Good Things on the Horizon

Posted in Career, Cats, Me Me Me!, Updates by Marci

Cat at sunset by Serkan Sarikef

I know I haven’t been blogging as much lately. But that’s actually a good sign, because it means that I’m busy with some really great things right now. I can’t reveal all at this time, but suffice it to say, I’m thinking about my blogging community (you!) and am missing all the reading and writing that comes with being a part of it.

There’s a new chapter I’m working on right now, and it is taking time to form and shape. But it is moving forward. I’m nearly done with my classes and field hours. I’m scheming and making things more and more solid. With the help from a few folks I’m actually getting things done and checking things off my list.

January 1st, folks…I hope to be in business January 1, 2015. It has been a long time coming. Thanks for your support, and forgiveness for being so vague. Muah! ❤

17Mar2014

Alone in a Room Full of GULP Dog People

Posted in Animals, Career, Cats, Humor, Me Me Me! by Marci

This past weekend I started on my path to doing pet therapy work on a volunteer basis. This means that I took an all-day class on the human component of a therapy animal team. The class is offered by Pet Partners and is the first step in becoming registered to do animal therapy with your pet – you know, visiting people in hospitals, retirement and nursing homes, schools, prisons, and other places where people can benefit from having a visit from animals. I’m SOOOO looking forward to being a part of this!

But did you know that the vast majority of therapy animals are dogs??? The course instructor had never taught anyone who wanted to use their cat as a therapy animal, but Pet Partners certainly supports it. To the instructor’s credit, he did his best to answer my cat questions and even invited me to attend a cat evaluation the next day, which was also very informative.

Please don’t get me wrong – I really do like dogs, but obviously I am a cat person. And I like dog people too, but obviously, I am a cat person. I was a little nervous about ~~being trapped with~~ hanging out with a bunch of dog people for the entire day, but they really were friendly and nice, just as I expected them to be; I just didn’t know how much I would have in common with them. And to be fair, cat people can be kind of weird, too. But man, they sure do get passionate about various breeds and talking about the differences between all the various types of doggies! This made me think, just as there are personality differences between breeds, surely there are personality differences between dog people and cat people. So I did a little investigating. And here’s what I found:

Interesting, yes? And for those of you who want a little more detail, I found these stats from DeathandTaxesMag.com:

I don’t know how true these figures are, but they sound about right to me. Perhaps this can be best illustrated by the following video, which has been floating around for a while, but I love it:

Hmmmm…on second thought, perhaps using cats as therapy animals might be a bit more challenging than I was expecting. So, if you have any hints or advice for me, feel free to let me know. Anyone? Anyone???

Words that I live by (for shame!)

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

– Mary Wilson Little

This might very well save my life over the next two days…

13Jan2014

Blllaaaaahhhhhhhhhh…….

Posted in Career, Complainments, Humor by Marci

I wish I had something interesting to write about. I wish I had something interesting to think about. Unfortunately, it is Sunday evening and I am pondering what tomorrow will be like…but the answer is already too clear. I will be in a meeting from 9 to 3. First, I hate meetings. Second, I start getting angry when they go beyond an hour. Third, what’s up with no breaks??? Fourth, don’t even suggest a working lunch. Alright, here are some funny pictures to help me see my upcoming Monday in a more cheerful light. Ready? Here we go!

18Sep2012

It’s Launch Time!

Posted in Career, Feminism, Me Me Me!, Women by Marci

Good day, gentle readers. For the past 15 years I’ve had the idea of doing a magazine, aimed at girls between the ages of 11 and 17 or so, that focuses on subject matter that doesn’t reduce our girls and young women to sexual objects who only need to look cute and pick the right shade of lipstick to be successful in life. I wanted a magazine that would foster a love of creativity, intellect, and curiosity in girls and young women so that they might someday have the confidence to achieve any dream they have. Why do boys have magazines geared towards adventure, the outdoors, technology and science, while girls have so few, if any, equivalents?

Well, starting a magazine was going to be pretty difficult for someone who has a background 180 degrees from what she should have to do so. Someone suggested I do a blog, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense – it’s up to date, I have complete control of the content and format, it’s free to everyone, and more and more people are getting away from print media and looking towards electronic sources for their news and entertainment. So, hello Brainy Girls blog – it’s VERY nice to finally meet you!

Please take a few minutes to read my new blog, Brainy Girls, by clicking here. It will change monthly, and I’ll add things throughout the month, too. The main message of this blog is to let our girls and young women know that it’s ok, and even awesome, to use their brains. Don’t be scared of being smart – embrace it! And you don’t have to choose between being brainy and anything else. You can be everything you want to be all at once, as long as it is truly you. Be who you are – the world WILL benefit!

Additionally, the Brainy Girls facebook page is complimentary to the Brainy Girls blog. I hope it will be a forum where women and girls of ALL ages can interact to ask questions, give advice, serve as role models and mentors to others, and offer opinions and feedback on this blog. So take a look and “like” our Brainy Girls facebook page, too! And if you’re so willing, please share our Brainy Girls blog and facebook page with your friends, daughters, and daughters’ friends.

And don’t worry, I’ll still sporadically update this blog with all things Marcilicious, just as I’ve been doing since 2005. Enjoy my new side project! Toodles!

9Jul2012

Unchained from my desk for a day!

Posted in Accomplishments, Animals, Career, Me Me Me!, Non-cats by Marci

A couple of weeks ago I got to head outside to help release translocated subadult and adult bull trout into the Clackamas River for a reintroduction project that I’ve been involved with for nearly three years. These bull trout were taken from the Metolius basin, implanted with radio tags so they can be tracked, and trucked over to the Clackamas River, where they will hopefully reproduce and re-establish a population in a part of their historic range. It was an amazingly beautiful day out, and I hope the bull trout like their new home!

You can read more about the day at the Columbia River Fisheries Program Office’s Dish on Fish blog, here.

6Jul2011

One small step for fish biologists, one great splash for bull trout!

Posted in Accomplishments, Animals, Career, Me Me Me!, Non-cats by Marci

**Please note: this is my personal blog and reflects my personal opinions. Any questions about this project relating to agency positions should be directed to either the US Fish and Wildlife Service or the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Thanks for reading!**

Sooo…this post is going to be about work. Which I rarely blog about, but last week was a good week, so I’m going to go ahead and share. One of the first projects I became involved with when I started my job here almost two years ago was the reintroduction of bull trout in the Clackamas basin, a little bit southeast of Portland. Bull trout once coexisted in the basin with a suite of native fish species including salmon and steelhead. However, bull trout disappeared from the basin in the 1960s (the last confirmed sighting was in 1963) largely as a result of overfishing and habitat degradation. So, now that many of the issues that caused bull trout to be extirpated have been addressed, the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service, decided that the time was ripe to reintroduce bull trout into the Clackamas to resume its spot in the ecosystem.

Bull trout in the Kootenai River drainage in Montana. Photo by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Stock (used with permission).

The reintroduction project has been in the planning phases since the mid-2000s. Bull trout were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1999, and reintroducing them to a part of their native range falls under recovery actions planned for this species. Our office provides technical assistance to the regulatory folks, and it was my task to perform the preliminary bioenergetics modeling for bull trout, as well as lead the development of the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan for the project, which is anticipated to continue for up to 20 years (and perhaps beyond that). I am currently the chair of the M&E committee, comprised of biologists from several of the agencies involved in the project. It was a big task to complete the M&E plan, but a necessary one for a couple of reasons.

First, the bull trout population in the Clackamas is an experimental one. The major benefit of having a strong Monitoring and Evaluation program is that we will learn something no matter what happens – we will learn why the reintroduction succeeded or failed. Either way, we will know more about what might work for the recovery of this population as this project progresses, and ultimately for this species elsewhere in its range.

Second, we need to pay close attention to what these bull trout do in the Clackamas because there are other listed species in the basin, such as Chinook, coho and steelhead. In fact, this project has been fairly controversial because of concern for these other listed species, which makes it all the more important that we have a strong M&E program and dot all of our regulatory i’s and cross all of our regulatory t’s. Because bull trout are top predators, where these species overlap in time and space salmon and steelhead may face an increased risk of being eaten by bull trout. Of course, bull trout eat plenty of things other than salmon and steelhead (other fish, insects, etc.). But part of our monitoring program focuses on the interaction of all of these listed species so that project managers can take action if it looks like the impacts from bull trout are greater than anticipated.

Anyway, there’s a bit more to the story, but I’ll cut to the chase. Last week was a big week for us because we finally completed all of the regulatory requirements needed to get fish in the water. About 30 subadult and adult bull trout were collected from the Metolius, implanted with radio tags so we can keep track of their whereabouts, trucked over to the Clackamas, and released in the Big Bottom portion of the upper basin. Yay! There was a fair amount of press there, and it was great to see these beautiful fish swim in waters they hadn’t seen for 50 years. Let’s just hope they stay there! We’ll continue to move juvenils and subadults/adults through July, and our monitoring program will kick in almost immediately.

You can see some of the video footage and pictures that were taken here:

From the Oregonian – http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2011/06/bull_trout_released_in_upper_c.html

From KGW News Channel 8 – http://www.kgw.com/video/featured-videos/Bull-trout-released-in-Clackamas-River-124829994.html

And here are some pictures I took – enjoy!

There were plenty of people on hand to witness the first bull trout release!

Above, this bull trout was just taken off the transport truck. The cooler was walked down to the banks of the Clackamas and the bull trout swam in the waters of its new home a few moments later.

This was the first bull trout back in the Clackamas! Good luck – we’ll be keeping track of you!

29Oct2010

That’s it???

Posted in Career, Me Me Me! by Marci

Happy Halloween, y’all! Because I’ve been super busy this month with moving and everything, I didn’t have time to get a costume together or my residence decorated. And it’s a real shame, because I had a great costume all designed – I was actually standing in JoAnn’s with bolts of fabric in my arms, but I abandoned the plan last minute because I’m just too busy. So, you’ll have to see my costume next year.

Anywhooooo…I did manage to slowly transform my office into a spooktacular spider lair during the month of October. My costume would’ve played into that. Yes, I was the only one at work who decorated their office…I don’t care though! As far as I’m concerned, Halloween should be every month. Candy and costumes? It doesn’t get much better than that in terms of holidays!

30Jul2010

M is for…wait for it…

Posted in Animals, Career, Me Me Me!, Non-cats, Travel by Marci

…Montana! Ha – I’ll bet you thought I was going to say M is for Marci! But I didn’t – I know, shocking, right? Well, it still is for Marci, but as I initially stated, M is also for Montana. Which is where I went just a couple of days after Chris and I returned from Alaska (July 13-15). I flew out to Kalispell, which is just outside of Glacier National Park. I’d only driven through Montana once, several years ago, so the whole place was pretty much new to me and I will say that I quickly learned that M is also for Magnificent. Yes, Montana is indeed Magnificent, Majestic, Marvelous, and M-pressive!

My trip was only Tuesday through Thursday, and much of the time was spent in a meeting room in Whitefish, just a stone’s throw from Kalispell. I was there for a bull trout recovery planning meeting and while it was slightly dry (as opposed to wet, which fish tend to need), our group did get outside one afternoon for a drive up Grave Creek in the Kootenai watershed. We were only a few miles from the Canadian border, which you can see in this picture – there’s a line cut through the trees to mark the interface of our countries. How’d you like that job, trekking through some of the most rugged land in our continent to cut down and maintain a tree-free line?

The Canadian border from the headwaters of the Wigwam Basin.

The following day I was able to spend a couple of hours driving around the south end of Glacier National Park. I found Lake McDonald and the views of the mountains particularly stunning, but the drive through the forest was interesting too.

Lake McDonald, with several peaks in the background (from left to right, Mt. Vaught, Mt. Cannon, Mt. Brown, Little Matterhorn, and Edwards Mountain).

Large portions of the forest had burned in wildfires which made the trees look like skeletal toothpicks – you might think this would be not so picturesque, but you could see the topography of the landscape really well instead of just driving down a thickly wooded corridor. Additionally, seeing the forest regenerating with new growth and baby trees was a reminder that forest fires are a natural part of ecosystem processes, and that they benefit the native species that have evolved to survive with fire as a part of their environment.

One of the burn areas. Note the burned, branchless trees in the background; the vibrant green groundcover is nearly a monoculture of lodgepole pine treelings that are about 2-3 feet high.

Anyway, the water there was incredible – aqua blue from the glacial till – and we took advantage of a shady spot next to the Flathead River to enjoy lunch (I accidentally left my prescription glasses there and had to return for them after realizing they were missing a half hour down the road…oops!). I’m glad I got to see the area, and now I understand why bull trout like to live there!