Written by Lisa Leen, 2025 FOMR Biological Technician
Conas ata mo cairde
(How are you, my friends)
My time at Malheur has sadly come to an end, and looking back, I am incredibly grateful that I could spend my summer working as diversely as I was able to at Malheur. Especially during a historic water year with rapid plant growth.
Some activities that I was involved with during my last few weeks included duck banding at Boca Lake on Malheur and at Summer Lake Wildlife Management Area in Lake County. This was a joint effort between U.S. Fish & Wildlife and Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife with a few third parties also involved. Most of the species we banded at Boca were green-winged teals, blue-winged teals, cinnamon teals, gadwalls, mallards, northern shoveler, with a few redheads and ruddy ducks. Each duck was sexed, classified by their age range, and a few were swabbed to test for Avian influenza. We saw most of the same species at Summer Lake, with the exception of a few Canada geese and a trumpeter swan that were also banded.
I typed up a report of all the species of fish that I spotted coming through the fish trap throughout the summer. In total we saw 10 species, 7 of which are native and 3 non-native species. We also tracked which traps had the most diversity along with the average redband trout length which was 31.2 cm. Our most abundant species was the native redside shiner, with over 1600 making it upstream. The least common species was the invasive common carp, which we only caught 2 in the trap early in the summer.
Domonic and I did one last effort of electroshocking in the Blitzen River to survey for Redband before that stretch of it would be open to the public. We got more fish this time around compared to July. We had a decent number of larger-scale sucker that were caught, which is a bit surprising because in my fish trap report, they were some of the least common native fish that were spotted coming through the traps. I also got to test out my rowing skills on the drift boat, and we rowed the boat upstream the the start of the stretch of the river we would be shocking.
On my last day, I had the opportunity to accompany U.S. Fish and Wildlife regional leadership officials from Portland as they took a tour of Malheur Lake. I also got to learn more about the lake and how the recent drought conditions served as a sort of reset for the lake, and why we are seeing abundant plant growth in places where there were never plants before.
Lastly, I would like to thank everyone at the refuge that I got the chance to work with over the summer. Being able to work for the Friends of Malheur and with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife staff at Malheur is so special to me. I will always reflect back on my time at Malheur as a great learning and growing experience.
I hope to come back to the refuge to visit and see the birds, fish, and mammals I got to help out this past summer.
Slan leat
(safe travels)
