The bulk of July and August have just flown by. I can’t believe that August is already nearly over!

A beautiful sunset at the Wild Rivers Recreation Area

Over the past couple of months, I have found that being an SOS intern comes with a serious learning curve. I think nostalgically back on the days when I naively assumed that a population of plants would all go to seed at the same time. Instead what we’ve found is that often populations will consist of a mix of plants with either mature and immature seeds, or a mixture of both. The most notable population that presents this problem in my experience is Heterotheca villosa, a small yellow aster. In many of the populations that we have found, many of the individuals will have mature and immature seeds, buds, and flowers all at the same time! This can make timing collections a little confusing sometimes.

Me pressing some herbarium specimens in the field

It can also be a little rough estimating how much seed you can expect to get from a population. In order to do so, we look at plants throughout the population, and estimate the average number of seeds per fruit as well as the average number of fruits per plant. From these numbers, we can calculate about how many plants we’ll need to collect from in order to reach the SOS goal of 10,000 seeds. We underestimate a bit in our calculations to account for seed loss due to factors like insect damage or unfertilized ovules.

A collection of Elymus elymoides sitting out to dry

Up until a couple weeks ago, my co-worker and I had been having a rough time finding plant populations that were ready for collecting. Instead we ended up with a list of future collections, and very little to actually collect. By the beginning of August, we had accumulated a list of about 20 populations that we were focused on monitoring. We were having some trouble estimating when populations would be ready to collect, which resulted in us really fixating on the 20 plant communities on our list, checking them more often that was probably necessary for fear of losing the seeds in the population.

The meadow that we affectionately named The Meadow of Dreams is one of my favorite places that we have scouted out for plant populations. There are about 5 populations that we are monitoring there, and the scenery is absolutely gorgeous!

We spent quite a bit of July out at Ute Mountain, where we really felt the effects of the monsoon season rains that this area experiences. Nearly every afternoon that we went to Ute Mountain, we were rained out. It sometimes became a race against time where we tried to hurry to get off of the dirt roads surrounding Ute Mountain before they became too sloppy to escape. Once as we were trying to leave in a hurry, we were stopped short where a chunk of road had collapsed due to rain runoff. One half had crumbled into itself, and the other half was covered by a large puddle. Luckily there was another road out, but it definitely added a bit of excitement to our escape.

One of the infamous Ute Mountain afternoon storms rolling in

So all in all, there was a bit of metaphorical floundering in the beginning of the collecting season, but we started to get the hang of things and stayed pretty organized as time went on. During the month of July, we made about 3 or 4 collections. Unfortunately, this isn’t anywhere near our target number of 35 collections by the end of September. Clearly our techniques needed some refining.

Help came to us in the form of Ella, one of the SOS interns from Santa Fe. This is Ella’s second year of being an intern, so she is super organized and has some pretty good strategies. She came and worked with us for several days, and during that time, we made 4 collections. She recommended several useful strategies, including dedicating one day each week to office work and planning, and trying to plan scouting trips that cover the most amount of ground possible. The idea of having a really well thought out and organized plan set in place each week really appeals to me, and my co-worker and I plan on implementing the one day in the office per week technique. It was also nice to hear that in most cases, it’s alright to collect off the side of the road, something that my co-worker and I had thought was a big no no in all circumstances except for gravel back roads. Additionally Ella gave us some good advice on prioritizing, and how sometimes you have to let less important collections go for the sake of having time to make more important ones. It was a little embarrassing at first to admit that we needed some help and tips, but I’m  glad that I was able to overcome those feelings and be receptive to Ella’s teaching. I’m very grateful to Ella, because she definitely changed the way that we are going to focus our efforts in the future. I’m excited to try out some of her techniques, and try to get as close to our target collection goal as possible by the end of next month.

A breathtaking view of the Rio Grande Gorge from the area surrounding Ute Mountain

One of the most interesting things we did last month was help out with a butterfly study in the Wild Rivers Recreation Area. The study aimed to look at whether female Anasazi Skippers were making it back into the Rio Grande Gorge to lay their eggs after feeding on nectar from the campground loop on the plateau above. We helped capture the skippers, and mark them with paint along the campground loop. Then we tried to resight skippers down in the canyon and determine if they had been marked up on the loop.

I was super proud of my tent positioning here on the edge of the gorge at Wild Rivers. It was very picturesque.

A view from the bottom of the Rio Grande Gorge

A top view of the Rio Grande Gorge. We hiked down to look for marked Anasazi Skippers.

The reeds in the gorge where the Skippers lay their eggs

A skipper that I marked with paint. The patterns and colors indicated the area where the skipper was marked and the individual’s ID number.

All in all, it has been an incredibly busy month filled with much learning and beautiful scenery. I’m excited to try out some new strategies and try my best to meet our collection goal by the end of September!

Until then!

~Sierra

BLM Field Office

Taos, NM