Last Monday, I was sitting in the board room of the Surprise Field Office in Cedarville, California. In attendance were members of three separate BLM field offices from northeastern California and western Nevada in addition to members of State Fish and Game, several university extensions, and a handful of NGO’s. The meeting had been called in order to discuss the results of the census of Greater Sage-Grouse which was taken from mid-March through early May across Washoe, Modoc, and Lassen counties in northeastern California and western Nevada.

The data had been collected by an equally diverse group of agencies and volunteers and it painted a pretty clear picture.  Counts of sage-grouse leks (grouse breeding grounds) within Washoe, Modoc, and Lassen Counties were down, depending on location, by somewhere between 35-80% from the previous year.  Generally, counts taken in marginal habitat and peripheral areas had experienced a decline close to 60-80%, while leks in more productive locations which were closer to core Nevada populations seemed to have seen less of a decline.  These were simply rough numbers.  No complex data analysis had yet been rendered, though these numbers were startling to me.  We know that lek attendance and population fluctuates on an annual basis.  But a decline of up to 80% seemed to me a little extreme; especially considering the previous year hadn’t been an atypically dry year, nor could I account for any other glaring reason why there would be such a sharp decline over the course of twelve months.

Having worked with Sage Grouse before, in some of the more productive habitat in the country, this realization came somewhat as a surprise.  I knew that grouse had been declining across their range over the past century and a half, but in Rich County, Utah, it was difficult to tell.  Since I’ve been in Modoc County I feel like I have been able to see the decline first hand, almost as if it was happening before my eyes.  Within the Alturas Field Office we have three primary lek complexes on BLM land.  One of these sites, despite costly and extensive restoration projects, has not produced an active lek in three seasons.  At another of our primary lek complexes we were unable to locate any birds this season, for the first time ever.  The last of these sites, I had a high count for the season of seven birds total (three males and four hens) in an area which is perhaps as peripheral as any; a small sage island surrounded by national forest.  All of this makes me wonder, how long will it be before the birds are unable to sustain themselves in northeastern California?

A day after the meeting in Cedarville I was out in the field at one of the lek complex locations; Hayden Hill, a sage island surrounded by juniper and pine forest in the foothills of the eastern Cascades.  Within the area, there are close to a dozen points which are indicated as being historic or inactive lek sites.  I was just wandering around mulling things over, truthing the sites, looking for signs of sage-grouse use.  Mt. Lassen and Shasta were clearly visible to the west shining brilliantly and snowcapped in the midday sun.  While I was out wandering around I stopped to chat with a local rancher who was moving his cattle from his ranch to his grazing allotment.  He introduced himself as Jerry, a fourth generation rancher in Lassen County.  I told him who I was and what I was up to.  Jerry, as many throughout the region, was quick to tell me his opinion of ‘sage chickens.’  “Back when I was young,” he said, “sage chickens used to be everywhere.  Sure do see quite a few less now-a-days.” Jerry expressed his belief that the lack of predator control, specifically of coyotes, was the main factor which has contributed to the demise of the grouse.  Jerry has lived in these hills a long time, his observations are keen, and shouldn’t be discounted. Though, no such simple or straightforward explanation can account for the complex ecological, economic, and ethical factors which are at stake in the decline of Sage Grouse or any other perceived environmental crisis.

Sage grouse is a touchy subject throughout the Great and Wyoming Basins. Conversations which I have had with biologists, environmentalists, energy developers, and lay people on the subject often reflect these conflicting worldviews. The story of the decline of sage grouse parallels a thousand other stories of habitat fragmentation, the loss of species, environmental toxins, rampant development and so on, painting the picture of an environmental crisis; a perceived crisis which seems to exist on many different levels and in many different ways.  Underlying this story are the varying interests of people and the cultures they make up throughout the west.  All of this makes me wonder; if there is a crisis, perhaps it stems from our lack of ability to account for the varying and often opposing worldviews and value systems with which they are associated and their application to land management and beyond.  We seem to lack a working model, and in some case the desire to work towards developing a working model, through which to integrate and understand these various perspectives of stakeholders.

If the goal is indeed to manage land for multiple uses, how do we as an agency function on these multiple levels? How do we account for various value systems and their priorities? Is it even possible to effectively operate as a federal agency while still doing what is ecologically, economically, and ethically correct?

Phil Krening – BLM Alturas, CA

Hello and thank you for reading my first blog entry! I hope you return frequently to check out my entries, plus all posts from fellow CLM interns. My name is Maria, and I’m interning with the Bureau of Land Management in Cedar City, Utah.

This was my first week at work, and it has been all about transitioning and getting comfortable in a brand new part of the world. I am from Maine, and I went to college at St. Lawrence University in Northern New York, where I studied conservation biology and anthropology. Prior to the Chicago Botanical Garden giving me the opportunity to move out to Utah, the farthest west I had ever traveled in the U.S. was Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on a family trip. I knew that living and working in Utah was going to be very new and exciting.

The landscape is the first thing I notice. Even though I’ve been living in Utah for a few weeks now, I still can’t get over the impressive landscape. Cedar City is surrounded by mountains and sagebrush habitat, a stark difference from the heavily forested and gentle slopes of the east coast. Mule deer, pronghorn, and wild horses are a common sight around the Cedar City BLM field office. The birds are different too. I am an avid birder, and working on avian surveys and raptor nesting projects in the coming weeks will help me learn about the many different west coast species that I’m unfamiliar with.

Recently it has been raining a lot in Maine, but in Utah it has been comfortably warn and dry. The relatively arid environment preserves ancient geologic features. The bare rock of the nearby mountains and canyons of Southern Utah are home to more than great wildlife, but also prehistoric petroglyphs. The Parowan Gap, fifteen minutes down the road from the BLM, is a gallery of well-preserved rock art, some of it dating back at least 12,000 years. What exactly the carvings represent is a mystery, but despite that, the drawings of the Fremont, Hopi and Paiute people over thousands of years are incredible and are worth visiting.

So far, working with the BLM has been insightful and a lot of fun. More fieldwork is on the way, and I’ll be sure to report back about further adventures here in Utah!

My internship is taking place with the BLM in Vernal, UT.  The main thing that my coworker (another CLM intern) and I will accomplish is rare plant monitoring and seed collections for seeds of success.  Coming from Michigan, the plants, wildlife, and climate are a whole new experience for me.  Our mentor is essentially doing 3 jobs, so we don’t 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.  The list of plants I can point out in the field is getting pretty long!  The shrubs still stump me…they all look so similar.  I definitely don’t have an eye for those yet.  My keying skills and my botanical vocabulary is improving though.

I’ve been here 5 weeks now, the majority of which have been spent locating populations of 3 different species, Sclerocactus wetlandicus, Schoenocrambe argillacea, and Schoenocrambe suffrutescens.  We’re also slowly trying to locate populations of other species for seed collections as we monitor the rare plants.  The other thing we’ve done was collection for genetics testing.  We spent 2 days collecting buds from “different” cactus species so that genetics testing could be done to see if they really are separate species.

While the work we’ve done so far hasn’t had much variety, we’ve managed to have quite a few adventures.  On Tuesday we literally ran into our first rattlesnake of the season.  We were walking through some sagebrush when we almost stepped on it; unfortunately we saw it before we heard it.  It was striking at us, but thankfully we walked away without getting bitten.  It wasn’t the best way to start our morning.  Then on Wednesday we got a flat tire in a really remote location and couldn’t get the winch on the truck to lower the spare….which led to us having to be rescued.

Those were 2 unfortunate experiences, but I’ve had some really good ones too!  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.  We also got to watch a thunderstorm roll in and we found an elk antler, a coyote skull, and another antler.  Since everything is really starting to flower now, it’s a gorgeous time to be outside.  It is absolutely beautiful out here (aside from all the well pads) and I can’t get over how far you can see!

Three weeks into my internship, and I am starting to feel like I am adjusted to the area and the job. First I drove West, from Ohio to Oregon. It’s the farthest West I’ve ever been and quite new to me. Lakeview is a little town, but I am enjoying it, as I’m not much for cities anyway.
I arrived in Lakeview expecting a little town in a desert. And was pleasantly surprised to see that the town has numerous trees – many fruit trees, along with some other types – though it is surrounded by high desert. High desert in Oregon is not technically desert, getting enough rain to push it out of the true desert category. Add to that that there are numerous Juniper/Pine forests at higher elevation and the area is much greener and less dry than I expected. Though, seeing as spring is the rainy season, it will still get quite dry soon.
The first couple of weeks went by quickly. Tours of the resource area, learning as many of the plants as I possibly could and doing some SOS collections. Now that I am getting experience in the internship and learning more about the goals I feel like things have slowed down a bit.
The variety of projects we do keeps things interesting, as we rarely do the same thing from one day to the next. Not everything is fun all the time, but overall is has been an enjoyable and informative beginning to the internship and I hope to continue to learn more as the season progresses.

My CLM internship has brought me into the wild, to the last frontier…Alaska! I am working for the National Park Service at Wrangell-St. Elias near Copper Center, AK. I feel very grateful to have the opportunity to experience such a historic and unique place. Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest National Park in the U.S., covering over 13 million acres! In conjunction with 3 other parks (Glacier Bay in Alaska, Tatshenshini-Alsek British Columbia Canada, and Kluane Yukon Canada) this area is the largest internationally protected ecosystem on the planet covering over 24.3 million continuous acres!! With 25% of the park covered with ice, Wrangell-St.Elias has the greatest concentration of glaciers in North America and contains the largest non-polar ice field in the world! The vastness of this place is so hard to comprehend. The Copper River runs right through this park, which is the spawning corridor for the famous Sockeye and Chinook salmon. This park also contains a National Historic Landmark, Kennecott copper mine. In the 1900s Kennecott Corp. mined copper ore that contained 97% copper and generated over $250,000 worth of copper throughout the time it operated until 1938 when the mine was closed. A railroad had been built specifically to get copper out of the mountainous region, a huge and very difficult undertaking given the harshness of winters here and the challenge of building around glaciers.

My job here at Wrangell-St. Elias is to protect the pristine plant life that exists here. I am on the Exotic Plant Management team and we are responsible for conducting plant surveys, mapping invasive species, collecting native seeds for re-vegetation projects, and also taking volunteer groups out into the park for re-plantings. A large part of my job is also education and outreach to local communities about the threats of invasive species and how they can help in their own backyard. In fact, most invasive plants arrive in new locations from people planting them in their yard, not knowing that they are exotic, or non-native to that habitat.  The implications of invasive species affecting the planet are HUGE, especially with the occurrence of climate change. There is a new aquatic invasive that has reached Alaskan waters, Elodea canadesis (Canadian waterweed) and if untreated could drastically impact salmon populations, a huge industry Alaska depends on. I am very much looking forward to working in a place where invasive species are realistically controllable. Two summers ago I conducted invasive plant surveys in Wisconsin, my home state, and was almost discouraged by the extent of invasive species infestations already there. The cost of removing some of these plants is immense and can take over 15-20 years to be successful. Hopefully here in Alaska, we can prevent invasive plants from invading before it’s too late.

I titled this blog posting “Into the Wild” because moving here has really been a lifestyle change (and I’m currently reading that book by Jack Kerouac). The ground is still frozen here and our housing has no running water yet. Having to haul in water jugs a couple times a week for our water supply really makes me think about and appreciate those who lived off the land by the river and had to use it for their water supply. We have no wi-fi, no cable tv, and my cell phone doesn’t get reception in the remote area I am living in within the park. I am happy though, living a simple life in the woods is exactly what I wanted to experience. I have more time to read, write, do puzzles, and just think about life more with less busyness, distractions, daily advertisements and loud city noises.

The field season has not started here yet, unfortunately. It just snowed the past two days and there is more snow in the forecast for this weekend! So far, I have just been mounting specimens for the park’s herbarium and planning for the coming field season. I am hopeful that spring will come and sunny days are ahead!

Cheers,

Morgan, Wrangell-St. Elias Exotic Plant Management Team, NPS

Some adventures are like long, sinuous dirt paths lined with cholla, and through uncharted landscapes where many untold dangers lie in wait for new interns.  Fresh out of college and lacking extended experience in roaming the range of Arizona, these neophytes link arms and fight the likes of rattlers, illegal activity, and identifying flora.  In search for key areas or range improvements, they trudge on with their transect tapes and compasses to complete the tasks set out for them.  Instructed in desert safety, defensive driving and monitoring techniques, there was never talk on how to deal with the onset of severe enjoyment disorder.

There comes a time when the afflicted techs must reluctantly depart from the natural atmosphere they have become accustomed to.  Physiological acclimation, friendships, and routines that have now become habit must be set aside and wished farewell.

Such a heartfelt bittersweet ending has approached and I am now aware of how dependent upon the relationships, climate, flora, ecological systems, route infrastructure, etc. I have become over the last 11 months.  The only thing I can extend forth towards Arizona, and those individuals who have so richly impacted my time at the BLM Phoenix District Office, is to exclaim that I am so ever conscious and thankful to have been selected for this position and to have had the opportunity to enrich my biological/ecological knowledge.  I was never more alive in my life – like I had the power to make an impact in this world – than during my internship with the BLM.

  ”Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust

All the best, Alyson

Any diary of an intern who is obligated with the task of implementing a monitoring plan, consuming her day with completing various vegetation monitoring methods and sample plot layouts in an array of ecological sites, would not be complete without some photos of the more vibrantly-colored angiosperm species that offer such sweetness to a harsh and unforgiving desert flora and terrain (and most of all – the climate).

Sheep! One would not expect to see this animal being used for grazing on rangeland in a desert environment [in the heat of summer] given they are always fashioned with a wool jumpsuit.

One of the first tasks a range technician is to accomplish when establishing a key area – pounding the t-post into the plot center.

Making lasting friendships is unexpected but always awesome!

The delicate and the deadly wildlife can be found in the same biotic community. One must be vigilant for deleterious factors; always consenting to standard safety protocol.

Early this April, I received word that my internship would soon conclude.  There was simply not any available funding to continue my position.  Although I was disappointed to leave my internship prematurely, I can certainly look back on the experience and say that I was blessed with a myriad of opportunities during my time as an intern.

One of the most valuable, but unexpected gifts I received through my internship was the practice of quiet.  While at work, I usually found myself quietly working on my own to accomplish the tasks of herbarium operation.  These hours I spent “with myself” were so valuable in helping me practice being content with my own company through the course of a day.  After beginning my new job helping manage a retail greenhouse (where I interact with many customers and co-workers throughout the day) I realized just how valuable that quiet time had been.  Even though I thoroughly enjoy working with people, I was surprised when I realized how much I valued that stable solitude.

I was also given the opportunity to get to know a wide range of positively wonderful people!  My co-workers were marvelous, and also incredibly knowledgeable and good-natured.  My internship has also certainly been an excellent opportunity for networking within the Bureau of Land Management, and has allowed me to work with a variety of people in my field.

During the course of my internship, I had the chance to participate in a variety of projects.  Most of these projects involved managing lichen specimen data using our access database.  Since these data management projects involved so much data and and required quite a bit of time, I did not have the chance to see them to their completion before I left.  However, I did get to see significant progression over time.  I also mounted many herbarium vouchers, and made a sizable dent in the specimens that had been waiting for years to be mounted. One project I was able to see to completion was the organization and labeling of our small herbarium library, which now contains a variety of botany related literature.

Many thanks to everyone for the chance to work with the CLM internship program!  With my internship now complete, I am excited about the possibilities of my new job, and I can’t wait to see where things lead!

My internship was a botany internship with the BLM WY in Lander. The goal was to conduct Seeds of Success collections and to create an herbarium collection for the office so they would have reference material. In addition to completing those tasks, I was also able to provide a huge amount of map data work for the office. This office had not ever had a botanist, and their data was unmaintained and challenging to use. I was able to not only collect a large amount of data last summer, but I was also able to organize the offices current data, and then some. With the help of the GIS specialist, I created two geodatabases that are easily usable and can incorporate all future data collection, both in-house and 3rd party. The big concern was that there were surveys that resulted in negative data that were never incorporated, and as a result, many areas were being surveyed multiple times. So they needed a way to show all areas of known locations AND any areas that resulted in negative data so that resources were not being wasted in duplicate surveys. I was able to provide this for them, and I believe that they are very grateful.

The field work that I did last season was also very rewarding. Being a native of the northest megalopolis, it was refreshing to see the vast open spaces that WY has to offer. And the serenity fed my soul.

I will miss WY and the people that I have come to know in the office here. This experience has not only allowed me to see beautiful country and make new friends, but it has also assisted me in making decisions about my future and career goals. My life and my person are better for it, and I encourage anyone to participate in this program.

It’s been quite a spring so far. Sage-grouse lek counting season ends next week, along with mornings that require waking up at 4am. Golden eagle nest monitoring season has begun, although unfortunately the nest I was originally assigned to monitor turned out to be inactive. Luckily, the Bighorn Basin has the greatest concentration of golden eagles in the country, so there are plenty others that are available for watching. I’ve been out and about mending fence, recording a few new raptor nests, seeking out nests of unknown species, scouting for seed collection sites, digging up specimens of the few blooming forbs around that I plan to collect from, recording powerlines using GPS, helping with the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Adoption event, and planning and teaching a lesson on raptor ecology for the local middle school’s Natural History Days (NHD).

Participating in Natural History Days, in addition to the Wild Horse and Burro Adoption, was a new task for me this year. My first day teaching, with the help of the friendly BLM Geologist and fellow raptor volunteer at the museum, was a great success. Now, on to my next teaching day on Tuesday…solo…

The lesson centers around raptors, or birds of prey, and features 2 live birds from the Greater Yellowstone Raptor Experience program at the the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. The first day we had a red-tailed hawk and a peregrine falcon, and next time I will have the great-horned owl and the peregrine falcon, because the hawk has prior engagements on that day. Many species-species and species-environment interactions are discussed in order to convey a message of the interconnectedness of life on the planet, as well as the importance of biodiversity and wide-reaching impacts of humans on wildlife and the environment. The lesson ends with a game of tag, in which some kids play the role of mice while others play the role of predators like rattlesnakes, red-tailed hawks, and great-horned owls. From this they can experience the difficulty of a prey species surviving the pursuit of predators in order to acquire food and feed their young, and that of a predator trying to feed its young while itself being pursued by apex predators like the owl.

Tag is probably almost as fun to watch as it is to play. I was actually able to play a little when one of my “mice” got tired and I had to take her place. As the number of mice dwindles from being tagged or “killed,” the predators start getting awfully hungry and competing more for the remaining mice. When the “car” (played by the Geologist) runs along the highway and “kills” predators like the hawk while it is on a kill, or a rattlesnake while it is sunning. The abundance of mice making it past the remaining predators results in the mouse food supply running low due to their overpopulation. In this way the students can better understand the checks and balances that are necessary to maintaining a relative balance in nature, and how it gets affected when even one type of predator or prey species is removed.

It was a pretty fun time had by all, I would say, including me. And although I’m somewhat nervous about my solo act, I’m looking forward to doing it again.

You might think amphibian surveys would take you to cool, damp, dark places. With the Oregon Spotted Frog, not so! During our first few weeks as I sat in the office, having taken on the OSF as Species Lead, I read the following as ideal survey conditions: warm, sunny days with little or no wind. Well that sounds pretty ideal indeed! While we waited for our supervisor to return from a training, we were set on some office work and whatever field trips staff undertook. When our supervisor returned, the first thing we hear is that it’s a hot, hot year and the frogs are spawning whole weeks before they’d ever spawned before (yikes!). Thus launched one crazy month of survey after survey.

Like many rare species, the OSF is quite shy and hard to find. Over the years, as surveys yielded fewer and fewer numbers of adults (my last few days of data reorganization have started to make this quite clear to me), the Klamath Falls FWS office changed survey tactics to focus more on egg mass surveys, which are far less mobile and cryptic then their originators. We had one special day this season where we saw a few adults and one subadult Oregon Spotted Frog (it was one of the warmest, sunniest days). OSF spawn when water reaches warmer temperatures in the shallows, usually around May through June/July, and the egg masses develop over 2-3 weeks. The trick is to catch the window when you can find the highest density of egg masses and get to the sites to survey, but each site window varies depending on local water temperature conditions, altitude, location, etc. As it was we caught the tail end of spawning at most sights, seeing little OSF tadpoles hatch out and occasionally get eaten by leeches. The presence of hundreds of chorus frog eggs is also a sign that we are too late.

We have been balancing local surveys around Upper Klamath Lake of known territory, with surveys of historic territory in the Modoc National Forest down in California. This was quite exciting as we have had the chance to look for OSFs where they have not been seen in the last 100 years or so, and had we caught any evidence of their existence it would have made some ripples. These surveys turned up negative in the end, but my fellow intern and I got to spend several nights camping in the Warner Mountain Wilderness, the past 3 weeks hiking into remote lakes and creeks and generally absorbing the beauty that surrounded us, including the occasional coyote spotting. Last week however we got caught in a few storms, and neither the frogs nor us were experiencing prime operating conditions!

Well, that just about wraps up OSF surveys for the year, next week will be working with several valued, yet endangered, fish species in the Klamath Basin. I can’t wait to see what comes next!