Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of family, friends and amazing food! I know I did. Sorry about the delay in posting, however, because of the holiday, I really had no free time until now. First about my tour and then thanksgiving!

My last 8-day tour was in Corona, CA on the Lake Mathews Reserve, which is one of the 8 reserves under the same management. We were working for the Riverside County Habitat Conservation Agency (RCHCA). This huge portion of land, 12,000 acres if I remember correctly, was once used as a citrus grove and vineyard. There was a development halt in the late 80's because of a little rodent called the Stephen's Kangaroo Rat.


This rat was placed on the Endangered list in 1988 and therefore, in order to help protect its habitat, things were shut down. For a while, this land was in limbo because the BLM didn't want it for whatever reason and there was no other organization that would be able to manage the combined 22,000 acres of land. The RCHCA came about and decided to take this project on. Now, this land is closed off to the public while groups like the Nevada Conservation Corps, try to restore and clean it up with hopes in opening it as a park.

Since the place was so large and there was so much work to be done, 6 crews were sent to this site.

We had 60 people working on various projects all week, such as Burrowing Owl housing installation, native seeding, irrigation pipe removal, Tamarisk removal and fuel reduction/fire break installation. Because I am on a chainsaw crew, we mostly worked on the Tamarisk removal.
Before:

After:
It was a good tour and our contact, Brian Shomo, from the RCHCA was outstanding and really showed us how appreciative they were of our work. It really does make a world of difference to us, to hear positive feedback from our project partners. Especially when the conditions are less than desirable and we're out there working through it. This tour was also the first time I've come across a rattlesnake, black widow and tarantulas! Pretty cool!


Literally, right when I got back from tour I went straight to the airport to pick up my friend, Chan. Poor guy had to witness me immediately after 8-days of chainsawing. I wasn't a pretty site, I'll admit it. :) We spent a fun night on the strip before heading down to sunny San Diego for Thanksgiving. We have some friends living down there so we stayed with them. They had to work on Tuesday so Chan and I decided to head to Ocean Beach and walk the Sunset Cliffs. I so dearly miss the ocean so this was perfect! :)


On Thanksgiving there was a lot of cooking, watching football, playing football and talking about fantasy football (I gladly removed myself from the latter). It was great to see everyone again and our dinner was delicious!


My next tour is a local one, meaning I am not camping and am coming home every night. I think it'll be really interesting and hard to get used to. It's a desert clean-up tour and I am nervous about it, as crew's that have already done it, found numerous dead/killed dogs. :( Wish me luck!

They Can't All Be Winners...

What a tour that was. Where to start..

This was my first 8-day tour since moving down to Las Vegas and we were working in the Palm Springs, CA area. There were two parts to this tour, both equally mind numbing and mundane.

We were camping at this place called the Whitewater Preserve, which is managed by The Wildlands Conservancy. It covers about 2,850 acres and this canyon starts at the bottom of Mt. San Gorgonio (which is the highest peak in Southern CA) and catches rain water and snow run off and eventually leads to the Salton Sea. This water collection creates a steady white water river, which, in turn, supports a pretty robust wildlife corridor. This delicate riparian habitat supports many native species of plants and animals including the endangered Southwest Willow Flycatcher and Bell's Vireo.
There is a plant called Tamarisk, which is a Salt-Cedar, that is invasive to the area and is quite the water hog. It's root system is really incredible, often doubling or tripling that of the above ground portion of the plant. It spreads it's roots out and steals the water from the native species. Our job was to located this plant in the canyon, pull it up if it was small enough or cut it and spray it with a mild herbicide if it was not. Thrilling. So some of our days were spent wondering around this canyon in search of this plant.

The other days were spent playing a massive game of pick-up sticks. Some of the larger Tamarisk plants had been cut and piled up throughout the canyon about two years ago. Our other job was to create a line of people and pass these sticks up to the road to the put in a chipper. Again, thrilling.
Since we were running out of work to keep everyone busy, we relocated for a day to the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. This preserve covers about 25,000 acres and is managed by the BLM. It is a lush area with a network of boardwalks running throughout it. When we first arrived, we met with our project partner to get an idea of what we'd be doing. Tamarisk eradication. The 8 of us loaded up with 4 chainsaws, 3 Dolmars (gas and bar oil containers) and started on a 20-minute hike further into the canyon in search of this Tamarisk. We get down there only to find out there is only 2-3 trees that need to be cut down. One saw, one sawyer and about 20-minutes would suffice. The rest of us headed back to the truck to await further instruction. The other project they came up with to keep us busy, was to trim the willows around the boardwalks. Needless to say, there was a lot of standing around and wondering what else we could do.
The worst part of this tour was the lack of organization. I don't know if it was the fault of our project partners or the NCC or a collaboration of both. Either way, it was a lot of sitting around with our thumbs up our... There were 4-crews assigned to this project. That's about 40 people on a project that 2o people could have done during a 4-day tour. I was highly disappointed with the lack of education and information provided to us, also. I learned very little on this tour and what I did learn, was seeked out and researched by me. To top it off, there was no cell phone service either!
Next tour is another 8-day in the Palm Springs area. I dearly hope it is not the same type of work or else my sanity might come into question.

On a positive note, there was a woman camping at the Whitewater Preserve who had a yellow lab. Every morning I got to play with him! He put a bright spot in my days of mindless, minion work..