{"id":25388,"date":"2013-05-20T11:34:35","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T18:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=25388"},"modified":"2013-05-20T11:34:35","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T18:34:35","slug":"rattled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=25388","title":{"rendered":"Rattled"},"content":{"rendered":"

My internship is taking place with the BLM in Vernal, UT.\u00a0 The main thing that my coworker (another CLM intern) and I will accomplish is rare plant monitoring and seed collections for seeds of success.\u00a0 Coming from Michigan, the plants, wildlife, and climate are a whole new experience for me.\u00a0 Our mentor is essentially doing 3 jobs, so we don\u2019t get a lot of time to go out in the field and learn from him; instead we try and key out plants we find every day or bring back plants that stump us and ask our mentor.\u00a0 The list of plants I can point out in the field is getting pretty long!\u00a0 The shrubs still stump me\u2026they all look so similar.\u00a0 I definitely don\u2019t have an eye for those yet.\u00a0 My keying skills and my botanical vocabulary is improving though.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been here 5 weeks now, the majority of which have been spent locating populations of 3 different species, Sclerocactus wetlandicus<\/em>, Schoenocrambe argillacea<\/em>, and Schoenocrambe suffrutescens<\/em>.\u00a0 We\u2019re also slowly trying to locate populations of other species for seed collections as we monitor the rare plants.\u00a0 The other thing we\u2019ve done was collection for genetics testing. \u00a0We spent 2 days collecting buds from \u201cdifferent\u201d cactus species so that genetics testing could be done to see if they really are separate species.<\/p>\n

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While the work we\u2019ve done so far hasn\u2019t had much variety, we\u2019ve managed to have quite a few adventures.\u00a0 On Tuesday we literally ran into our first rattlesnake of the season.\u00a0 We were walking through some sagebrush when we almost stepped on it; unfortunately we saw it before we heard it.\u00a0 It was striking at us, but thankfully we walked away without getting bitten.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t the best way to start our morning.\u00a0 Then on Wednesday we got a flat tire in a really remote location and couldn\u2019t get the winch on the truck to lower the spare\u2026.which led to us having to be rescued.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Those were 2 unfortunate experiences, but I\u2019ve had some really good ones too!\u00a0 While we were taking our lunch break on the side of a cliff (while surveying for clay reed mustard) we got to watch ranchers herd cattle.\u00a0 We also got to watch a thunderstorm roll in and we found an elk antler, a coyote skull, and another antler.\u00a0 Since everything is really starting to flower now, it\u2019s a gorgeous time to be outside.\u00a0 It is absolutely beautiful out here (aside from all the well pads) and I can\u2019t get over how far you can see!\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My internship is taking place with the BLM in Vernal, UT.\u00a0 The main thing that my coworker (another CLM intern) and I will accomplish is rare plant monitoring and seed collections for seeds of success.\u00a0 Coming from Michigan, the plants, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1808,"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\/25388"}],"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\/1808"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25388"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29042,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25388\/revisions\/29042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}