What. A. Month. I truly can’t believe August is ending – we have accomplished so much since July, and it’s hard to fathom that my time here is more than halfway over.

As far as plants go, we’ve been doing a lot of monitoring. Our projects are testing if our seed mixes (which are being used to revegetate old timber roads and make pollinator islands out of disturbed sites) are effective. We’ve also ramped up our seed collection quite a bit.

It’s been fun learning more about restoration processes and how the seed mixes were developed. Laura even showed us a cool paper about different monitoring methods (LPI vs. ocular quadrat, for all you cool kids) in riparian areas. However, we’ve also gotten lots of opportunities to cross-train with other departments, which has been incredible. So far, the Botshots have:

• Waded in the Bitterroot River with Wildlife, monitoring for Harlequin ducks and taking environmental DNA samples to detect their presence
• Gone out with the “Archies” to map historic peeled trees – also known as culturally modified trees – that the Nimiipuu people used to eat from in the springtime
• Electroshock fished with Hydrology
  • which was very fun. We caught a Bull trout (which is threatened, so we were excited to see it) but the second we put it into the monitoring bucket, it tried to eat a smaller Cutthroat. Circle of life.
  • We also had a great time slipping around on the rocks trying to net the speedy little guys, hence the amazing quote of the day:

“Lose a fish, go to jail.”

-Doug

Some other, non-work-related highlights from this month include:

• Swimming in some hot springs in Idaho
• Watching the Darby Rodeo
• Going to Glacier National Park with Cicely and Li when all of the wildflowers were in bloom
• A very dear friend coming to visit for a weekend

It’s been super busy, but in the best way possible. My brain and my heart feel very full.

See you soon,

E