Internship= Habitat Restoration Monitoring Intern

Position Dates: 6/17/24 - 8/30/24

About us:
The Student Conservation Association (SCA) is the largest provider of hands-on environmental conservation programs for youth and adults. Program participants protect and restore national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, marine sanctuaries, cultural landmarks, community green spaces, and much more across the country.

Position Description
The Bureau of Land Management's Central Coast Field Office seeks to place a Natural Resources Assistant (Botany)- Habitat Restoration Monitoring Intern. The maritime chaparral plant community is an ecologically significant habitat with many rare and endangered plants. This plant community has been impacted on Fort Ord National Monument by Army operations pre-base closure through road cuts as well as post-base closure through unauthorized trail use and trail reroutes. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been restoring these impacted sites through erosion prevention and have started to monitor restoration success with a vegetation transect design. From 2021-2023, the BLM visited 90 of 240 restoration sites to describe each sites current condition both quantitatively and qualitatively. However, current methodology is slow and cumbersome where we can only monitor an average of 30 sites year. The intern will be responsible for developing a standardized rapid site assessment and surveying remaining restoration sites dating back as early as 1996. The goal of this project is to identify and address which sites have not fully recovered to maintain the integrity of the maritime chaparral plant community. On occasion, the intern will be asked to participate on other crews with range management vegetation surveys and seed collection.