Photo courtesy of High Desert Partnership

Kaylee Littlefield, Amanda Sutcliffe, Hunter Kemper, and Carter Lardy giving a presentation about their summer monitoring work during a Harney County Wildfire Collaborative Stinkingwater Mountains field tour in July.

by Scott Barton
for Burns Times-Herald

Members of High Desert Partnership’s (HDP’s) Summer Monitoring Crew play a crucial role in forwarding the important work that the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative (HCWC) continues to do in Southeast Oregon’s sagebrush steppe.

Each morning throughout the summer months in Harney County, Kaylee Littlefield meets a Summer Monitoring Crew at HDP and assigns them their tasks for the day. Before the sun rises, the crew heads out to a specified remote corner of the county to do monitoring work for the collaborative.

Littlefield said she enjoys overseeing this seasonal work crew. After graduating from Oregon State University’s Eastern Oregon campus in La Grande with a bachelor of science degree in rangeland management in 2021, she took the reins as the community involvement and monitoring coordinator for HDP. Littlefield’s duties include overseeing assigned work crew projects, monitoring daily progress on each assigned project, and ensuring the crew has the tools, materials, and knowledge they need to succeed.

Summer Monitoring Crew 2022

The individuals who comprise the 2022 Summer Monitoring Crew are a unique bunch. They have close ties to the land and community and a vested interest in working to see that it’s bountiful and viable for generations to come.

Carter Lardy

This is Carter Lardy’s second season with the HDP Summer Monitoring Crew. The 17-year-old first heard about the opportunity in 2021 from his high school biology teacher, Amy Smith. It didn’t take long for Lardy to take the plunge by securing an interview, and ultimately landing the paid summer internship.

“I’ve learned a lot about the different vegetation throughout the region this summer,” Lardy said. “I’ve grown up hunting and fishing throughout this country, and having a greater knowledge of the landscape has deepened my appreciation for it.”

Going forward, Lardy said he hopes to use the skills he’s learned the past two summers to pursue higher education and a career in natural resources.

Hunter Kemper

Hunter Kemper is a 17-year-old senior at Burns High School. Much of the work that Kemper helped with this summer took place in the Stinkingwater Mountains and greater portions of the Southeast Oregon Wildfire Resiliency Project. These regions are where the HCWC has done extensive work to make the sagebrush steppe less susceptible and more resilient to wildfire. The work included monitoring vegetation on Potential Control Fire Lines (PCLs) in the Stinkingwater Mountains and Medusahead monitoring in areas around Juntura.

“I’ve learned a lot about what fire means for the landscape I call home,” Kemper said. “There’s a lot more work that goes into planning for wildfires than I ever knew. It’s been really neat to be a part of [it].”

The Summer Monitoring Crew’s efforts aren’t just focused on vegetation monitoring though. Both Kemper and Lardy said one of their more memorable experiences from the summer was banding migratory waterfowl on Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. This work is instrumental in monitoring populations, survival rates, migration patterns, habitat use, and a host of other indicators that speak to the health of various species.

“Having the chance to be outside, learn about the natural environment I’ve grown up in, and develop a more intimate relationship with the land have been the greatest rewards of working on the Summer Monitoring Crew,” Kemper said.

Amanda Sutcliffe

The most senior member of this year’s Summer Monitoring Crew is Amanda Sutcliffe. The 23-year-old recently graduated from Oregon State University with a bachelor of science degree in environmental science. As a biological technician, she played an integral role in the monitoring of vegetation, much like Lardy and Kemper. Specifically, the work entails performing transect surveys on both private and federal lands.

Sutcliffe said, “The work involves hiking to marked plots using GPS equipment and measuring the height of plants along a transect (path), as well as counting the shrub density or cover along the line.”

Sutcliffe said she really enjoyed the various educational trainings she’s undergone this summer, which shed light on the meaningful collaborative work HDP does throughout the community.

She added that she views her experience with the Summer Monitoring Crew as invaluable.

“The work provided me with field experience for future careers related to my degree by getting hands-on practice collecting data and performing vegetation surveys,” she said. “This position also allowed me to learn more about stakeholder involvement in natural resource management, while also developing essential skills that can be applied to any workplace. I have grown both professionally and personally by the knowledge and skills gained by working at HDP.”

Playing a crucial role

Though they’re small in number, the members of 2022’s HDP Summer Monitoring Crew played a crucial role in forwarding the important work HDP and the collaborative continue to do in the region’s sagebrush steppe.

Littlefield summed it up well when she said, “Ultimately, what I hope for is that each crew member can walk away saying they love rangeland management and want to go into natural resource career fields.”