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<\/a><\/p>\nLast week, I also got the opportunity to\u00a0go out with\u00a0the non-game\u00a0wildlife biologist for Idaho Fish & Game. Myself and some other interns\u00a0were lucky enough to\u00a0escape a hot day by going underground to look\u00a0for bats and cave invertebrates in the lava tubes. Although we didn’t see any bats that day, we did find a rare cave beetle! We also helped conduct insect surveys aboveground- we\u00a0looked for a rare jewel beetle commonly found in the roots and flowers of Eriogonum <\/em>sp.<\/p>\n Cave explorations<\/p><\/div>\n Eriogonum sphaerocephalum<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n As my plant ID skills sharpen, I find myself spending more and more time looking at them, even in my free time. For fourth of July weekend, myself and a few friends headed up to the Sawtooth Range near Stanley, ID. We backpacked up to the beautiful Goat Lake, which was still coated in snow and ice! I expected there to be snow up at high elevation, but didn’t expect the entire area to still be completely buried. Instead of heading up higher through slushy snowfields, we opted to hike down at lower elevations, which afforded us more time to look at plants. We were entranced by beautiful meadows filled with Artemesia tridentata, Calochortus nuttallii, Eriogonum <\/em>sp., Penstemon<\/em> sp., Purshia tridentata, <\/em>Delphinium <\/em>sp., Balsamorhiza sagittata, <\/em>and more.<\/p>\n Sunset at Goat Lake in the Sawtooth Range.<\/p><\/div>\n Ridge-line full of wildflowers!<\/p><\/div>\n Savanna<\/p>\n Shoshone Field Office- BLM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My internship here in Idaho is zipping along! After a fun and informative week spent attending the CLM workshop in Chicago, my crew jumped into collecting data for MAIM (Modified Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring). A typical day for this includes … Continue reading <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>