{"id":1209,"date":"2009-11-05T06:00:37","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T13:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2009-11-05T06:00:37","modified_gmt":"2009-11-05T13:00:37","slug":"the-last-pale-light-in-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=1209","title":{"rendered":"The last pale light in the west"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I decided to move to Tucson for my internship I promised myself one thing, I wasn\u2019t going to sit on any cacti, I wasn\u2019t going to realize that clich\u00e9 of an Easterner gone West. Within one week that promise was broken by a poorly placed agave. Despite this tragedy for the seat of my pants, I can gladly say that this internship has been one of the most exciting and surprising experiences of my life. Having never been to Tucson before, I took the stereotypical New Yorker view and assumed it was all desert, complete with saguaros and rattlesnakes. While I have definitely seen my fair share of both, I\u2019ve also realized that a lot of the land around Tucson includes grasslands and riparian zones, complete with diverse ecosystems that I never expected to see here.<\/p>\n

\"Grasslands<\/a>

Grasslands on the Audobon Research Ranch<\/p><\/div>\n

\"cholla<\/a>

Cholla Forest on the Ironwood<\/p><\/div>\n

Because my internship doesn\u2019t revolve around one major project, I\u2019ve gotten to help out on a wide variety of research with a lot of different people and organizations. The largest project I\u2019ve worked on so far has been monitoring the grasses on the La Cienegas National Conservation Area. Prior to this job I\u2019ve had very little by way of plant education, so this was a crash course in grass identification. To make matters worse, this has been a bad drought year for Tucson, so nearly all of the grasses were missing their seeds. Despite all of this, I\u2019ve actually come to really enjoy vegetation work. I can now reluctantly say I have a favorite upland grass\u2026<\/p>\n

\""Take<\/a>

"Take a picture for your mother"- upland grass monitoring<\/p><\/div>\n

The work that I was most surprised to find here was fish research. I\u2019ve gotten to expand on my experiences in stream ecology, helping to survey and catch some of the endangered species of fish that live in the Gila and San Pedro Rivers. I\u2019ve gone seining for Top Minnow, laid traps for Gila Chub, and conducted water quality testing. I never thought there would be this many opportunities to don chest waders in Arizona.<\/p>\n

\"Counting<\/a>

Counting Minnows<\/p><\/div>\n

My internship has also included a scattering of random jobs here and there. I got to spend one day last week helping out with the Historic Empire Ranch Roundup, a sort of cowboy festival that benefits the restoration of an old ranch on BLM land. Two weeks ago I got to go down to a ranch right on the Mexican border to work with the Nature Conservancy on some vegetation monitoring they were conducting. A few weeks before that, I was helping out with the reintroduction of prairie dogs into areas where they were previously hunted to extinction. Although it\u2019s hard for me to predict what I\u2019m going to be doing for work more than a few days in advance, the work keeps me on my toes and more often than not it\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n

\"Petting<\/a>

Petting the mini-horses at the Empire Ranch Roundup<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Can<\/a>

Can you spot mexico?<\/p><\/div>\n

\"prairie<\/a>

Prairie Dog Release<\/p><\/div>\n

Unlike most of the other interns in this program, I didn\u2019t start until mid-august, so I still have a few more months in Tucson. I\u2019m ready for whatever comes after this, but I\u2019m more excited to find out what I\u2019ll be working on next week.<\/p>\n

\"Tucson<\/a>

Tucson Sunset<\/p><\/div>\n

-Peter Leipzig-Scott<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I decided to move to Tucson for my internship I promised myself one thing, I wasn\u2019t going to sit on any cacti, I wasn\u2019t going to realize that clich\u00e9 of an Easterner gone West. Within one week that promise … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1224,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions\/1224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}