Tonto National Forest, AZ: Part 1, Intro to an Epic Adventure

One of the most exciting aspects of being a wildlife biologist is getting to work all over the place, and on all kinds of projects. This summer I took a job in the Tonto National Forest of Arizona, a state I hardly knew anything about. As a “biological wildlife technician” for the U.S. Forest Service (what kind of wildlife is not biological, I wondered) I was supposed to be working on several interesting projects. While the bat study did not receive enough funding, I did end up working on projects involving the federally endangered southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus), the federally threatened Chiricahua leopard frog (Rana chiricahuensis), and listed or at-risk native stream fish. I also was able to help AZ Game and Fish with a couple surveys on the federally threatened desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) as well. On top of my awesome job, I had a blast exploring the area in my off-time, and saw many plants and animals I have always dreamed of seeing.

Having never been to Arizona, I really did not know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived, however, because the Tonto National Forest is absolutely gorgeous! The Sonoran Desert, being the hottest and driest in North America, is home to a veritable menagerie of highly-adapted plant and animal life. I loved climbing around on the granite boulders and exploring the washes. Chaparral was a new experience for me, and as the densest shrubland community on earth it has left a lasting impact, mostly on my flesh that was ripped at by catclaw acacia and scrub oaks all summer. Our living quarters were located in the middle of nowhere on Roosevelt Lake, the biggest lake in Arizona (even if it is man-made). I could see mountains all around, which is just the way I like it to be. On any given day I could be frolicking in the desert, and then cooling off at 7,000 feet elevation in Ponderosa pines.

Since my summer in Arizona was certainly an epic adventure, I will be posting about it in several parts and including lots of photos. I will detail the projects I worked on in some entries, to give you insight into the career of a wildlife biologist, and in others I will talk about the things I did for fun and the cool stuff I saw. The journey will be long, and hopefully you will find it every bit as exciting as I did.

Pack Our Parks! Illinois state park closure date nears

Hey all, I received an e-mail today about another event aimed at drawing attention to the proposed closure of several Illinois state parks, and which obviously hopes to prevent these closures. The event is taking place this Saturday, November 1. For anyone who lives in IL or is close to an IL state park, please participate in this event!!! It will only be successful if a lot of people take part. Besides, it's gorgeous out this time of year and it will be winter before too much longer!

Also, if you have not yet signed this petition to save IL state parks, please do so now! It only takes a few seconds to sign the online petition, and the only info you need is your name!

Here is the e-mail I received about the Pack Our Parks event:

Friends of State Parks:
Many of the partners working on the state parks effort have organized a fun event for this Saturday, November 1 called Pack OUR Parks, or POP Illinois.

The action is to take time on Saturday and go to your local state park. There are no planned events, but please go to your park between 10:00 and 11:00 AM "as a prime time for maximum attendance for media exposure."

As the invitation said, "Your park could be next… Show our legislators and our Governor how much our parks mean to us!"
Please pass this along to all of your friends.
For more information please contact:
Jane Hovland, Chair, POP Illinois
popillinois@verizon.net or 217-412-0801
or go to POP Illinois at www.ILparks.org Calendar of Events

The online petition at www.SaveOurStateParks.org is doing quite well, thanks to all of your efforts to pass the link on to your friends. We have over 32,000 signatures, including paper petitions sent in to our office. Please continue to tell your friends, and if you haven't emailed your friends yet, please point them to the petition and urge them to sign.

Marc Miller, Senior Policy Advisor
Office of Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn
Room 414, Stratton Building
Springfield, Illinois 62706-4700

Direct Phone Line: 217-557-5625
Stratton Office Main Line: 217-782-3734
Fax: 217-782-9879 -or- 217-782-9728
E-mail: Marc.Miller@illinois.gov
www.StandingUpforIllinois.org (main webpage)
www.CleanWaterIllinois.org (water webpage)

Gear Review: Midwest Tongs Mark O'Shea Signature Series Snake Hook

Product and Purchase Info
Product: Mark O'Shea Signature Series Snake Hook
Manufacturer: Midwest Tongs
Date of Purchase: January, 2006
URL: http://tongs.com/
Purchase Price: $49.95

Product Details
Weight: very light, exact weight coming soon
Dimensions: total length 29 inches, shaft width 0.75 inches, titanium hook 4 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall, handle grips 4 inches long
Size: this review is for the 29 inch hook
Colour: anodized blue with silver hook and black grips

Evaluation
Having worked at a zoo and a nature center, I've used many snake hooks before. I've always been disappointed with their flimsiness, and couldn't see dragging one into the field with me, so I never bought one. Then I met the Mark O'Shea Signature Series 29 inch snake hook from Midwest Tongs. This beast of a hook is now my constant companion on hikes and roadcruises. It is love, indeed!

The blue anodized tubing is thicker and tougher than the standard golf-club-style hooks of yesteryear, and the titanium hook, held in by rivets, shouldn't bend or twist out of place. This well-balanced hook is easy to hold and carry with its grippy texture and foam mid-shaft and rubber end-shaft pads.

I use my hook for flipping rocks, ripping and rolling logs, moving branches, digging in the dirt, poking around in murky water, traversing steep cliffs, beating away dead branches, examining dead things, and keeping my footing in slippery conditions. Oh, and you can use it on snakes, too! At 29 inches long, this hook isn't really appropriate for handling large or strike-happy venomous snakes, but it comes in a 40 inch version if that's more your style. I prefer the 29 inch version because it straps to the outside of my packs without sticking off really far and snagging on things, and I think it's easier to carry, especially when bushwhacking (which is most of what I do). This hook is more like an indestructible extension of my arm.

I've used this hook all over the country, including: the bluffs, creeks, and cliffs of Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois; the deserts, forests, mountains, washes, and canyons of Tonto National Forest in Arizona; the mountains, rivers, and sage flats of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming; and the lakes and portages of the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and Canada. It's survived all kinds of environments and weather conditions and my constant abuse, but is still in very good condition. It has many scrapes and scratches on the handle and hook, which is to be expected, and the only real damage is a tear in the foam mid-shaft handle. Nothing on the hook has become loose, cracked, or broken. I couldn't be happier.

Bottom Line
If you're looking for a rough-and-tumble field hook that will go the distance with you, look no further than the Midwest Tongs Mark O'Shea Signature Series snake hooks!

Fall colours!

My passion for colours is no secret to anyone who knows me (or who just sees what I wear!), so fall is an exciting time for me. I have taken a plethora of fall colour photos and figured I would share some of my favourites, since not everyone gets to experience fall in all its grandeur! Remember, you can click a photo to see a larger version of it (though some don't blow up very large because I reduced the resolution too much). I apologize to those of you on U.S.F.S. computers, because you won't be able to view my images. From now on I'll be linking my photos from Photobucket because I don't have time to resize and re-upload everything to Picasa. Sorry!

These shots are from multiple Septembers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

These photos are from Starved Rock and Matthiessen State Parks in Illinois.

Fall on campus here at Lawrence University (Appleton, WI). There were taken yesterday!

I hope you enjoy these fall shots as much as I do!

Brit

A word on time...

...and how I don't have any of it! School is in full swing and I still haven't settled in, despite the fact that I've been here for three weeks. There are still a few boxes and bags on my floor to be unpacked, and I have yet to step foot in the gym since I moved back in (I usually go for at least an hour each night). On top of being a full-time biology major taking time-intensive courses, I am also the president of GreenFire (our highly-active campus environmental club) and a member of the animal welfare club (we volunteer at local animal shelters, make collections for them, etc.). Oh, and I have three jobs where I've been working over 15 hours a week. It's tough, but at minimum wage it takes a lot to make anything.

The good news is that I got my camera back from Canon and it has been fully repaired for free, so now I can get to work on my gear reviews (in all my free time!). I've also gotten my AZ photos uploaded to my photobucket account, so I'm ready to start working on my big trip posts. It will be a long process, but I'm excited to share my adventures and photos! In the meantime, I hope to get up some of my favourite fall photos, for those of you who may not get to experience it as grandly as we do here in the midwest.

Yes indeed, fall is upon us here in Wisconsin! The trees are alive with yellows and oranges, the bushes are turning red, the days are shortening, and the squirrels are going nuts for nuts. Literally! There is a huge walnut tree by my second-story bedroom window, and the grey squirrels (photo of one below) have been in it constantly, plucking the big green fruits and peeling the outer coverings off so they can stash the inner nut. They knock down three times as many as they manage to grab, so my afternoons are filled with the constant dull thuds of the fruits hitting the ground thirty feet below. I have to be careful when I do homework in the yard now, with the constant threat of walnut-asteroids. A few branches hang over the roof, so you can imagine how it sounds when they shake the fruits loose up there! You'd swear someone was pelting the house with baseballs. Lately I've been seeing a tiny little red squirrel among the fallen fruits, flitting around in the crazy paranoid manner that is typical of his species. I had thought he was perhaps a passer-by, but I heard him chattering his defensive calls this afternoon in a nearby tree, so he's obviously staked some territory in the neighbourhood. This makes me quite happy, because red squirrels are a rare treat in this area and I will enjoy his plucky presence this winter.

I must now get back to work on my developmental biology homework, but I will leave you with a random cool tidbit from this morning's reading: animal embryos first develop their hands and feet with webbing between the digits, sort of like paddles or flippers. A set of genes later turn on and tell the tissues between the digits to die. In animals that retain their webbed feet (like ducks, for instance), another gene represses the genes that tell the interdigital tissue to die, so the webbing remains. How cool is that!?

Brit

Save Illinois' State Parks!

This is just a quick note about a major issue going on in my home state of Illinois right now. Governor Rod Blagojevich is CLOSING eleven Illinois state parks and half as many state historic sites due to "budget concerns." Some of the parks he is closing are highly popular and get very busy during the summer season, so it makes absolutely no sense. If you care about being able to enjoy the outdoors, please go to this website and sign the petition and send a letter to that jerk Blagoevich, even if you don't plan on ever going to an IL state park. The deadline for closure is coming up fast, so act now before it's too late! Your state parks could be next!!

http://standingupforillinois.org/saveourparks/index.php


Brit

Vice Presidential Debate

So who all watched it last night? If you did, you're probably still groaning about Palin's performance. I've never heard her speak before and all I can say is "wow." I'm actually a little embarrassed that she stands for the great state of Alaska, and I can only wonder if McCain was watching the debate thinking "crap, what have I done!?" That woman is unbelievable! She skirted around several questions, changed the topic numerous times, and rambled on about pointless stuff (and on and on and on!). It was like she had written all these little speeches for this event, and she was going to make sure that she got to read them all in their entirety before the night was through, whether they were relevant or not!

I'm all for getting women into the President and VP seats, but I don't think she is the one. I'll be damned if my country's leader sits down at some foreign relations discussion and says "Say it ain't so Joe!" or "Doggone-it that just ain't true!" I don't care if she talks like that in her personal life or at casual events, but that kind of language seemed ingrained into her speech and I don't think she would be capable of shutting it off when she needed to do so. Biden carried himself much more professionally, which is probably something that comes with experience as well.

Palin's actual stance on the various issues brought up is more of the same story. I couldn't believe her behaviour during the gay-rights section, claiming she would be "tolerant" of homo-sexual couples but offering no rights to them. Her attitude at that point was incredibly negative, and it's clear that she doesn't believe homosexuality has its place. Biden's stance was more egalitarian in granting quite a few rights to homosexual couples, but the "marriage is between a man and a woman" comment was a disappointment.

I'm also disappointed in the energy issue. Drilling for oil is not the answer, but coal also is not the answer. We need to be investing in wind and solar energies, not in burning more filthy coal and oil!

I don't really delve into politics much, if at all, so this is probably the last you'll hear from me on it. I was just flabbergasted at what a flake Palin is, and a wee bit disappointed by a few Biden comments.

Obama/Biden for '08!