Our Stories

The Buffalo Field Office (BFO) rangeland management staff administers over 400 grazing leases. Grazing allotments vary in size from less than 40 acres to over 26,000 acres.

A volunteer patrol is making sure horse-riders and mountain bikers get the most out of trails in the San Joaquin River Gorge. The patrol, called the San Joaquin River Gorge Volunteer Trail Patrol, regularly rides trails in the area and is known for its strong interaction with visitors and for supporting local events. For example, Trail Patrol members have assisted with several competitive races and special events, such as the Big Sandy Pro-Am mountain bike race, the San Joaquin River Gorge Ultra Half-Marathon, the Search for Sasquatch Day and the quarterly Family Fun Days.

Just outside of Grand Junction, Colorado, we work closely with the Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Range Fertility Control Darting Team to keep the Little Bookcliffs wild horse population at ideal levels. The volunteer advocates began working with the BLM in the early 1980s.

Stone flies may again be a natural part of the Upper Gunnison if a research project finds their reintroduction has a high chance of success.Under the project, conducted by Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Western Colorado University, volunteers are collecting stone fly nymphs from the Gunnison Gorge and moving them to BLM- managed lands in the Upper Gunnison. Historically, stone flies were found in the Upper Gunnison, although they are no longer found there naturally.

What do the dwarf woolly meadowfoam and the vernal pool fairy shrimp have in common? They are both found on top of the Table Rocks in southwest Oregon. If you hike these flat-topped mesas in early spring, you have a good chance of seeing them. This is a highlight for many of the 3,500 school children that annually hike these rocks as part of the Table Rocks Environmental Education Program.

The BLM Fort Ord National Monument provides an excellent outdoor classroom for environmental education and scientific research. Each year hundreds of school students from around the Monterey Peninsula visit BLM lands for science projects or for special field trips focusing on soil erosion, wetland ecology, or habitat restoration.

An invasive marine invertebrate known as “marine vomit,” that can smother native species has been found within Whiting Harbor in Sitka. This non-native carpet sea squirt, Didemnum vexillum, (D. vex) is thought to be native to Japan. It was first detected in Whiting Harbor in 2010 as a result of a citizen-science-marine invasive species bioblitz. Tammy Davis, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), invasive species program lead, was concerned along with other stakeholders including local Sitkans and those who work in the marine invasive species world, about the discovery and potential growth and spread of D. vex in Whiting Harbor.

While BLM Alaska’s Seeds of Success works with several others to collect and promote the use of native seeds, a big helping hand comes from interns from the Chicago Botanical Garden Conservation Land Management Intern program.

Last year Ryan McConnell, an AmeriCorps Volunteer in Service to America (or VISTA) intern, helped local students learning English as a second language connect with nature through education and stewardship programs at McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area. The BLM and partner group Colorado Canyons Association sponsored Ryan and turned McInnis Canyons into an outdoor classroom with the help of a Hands on the Land grant from the National Environmental Education Foundation. They partnered with the Dual Immersion Academy, a public charter school in Grand Junction, Colo., and its new STEM program to start the program.

Interns are a valuable resource to the BLM, and there is no better example than Magdalena Gudino, who attends California State University in Sacramento. As part of her recent internship, Magdalena helped conduct studies on ponds at the Cosumnes River Preserve affected by the methylation of mercury, documented the location of invasive plant species, and monitored the preserve’s pond water levels.

For some Americans, sagebrush is so ubiquitous it is forgotten — always in the background of the classic Westerns but somehow never looked at. Until now. Millions of acres of sagebrush land, managed mostly by the federal government because nobody else originally wanted it, have become a target for the largest, most ambitious habitat conservation effort in American history.