{"id":16483,"date":"2012-05-17T11:39:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T18:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=16483"},"modified":"2012-05-17T11:39:11","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T18:39:11","slug":"coos-bay-oregon-blm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=16483","title":{"rendered":"Coos Bay, Oregon BLM"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0My name is Mimi Jenkins and I am lucky enough to be working as a CLM intern at the Coos Bay District office\u00a0of the Bureau of Land Mangement for the next six months. The first two weeks here have been an amazing introduction to the beautiful landscape I will be working on during my internship doing noxious weed inventory for Scott Knowles, a Natural Resources Specialist.\u00a0 I am still in awe of the rocky coasts where the Pacific Ocean crashes against the sheer cliffs or gently wades in cool, clear coves. The land is green, dominated by conifers, and covered in moss and water-loving creatures. The old growth forests laden with massive Douglas firs hundreds of years old and\u00a0ferns make you realize how\u00a0tiny of a speck of dust you are on this Earth.<\/div>\n
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Elk @BLM's Dean Creek Elk Viewing Site<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

These first couple of weeks have been mostly training and preparing for the 6 months ahead. Since many of the flora and fauna here on the Oregon South Coast are foreign to an Eastener like me, I have been attempting to quickly learn as much as I can, especially in terms of noxious weeds since I will need to accurately identify them\u00a0 in the field for my internship. I have gone out in the field with my mentor, Scott Knowles, and the other CLM intern here, Nathan Reese, to learn some of the noxious weeds and what the work we will be doing entails. Nathan and I will be spending our time driving out to the BLM sites as well as private lands, mostly on logging roads, and taking inventory on\u00a0noxious weeds\u00a0using a Trimble Juno GPS device. The data we will collect\u00a0will be used\u00a0when the BLM contracts out for treatment of the weeds (i.e. herbicide spraying). It’s\u00a0crucial to try to control noxious weeds because they crowd out native plant species which provide important habitat for wildlife and are generally deemed to be “injurious to public health, agriculture, recreation, wildlife, or any private or public property”. For example, the western snowy plover shorebird is threatened because of loss of habitat, largely due to the introduction of European beachgrass. This\u00a0exotic plant was\u00a0used to stabilize the sand dunes on the coast and has since changed the topography of the dunes where the plover nests, decreasing the amount of open sand space for nesting and providing hiding spots for predators.<\/p>\n

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Snowy Plover, photo taken from BLM shared directory<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to training and learning from my mentor, I have had the opportunity to venture out with some of the other BLM employees, including wildlife biologists and a\u00a0fish biologist. Steve Langenstein, one of the wildlife biologists, took us out to Spruce Island, a piece of land that BLM bought many years ago from a man who had brought over several foreign Rhododendron species which flourish in this area. We helped him take down some bat boxes that were no longer in use and poorly designed\u00a0and put up\u00a0purple martin\u00a0boxes in their place.\u00a0While taking down one of the bat boxes, we found 4 little brown bats sleeping, so Steve relocated them to a warm woodpile. He also showed us the BLM’s Dean Creek Elk viewing site where we ran into a herd of elk (not literally).\u00a0I\u00a0have also visited the BLM’s Doernir Fir, the largest Douglas Fir known to exist, with a diameter of 11.5 ft. On another day last week, we went out with some wildlife biologists\u00a0doing spotted owl surveys.\u00a0Species like the spotted owl and marbled murrelet which depend on old-growth forest habitat have been hard-hit due\u00a0 to intense logging. We\u00a0hiked into a site where a pair\u00a0of owls was known to live in previous years.\u00a0Since we were out during the day, we didn’t anticipate seeing them but when\u00a0we called them, we heard\u00a0them respond and followed the sound to\u00a0close\u00a0\u00a0in on them.\u00a0 Then we “moused” the pair of owls to\u00a0find out\u00a0if they were nesting.\u00a0It was an amazing experience having\u00a0a spotted\u00a0owl fly 2 feet from my face to catch this mouse out on the branch I was holding. These initial experiences have allowed me to familiarize myself with the area I will be working in and learn about\u00a0its biology, ecology, natural history and fantastic recreation opportunities.<\/p>\n

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Yellow Flag Iris, one of our noxious weed species, picture taken from BLM shared directory<\/p><\/div>\n

I am excited to learn and experience as much as possible during this internship and my time on the Oregon coast. Less than five miles down the road from where I am staying is Shore Acres State Park, a gorgeous site with beautiful trails through the woods and the ocean off to your left. It contains Simpson Reef, the largest haul out site for seals and sea lions on the Pacific Northwest coast. Out on the beachy haul out site, you can see Elephant seals as well as California and Stellar sea lions. Some unique and amazing birds are common sights around here too, like bald eagles, cormorants, egrets, herons\u00a0and hundreds of shorebirds, and puffins just south of here in a town called Bandon, OR.\u00a0 I am so excited to be able to take advantage of this amazing location,\u00a0in addition to\u00a0the great experience and knowledge I will gain from this internship and all my incredible colleagues here at the Coos Bay district BLM.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0My name is Mimi Jenkins and I am lucky enough to be working as a CLM intern at the Coos Bay District office\u00a0of the Bureau of Land Mangement for the next six months. The first two weeks here have been … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1706,"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\/16483"}],"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\/1706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16483"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16596,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16483\/revisions\/16596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}