{"id":70857,"date":"2016-07-21T10:11:30","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T17:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=70857"},"modified":"2016-07-21T10:11:30","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T17:11:30","slug":"first-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=70857","title":{"rendered":"First weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first two weeks working at Fort Ord National Monument were\u00a0exciting, extremely varied, and a tremendous amount of learning compressed in a short amount of time. In\u00a0those two weeks I watered native plant\u00a0restoration sites, exterminated\u00a0stands of invasive mustard, hemlock, and thistle, mapped the location of oaks using GPS and GIS, tracked a collared ground squirrel using telemetry, attended\u00a0meetings planning heavy equipment\u00a0projects and a central California invasive weeds symposium, collected native lily, silk tassel, and venus thistle seeds, and drove 4wd trucks on dirt roads around Fort Ord, waving at passing hikers. Needless to say, it was a lot – something new every day, or sometimes every half day. Tiring, but also fun, challenging, and rewarding.<\/p>\n

\"Watering

Watering a young oak in\u00a0a stand of dried up thistle<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the highlights of those first two weeks was using telemetry to find the\u00a0ground squirrel collared by a research team from CSUMB (California State University, Monterey Bay). It involved hiking a steep canyon while carrying an antennae over my head and using the volume of a steady beeping as an indicator of proximity to the squirrel. In the end we were able to pinpoint the squirrel’s location to a tunnel underneath a bush, and laid down a trap baited with a smelly peanut butter and tuna sandwich.<\/p>\n

In my second week, while hiking through rolling hills covered in yellow grass, we came across a few\u00a0white praying mantises frolicking in the grass. They really are some odd creatures:<\/p>\n

\"A

A\u00a0strange and beautiful insect<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Another

A whiter one<\/p><\/div>\n

The purpose of the hike was to reach an old goat grazing plot where Ranger Manny\u00a0had remembered seeing lily plants in need of seed collecting. However, when he last\u00a0saw them it was\u00a0springtime and\u00a0the lilies were in full bloom, but now in the middle of summer the dried up lilies camouflaged perfectly with all the other dried up plants,\u00a0so finding them was a bit of an easter egg hunt. But\u00a0the whole time we were surrounded by beautiful sweeping views:<\/p>\n

\""KYAWW!"

Eye candy<\/p><\/div>\n

\"More

“KYAAWW!” \u00a0-red tailed hawk<\/p><\/div>\n

The landscape really evokes feelings of a cowboy roaming the wild west, what with the swaying yellow grasslands littered with coyote brush, the turkey vultures circling\u00a0overhead, and the occasional cry of a red tailed hawk. That was the setting of a lot of my field work during those first two weeks, along with some oak woodland and maritime chaparral.\u00a0Not too bad of an office.<\/p>\n

Sean Pagnon, BLM Fort Ord National Monument, CA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first two weeks working at Fort Ord National Monument were\u00a0exciting, extremely varied, and a tremendous amount of learning compressed in a short amount of time. In\u00a0those two weeks I watered native plant\u00a0restoration sites, exterminated\u00a0stands of invasive mustard, hemlock, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7334,"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\/70857"}],"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\/7334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70857"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70869,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70857\/revisions\/70869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}