AK 930

Just another day at work...

As much fun as kayaking through the sound and enjoying the copious amounts of daylight here are, they aren't exactly my raison d'être up here. I do actually work up here. It just so happens that my work is just as fun.

In December of 2009, I applied to the Conservation and Land Management Internship. This program, run by the Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG), places recent college graduates in government conservation biology positions across the country. In my application, I refused to state a geographic preference, but I did express a desire to work with plants. Since most of America's public lands are in the west, I expected a placement in Nevada or Montana. [If you're interested in what other CLM interns are doing, check out this blog]

Seven months later, here I am working in Alaska! Up here, I work for two entities-- the Bureau of Land Management Alaska State Office (BLM) and the Alaska Natural Heritage Program (AKNHP). And even though these two offices are physically separate, both have the same project for me and my fellow interns. We need to collect seeds.

AK 930 in action

Throughout America's public lands, disturbances often occur. Large fires take out huge swaths of prairie, mining destroys big mountains, or pipelines divide habitats for years on end. Since humans cause most of these disturbances, we often need to repair the damage before bigger problems (usually soil and mineral erosion) take over. To do this, we revegetate.

Unfortunately, many seeds of plants native to the disturbed area are not commercially available or exist so at a prohibitive cost. Thus, the government started the Seeds of Success program in 2001 to bank these vital seeds and increase their availability. Hundreds of collecting teams throughout the United States find native plants and collect around 10,000 seeds from a populations. They then FedEx these seeds to various seed banks and seed processing facilities.

Dryas Drummondii (our only seeding plant)
 and my boss

We are collecting team AK 930, the only collecting team in Alaska. Because of Alaska's unique climate, only one of our target species is currently seeding. This means we spend a lot of time planning. When we're in the office (so far about 30% of the time), we arrange for rental cars, flights, hotels, and food for our upcoming trips. When we go out into the field with our boss, he teaches us plant names and systematics. When he doesn't come with us, we scout out plant populations that might be good to collect.

So what makes this job so awesome? First, we are pretty independent. Second, I'm using my degree. We get to make scientific decisions based on our rapidly expanding knowledge of the plants up here. Last but not least, I'm basically getting paid to hike and look at flowers. Later in the season, we'll even travel around the state. Place like Nome, Fairbanks, Glenallen, and Seward await. Not bad for a first job, huh?