BLM Projects: Endemic Buckwheat Preservation

A Glimpse of the Landscape

As some of you may know, I am working for the BLM these days and for those of you who don't know what the BLM is (since i had know idea previous to getting out west), the Bureau of Land Management is one of the agencies with the Department of the Interior. The others include the Forest Service, National Park Service and so fourth. We, the BLM, specifically deal with the management of public lands and since those are hard to come by back East its no wonder why I found out about this branch of the government so recently. I'm working closely with the Carson City District Botanist in addition to four other interns to manage botanical resources in our area.

Since I started my internship about a month ago we have done much training and discussion about upcoming projects for this seasons efforts. Just to highlight the topic of most recent deliberation I want to bring up the conservation of rare plants. My supervisor, the botanist, Dean, has brought attention to a small population of endemic buckwheat plants. Endemic means that they only exist in a very specific location within the entire world (like the giant tortoises of the Galapagos), this location happens to be within our district and therefore is a species of interest to us. When a species is endemic it often means that this organism is taking advantage of certain environmental factors allow it to live in specific space. This zone of "comfort" is referred to as a "niche". Now this rare and endemic buckwheat (polygonaceae family) happens to occupy a niche so specific that it only survives by utilizing the soil made up from the silica carcasses of prehistoric aquatic microorganisms (diatoms) that settled onto the bottom of the ancient oceans and are presently exposed sections of earth. This would not be a big issue if the soils weren't of economic interest, but they are. These diatenacious soils are used not only as a highly effective component to filters of all types but more so for the main ingredient in most cat litters.

Here at the Sierra Front Office we have acknowledged this small population of buckwheat and are making efforts to preserve this plot of land from the interest of local miners. Last years interns went out and set up monitoring plots and GPS marked each individual in this population as a means to quantify the situation. Just last week we had a miner come into the BLM district office to inquire about that plot of land that is so precious to us. This man has millions of investment dollars to set up a new "cat litter" mine but since the land is not yet officially preserved we have to wait for the higher ups to make their decision. Sadly in Nevada there are some very powerful laws backing up the miners to stake their claim, these laws pre-date the endangered species act and take no such consideration. With little preventing the miners form taking over we can only continue to monitor the area and hope the land is preserved in time to save our precious buckwheat who will have nowhere to go outside his niche.
Oh my... Each day I see how managing natural resources on the public lands is so difficult. We must conserve but also meet the needs of the People!

It is their land you know.