Meghan Cornwall '11

Description: This past summer I was a Student Conservation Association (SCA) intern at Modoc National Forest in Alturas, California. The SCA is an organization which partners with different environmental government agencies to create internships for students. The program is based off of the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC); it was created for students to give back to National Forests and National Parks that they have enjoyed. My internship included helping to eradicate noxious weeds and surveying for endangered or rare plants on the forest. My main job was on the weed crew; a team of four college students who identified and manually removed weeds. We worked four ten hour days for 12 weeks. Our boss gave us maps of old weed sites around the forest every morning, or directed us to new occurrences that were not on the maps. After the morning debriefing, we would drive out to the sites she specified. Our first job was to identify if the weeds were the actual said plant. Many times the weeds were misidentified since the forest uses the help of the ranchers and citizens who use the forest to report sightings of weeds. The citizens do not necessarily know the differences between noxious and native species. If it was a weed we would manually remove the plants using shovels, clippers or our hands. Some sites we could get clear in minutes, others would take half a day and others would take one or more days to get done depending on how large the infestation was. Once the site was weed free to the best of our ability, we would GPS the area and fill out forms detailing the species, the size of infestation, legal location and directions to the site. This was all compiled back at the office for future weed crews and for monitoring of the weeds. Since I was not a paid temp at the forest, I was able to help the botany crew, who were mostly in graduate school, conduct botany surveys. Here we would work on certain projects, including logging areas, ranching allotments, and fence lines to survey for rare or endangered plants. I learned how to walk transects, and do intuitive observation, which is looking for potential habitat for specific endangered plants. I have not taken a plant taxonomy class, so the botany crew taught me plant families and species, and how to key out plants that we did not know. I was also taught how to take a proper field journal. During these surveys, I helped find two new occurrences of the only federally listed endangered species on the forest, Orcuttia tenuis. In conclusion, my job was basically to weed an entire National Forest, as well as help with some botany surveying.

Reflection This internship was a very good introduction to field work. I was working in all sorts of weather and insect conditions. One of the most important things I learned was I am more interested in working with animals, than plants in the future. Working with plants was very interesting and plants are interconnected with ecology and animals, so learning basic plant taxonomy and species will help me in future jobs, so the internship was very useful in that respect. My supervisors were very willing to teach me anything I needed to know to help with my job including how to drive a manual and a four wheel drive vehicle. They understood my interest in ecology, and taught me more about the ecosystems in the area. This was a wonderful experience for me; I believe I learned a lot about plants as well as about myself as a person. I went out there not sure what to expect but came back with new experiences in a part of the US that most people do not see as well as some great new friends.