This summer as Rare Care Interns we worked on an alpine plant monitoring project for the National Park Service. On the surface, our job was simple: go to a site in Olympic, North Cascades, or Mt. Rainier National Parks, find the plant, map the edges of the population in the area, and usually set up a permanent plot to be monitored by the National Park Service in the future.
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By Jaileen Merced It is hard to believe that summer is over, and Allie and I have gone on 7 backpacking trips and 2 camping trips. Each of them very unique and special. From beautiful forest walks to steep crumbling slopes. We have covered so much ground and been to places I never thought I could reach. Working for Rare Care this year has been a privilege and a challenge.
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Each year the Rare Plant Care and Conservation Program (Rare Care) hosts a weekend to monitor rare and threatened plants of Washington State. Trained monitoring volunteers, Rare Care staff, and National Forest staff work together to collect data on rare plant populations. This year’s monitoring weekend was held in the Colville National Forest. Based at Frater Lake, we camped below the stars and woke to the chattering of red squirrels busy with their daily chores.
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This year the Rare Plant Care Internship worked with the National Park Service on a project focused on establishing long term monitoring plots in alpine and subalpine ecosystems in Washington state National Parks (Olympic Mountains, Mt. Rainier (Tahoma), and North Cascades). This monitoring programs seeks to understand the effects of climate change on vulnerable alpine/subalpine communities as a whole and rare and largely endemic species in particular.
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The Washington Rare Plant Care and Conservation program (Rare Care) is beginning a new initiative with the National Park Service to monitor rare plant species in alpine communities and bank their seeds in the Miller Seed Vault. This work will occur over the next three years at: Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks (NP). The primary goals are to improve our understanding of the vulnerabilities of sensitive alpine plants to climate change and to develop management strategies to alleviate impacts of a warming climate.
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The UW Botanic Gardens, in conjunction with the University of Washington Herbarium at the Burke Museum, hosted another successful symposium that brought together professionals, academics, and botanists from around the Pacific Northwest to share knowledge and celebrate Washington State’s flora. The full day event was coordinated by a diverse group including Washington Noxious Weed Control Board, Washington Native Plant Society, Seattle Public Utilities, Washington Natural Heritage Program, US Forest Service, and Washington Bureau of Land Management.
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If you’re looking for a symbol of resilience and survival for the new year – perhaps, even, a symbol of the ability to endure trial by fire with beauty and grace – consider Whited’s penstemon, pauper milk-vetch, yellow lady’s slipper or the dwarf evening-primrose. During the 2016 monitoring season, several agency partners asked Rare Care to devote monitoring efforts to populations affected by 2014 and 2015 wildfires that burned approximately 1 1/2 million acres.
Read more »Each year, Rare Care is delighted by a few unexpected discoveries. This year these finds include a single pygmy saxifrage high up near a rocky mountain summit.
Read more »The US Forest Service recognized Rare Care - including hundreds of trained volunteers from all parts of the state - with its Regional Volunteer Award for Citizen Stewardship and Partnerships.
Read more »Twenty-five volunteers, agency partners and Rare Care staff gathered in Klickitat County in mid-June to monitor rare plants.
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