Written by Lisa Leen, 2025 FOMR Biological Technician
Sláinte mhaith (good greetings)
June and July have been busy months, and I’m just about 2/3 of the way through my time here at Malheur. Some of the recent work that I’ve been doing with the Friends of Malheur is bat surveys for some of the buildings around headquarters, where some bats, such as the little brown bat, California bat, and Yuma bat, have been roosting. One night, we got over 300 bats from just one building! Continuing with the bat monitoring, I also helped Alexa, Malheur’s wildlife biologist, put up bat sensors that record their call around headquarters and Buena Vista, which were left out for four nights.
Most of my time has been spent operating the fish trap, taking measurements, and recording the fish that have passed through, and preventing non-native fish from going upriver. Some traps can have over 100 fish in them from just one day of being set. I have yet to see any more invasive carp besides the two I inspected early this summer. I have seen some other non-natives like bullhead and green sunfish, come up through the traps. We also had the aquatic version of a fox in the hen house with a Black crowned Night Heron who got into the Sodhouse fish trap and ate some of the Redband trout. We got our little thief out safely, and it wasn’t too many fish that we lost to our intruder.
I’ve also been taking measurements of the west and east canals down at Page Springs, which is at the southern end of the refuge. Using a device called the flow tracker (pictured above), I am able to take measurements of the velocity of the water in the canals as well as the temperature and width of each canal. Several measurements need to be taken along a transect that stretches across the canal, with 6-8 units between the stations where the measurements are taken. I also got to join my fellow bio tech, Sarah, on a canoe trip down the Blitzen River as she took water quality measurements for her Acoustic Doppler Current research along the way. With the lake being at a historic high, it’s crucial that we get as much data as we can for this summer.
I have also had the opportunity to assist in aquatic vegetation surveys out on Malheur Lake with Dominic out on the airboat. We assess the coverage of aquatic vegetation per plot, with each plot being a circle with a diameter roughly the length of the airboat. Our most prevalent species we have seen are the Hard Stem Bulrush and the Hybrid Cattail, with monocultures of them going on for several plots. Some of the other species that we saw were Bur-reed, Reed Canary Grass, Coyote Willow, Smart Weed, Sago Pondweed, and Common Bladderwort. Bladderwort is actually a carnivorous plant that lies under the surface of the water and feeds on small aquatic organisms with its trap-like bladders.
Although my time at Malheu is coming to an end I am even more determined to make the most of the remaining time that I have.
Rianta áthas (happy trails)
