During our ski bumming season I was hired for a full time and permanent position as a Senior Wildlife Biologist (Wildlife Specialist II) with Arizona Game and Fish (a job I applied for in October). It promised to be a really good job--the sorts of job that all Wildlife majors dream of getting someday (getting out of the seasonal tech rat-race)-- Complete with good benefits, both field work and statistical analysis and paper writing, my own office and computer. But I was still rather hesitant, mainly because it would be in Phoenix. Giant metropolises in the middle of the desert aren't my cup of tea. While I was considered for several other permanent jobs where I was in the top 2 or 3 candidates, this job was the only permanent job I was hired for (I did get several seasonal job offers). Thus, Elisha and I decided to go for it.
The job as been interesting (in both meanings of the word), to say the least. I work for the contract branch, which means we do work for other government agencies that don't have the specialty (military instillations, BLM, forest service and such). And my group is mainly herps (reptiles and amphibians) and birds. Since herps are mainly active in the heat, our field work season is full on during the summer, which means doing field work in the heat of the summer (occasionally approaching 120 F, but almost always reaching over 100F). And the field work can be quite challenging b/c obviously there is no shade in the desert and sometimes it's lots of walking over rugged terrain and steep mountains. And often its camping. When it is camping, it's too hot to sleep in a tent, so we just set up cots in the middle of the desert and sweat all night. Hydration is always a battle, and since I make a really concerted effort to drink as much as possible, I usually wake up around 1 or 2 in the morning having to pee, but completely drenched in sweat. It probably gets down to the low 90's most nights when we're camping, but it starts out the night well above 100. Thankfully, we often are also able to stay in hotels. They gave me a huge, lifted, and fancy (and gas guzzling) Ford F250 truck. Certainly a challenge to park at our apartment complex. I did manage to get it stuck once in deep sand, but the bluetooth speakers certainly make it nice to listen to podcasts on the long drives to my field sites and the air condition works great. Some of the desert, sand, and wash driving is certainly interesting and kind of fun. Arizona has a ton of very empty and wide open state. I think I heard it has the most public land per capita of any of the lower 48 states, and where I work, you almost never see a soul. And thus the roads are very remote and often quite interesting to drive. 4WD, high clearance, and experience driving in the sand is often necessary. As is route finding via GPS.
I have 3 main projects that are the projects I run. This is also my first job ever where I'm a supervisor and have technicians working for me. In addition to my projects, I also help the 2 other guys (Chad and Sky) in my position out. There should be one other person in my position as well, but they are currently hiring for that position as it was vacated right before I arrived. The field work has been pretty intense in terms of amount of it, which I think is one of the main things I struggle with this job. Throughout the summer I have averaged about 3 to 4 weeks of the month in the field, gone from home. I feel like I'm living out of my duffel bag and that I'm also packing, unpacking, and doing laundry when I'm not working. And due to the desert heat, we don't work normal 9-5 hours. We do a lot of 430am until noon and then 4pm til 7. For some projects we even start driving to our sites at 3am. I really do love field work, but this is pretty intense with how much it is. Also the conditions are challenging (ex hot) and when we are camping it's primitive camping. And generally we're too exhausted, and it's too hot to do anything fun after work. And in addition, it's just not the most beautiful scenery. I mean, don't get me wrong, the desert has a unique beauty to it that I really love, but it's not the same invigorating and inspiring scenery as conifer forests with streams and lakes and grass. Who knows, if I was doing a similar job but in the mountains of Colorado or Montana, maybe I'd like it a lot more. But also, maybe with being older and having a wife, maybe I'm just at a stage where being gone in somewhat uncomfortable conditions is not my cup of tea.
When you're gone for a whole week at a time, your weekend is often catch up of things you might normally do on weekday nights (internet things, laundry, shopping, etc). And also it makes it hard to get in a routine like joining a gym, joining a book club, or something like that since I'd always be gone. And one thing, if I have to be in a big city, that I'd really like to do is to join some sports leagues, but again, that's impossible when you're gone all the time. And even just having the opportunity to bike, hike, or run after work is not possible when I'm never home.
But when I reflect honestly, I have also enjoyed it. I've seen some really cool places, interacted with some cool wildlife, and of course it must beat sitting behind a desk. I've worked with some cool people and had good laughs. And actually when I get to stay at hotels or bunkhouses it's pretty plush. Because we get a travel allowance, I've also eaten out more than I would normally in my life. One project in Yuma where I've spent a lot of time at a hotel, I've had fun watching some of my favorite tv shows and used the treadmill and pool at the hotel. It also feels good to being working on something meaningful, trying to conserve our protect our wildlife. Though I'd admit that our projects (gov't wildlife projects in general) aren't as interesting to me as what happens in academia. Academia often asks really cool questions (how and why?) where as government management style jobs often are just asking (where is the species and how many?). I often go into the field week feeling some dread for the conditions, but then come back feeling pretty excited about it all.
I think one thing that has also influenced my feeling for the job is that I'm a supervisor and that I'm in charge of many of these projects. This means if something goes wrong, it's on me. It means I really have to be on my game and have a fair amount of pressure. This is different to the tech jobs I have enjoyed where you just show up at the time they tell you and then do the job they tell you to do. If the project doesn't work out because of bad methods, bad weather, truck breakdown or what have you, as a tech you don't really worry too much. But now all that stuff is my worry. And it also means spending a considerable time working outside of normal work hours, especially since I'm salaried. And of course those that know me, know that having only 12 days of vacation is a real challenge for me. Luckily I often work 4 10's which has allowed me to have 3 day weekends that I can take advantage of (though sometimes after a long week in the desert I don't feel like packing up again to go camping somewhere). And even sometimes I've had 8-10's giving me 6 days off that Elisha and I have been able to take advantage of to go on some cool short trips (see other blog posts).
I could go on and on about all this (those who are close to me have already had me talk your ear off about all this and more)...about the pluses and minuses of the job. About how long I should stay. Again, as I mentioned, it's a really good job, the sort of job that so many wildlife folk try to get and never are able to. And of course there are so many other things to juggle when thinking about all this. What Elisha thinks, our dissatisfaction with Phoenix, the climate, etc.
Anyways, I'll go through a bit of what I've been doing. First, my 3 main projects
Threatened and Endangered Species in the Bill Williams Watershed: The BLM has tasked us with discerning the range of threatened and endangered species in this area that includes the Big Sandy and Santa Maria rivers. These rivers flow for a bit along short stretches and disappear for long stretches. As part of this project, I've been tasked with finding the range of the endangered Mexican Garter Snake. To do this I spent a week looking for areas with permanent water and then 2 weeks trapping for garter snakes. I'm also of course documenting other species we capture, which include various fish, black-necked garter snakes, leopard frogs, and invasive bull frogs. During this project we also found some cute sonoran mud turtles and came across several other species of snakes, including a few types of rattle snakes. One rattle snake, we had to remove that was hanging out by our cots. Also during this project I got to witness the power of the monsoon, with some crazy flash flooding in the washes and river beds during heavy rains. I also saw a black bear along one of the river, as well as plenty of invasive burros. During this project we camped out. Luckily one spot we camped had a great shade tree and the other spot had the river flowing nearby where I could keep cool while not working by putting my feet in the water. These rivers are sort of near Wikiup (closer to the ghost town of Signal). The field sites are very far from any civilization and on rugged dirt roads. This means the star watching is absolutely fantastic! And like anywhere in Arizona, the sunsets are spectacular. During these surveys I had 1 or 2 techs with me to help me with checking the 100 traps we laid out.
Sonoran Desert Tortoise Long Term Monitoring Plot: On the Yuma Proving Grounds (army testing installation), I am tasked with setting up two long term monitoring plots that will be surveyed on alternate years. This year I'm working on the Cibolla side and the next year will be the Kofa side. Sonoran Desert Tortoises are endangered and declining (disease, invasives, climate change, habit loss being the main reasons for their decline). A team of me and 2 technicians survey a 1km squared plot, 4 times per summer (once a month). It's in the rocky mountains just outside of Quartzsite. Because that area is so insanely hot, I was able to convince my boss to let us get a cheap hotel room. The 2 techs get the 2 beds and I stay in a cot. Anything to have air conditioning to sleep in and rest in during our off period and to hydrate up. The tortoises generally are deep in their burrows, so you survey with flashlights and do a lot of bending over to check burrows, shelters and rock overhangs. During this project I've see some other cool wildlife like collared lizards, a large desert bighorn sheep ram, a couple of speckled rattlesnakes, and a couple burrowing pygmy owls. It's a lot of hard work, and we don't find many tortoises, but when we do, they are definitely cute. We mass and measure them, do a health and body condition assessment, put a "license plate" on their shell with white out, sharpie, and epoxy, but then also notch their marginal scutes (outer shell pieces) so that in many years if they are recaptured, we can still identify them. Desert tortoises can live over 50 years (even up to 80). Besides the numbers, I try to name the tortoises. One of the older ones is named Don in honor of Quartzsite's most infamous resident, Don King Kayser.
Naval Observatory of Flagstaff Wildlife Inventory: I like this one because of its location, the ponderosa forests of mountainous and mountain hippy flagstaff. On this project, the Naval Observatory (with telescopes and such) has asked us to tell them what wildlife they have on their chunk of property. I'm in charge of the herps and others are in charge of camera trapping for large mammals, trapping for small mammals, bird surveys, and invertebrate surveys. To make an inventory of the herps here, I do visual encounter surveys (just walking the property and searching under rocks and logs), and I also do some trapping. I constructed 6 drift fence arrays using erosion control fencing. At each array I have 4 funnel traps at the ends of the arrays and 2 pitfall bucket traps. The idea is that reptiles who are trying to go from one location to the next run into the fence and are then required to run parallel to the fence where they either fall into a bucket or find themselves in the trap. Constructing the fences took a week with two techs and using a piece of heavy equipment called a trencher. Then I am doing surveys during the monsoon and post monsoon and then will again survey in the spring for the pre-monsoon. Being cold and high elevation, the area doesn't have a huge diversity of herps, but we have caught plateau fence lizards, greater short-horned lizards, many-lined skinks, Arizona tree frogs, and terrestrial garter snakes. The California Academy of Sciences wants specimens of the area for their collections, so sadly I've had to euthenize a male, female, and juvenile of each species I catch. I am prepared to catch a rattlesnake, but have not done so, thus far. The work here is obviously much more comfortable than the desert, though at times it's been quite chilly and rainy. Being a cool college town, I have enjoyed eating at some of the Asian restaurants. There is a regional office in Flagstaff that has a bunkhouse, which is where I have stayed with my techs. Elisha also was able to spend a couple weeks up here helping me and enjoying Flagstaff. There are so many good bike paths and trails around here that I've really enjoyed running through the forests after work or up on the campus. One week I even brought my mt biking and did some mt biking up here. During my last week in Flagstaff it even snowed up on the peaks, and the thunderstorms are awesome here. Like in Estes Park where they really boom and ricochet and echo around the mountains
YPG Wildlife Trends: I took over this project and it's mostly done, so I only have spent a couple days on it. It involved driving to a bunch of camera traps on the Yuma Proving Grounds to get memory cards and change out batteries. These cameras are located on the actual testing areas of YPG, so I had to take training video classes and get a badge and then really pay attention to where I am going and to make sure I stick to the route that I am cleared by Range Control to travel on, lest I end up in an area they are testing a missile or bomb. You can often hear the bombs going off, and on a few occasions I was close enough to the test area that I could feel the shockwave of the explosion. Also while working on this project I helped a couple of guys from the Tucson branch with raptor surveys
I have also helped Chad and Sky with their projects.
Chad has been here for over 10 years. He's a really cool guy and maybe my best friend here. He is known as the "Tortoise Guy" and all of his projects are with tortoises. Because tortoises like rough, steep, mountainous terrain, he has the toughest job. For a couple of weeks I helped him with tortoise surveys in the Kingman area. Kingman also has a regional office, so we were able to stay at bunkhouse there. I also helped him for a couple days on a Tortoise project near Buckeye (outskirts of Phoenix) where we used VHF radio telemetry to track tortoises to their burrows.
Sky is mostly working with the endangered Flat-Tailed Horned Lizard. He has 3 different types of studies: Reproduction, Occupancy, and Demography. For the reproduction part of the project we were near Yuma and El Centro, CA, and we were camping. For this project we'd search for females and then when we found them, we'd use ultra sound to see if they were gravid and then attach little radio transmitters to them with make-shift collars so that we could find them again. For this project I worked with Sky and his tech Travis (aka T-Rod)
For Occupancy, I worked with T-Rod and interns to check for the range of the horned lizards. On this project we were staying at a nice hotel in Yuma (Fortuna). For demography we stayed at the same hotel, and I worked with T-Rod and techs. I spent a lot of time on these 2 projects. They are actually pretty fun b/c it's nice to have a hotel. The projects usually start at 4am or earlier, but then we are usually done before 1pm b/c there is a temperature limit. Once the sand hits 48C (about 118F), we have to quit. The sand warms quicker than the air, so usually we quit around 102-104 F of air temperature. Then you have the whole rest of the afternoon to chill in the AC hotel and watch fun tv shows or go run on the hotel treadmill. It's also a fun project because it's a challenge to track this cryptic species in the sand. They are often buried in the sand, especially in the morning when the sand is "cool", so you have to rely on their tracks to find them. On this project, we also see other cool lizards (zebra tail, desert iguanas, geckos) and find lots of sidewinders (maybe my favorite snake here). We also have seen kit foxes and a glossy snake and the odd scorpion. The work is largely on sandy areas an occasional small dunes. It's also interesting because it's on the Barry M Goldwater Range that borders Mexico, so we have to deal with border patrol and military exercises (the dispatch oddly named Leg Iron). And of course the border wall is often in sight, and in fact some plots are right next to it.
There is a Mount Graham Red Squirrel project that our group works on, though I have not been assigned to help with it yet. I was going to be in charge of it, but my schedule was just too busy. I had no weeks available for the field work required.
At the end of October, herp summer ends, so then I will switch to mostly doing office work (data entry, data analysis, report and paper writing, project proposals, etc). But I take it that there will also still be some field work such as a tortoise project out in the Imperial Mountains near the Colorado River and Yuma/California
