they’re quivering in one’s hand like a joke buzzer.
As many of my fellow interns can tell you, the sagebrush steppe of the intermountain west can easily feel barren. Lion-colored hills and austere rock outcrops rise from the sage like islands. Trees are rarer still, only to be found in the faraway mountains and remote waterways. Blooms are bright but brief, shriveling into brown husks in the unrelenting dryness. But, as Tolkien wrote, “all that is gold does not glitter”. Though the days of gold-panning have gone, there is still treasure to be found among the ridges and buttes, if one comes at the right time, and knows where to look.