Park Bench Banter — Eva Lark with Shursteen Sharpe (Episode 20) Transcript

[Eva Lark - Host]: Welcome to Boulder County's Forces of Open Space. I'm your host, Eva Lark, and we're here for Park Bench Banter, where we go behind the scenes to learn about what park employees do. I'm very excited for our guest today, Shursteen. Thanks, Shursteen, for being here and being our guest today on the Park Beach Banter Podcast. We like to have our guests introduce themselves. So if you could say your name, your title, what you do for Parks and Open Space.

[Shursteen Sharpe - Guest]: Thanks for having me, Eva. I'm Shursteen Sharpe, and my title is super long. I am the Early Detection and Rapid Response Specialist for the Noxious Weed Team. And in a nutshell, what that means I do is I plan... And execute the management of all the eradication species that are located on parks and open space lands.

[Eva]: It's called the Park Bench Banter Podcast because we're pretending that we're sitting on a park bench. So what park bench are you going to choose for us to sit on today?

[Shursteen]: Not a real park bench but it's a place that a park bench would be lovely if there was one there it's on the forest property which is very small and a lot of people probably don't know about it but it's actually on the ridge up above the fourth of July road trail like down there and you actually get one of the most beautiful views of the continental divide and i would love to put a park bench there because i often sit on the rocks there to enjoy my lunch so i think it's the perfect place for this.

[Eva]: How often do you get to visit this location?

[Shursteen]: Once every three to five years so not often and not a lot of parks employees even go there so it's a pretty secluded spot. I

[Eva]: Think that's one of the major perks of the position is that you get to see these like beautiful places that are here in Boulder County that not many other people get to explore or see. So in your position what is a typical day like or week let's say?

[Shursteen]: Yeah, that's a great question. My days vary dramatically, especially by the season, I'd say. But a typical in-season day, I personally go out and do all the assessments. So what I do is I go to either known historical or potential infestation sites, and I look and see if that plant is still there. Because the eradication species, a lot of time, there's very small populations of them. And we're still managing them down to having no plants and even when there's no plants found I have to go back for sometimes up to 10 years to make sure that there's no reinfestation of that plant in that area so what I do is I walk drive hike into these very small remote locations to see if the plants are there if they're there and I'm there and it's a small enough patch I just do the treatment while I'm there if it's a larger infestation that needs management by many hands I manage a team of a exceptional technicians every year that I get that treatment put onto their schedule and they go out and do the treatment in the wilderness or on the park that needs more hands than just mine. And then on top of that, I'm just also managing them day to day. So giving them other tasks to do. So larger skill ones like med sage, I'm sending them to walk hundreds to thousands of acres, transacting, looking for individual plants. So a lot of my job is also just planning out those treatments.

[Eva]: I think a lot of people will hear that word infestation and think of like animals, infestation of rodents, but not often thought of like with plants. So what qualifies as a infestation of plants?

[Shursteen]: That's a great question. And for my position, eradication, it's a single plant. Eradication species that I'm treating is they're given that designation eradication because they are a problem either in Colorado or in other states surrounding us that could become like substantial problems. Infestations, which is like hundreds to thousands of acres that are impacting either natural lands, ecosystems, agriculture, all of those different types of things. And so for me, an infestation is just one of those plants. Whereas like in other weed management, other plants, it's normally like a couple acres of infestation. For my position, it's just a single plant that constitutes an infestation, which is weird because when you think in other terms, like rodents, it's normally like lots of them.

[Eva]: Right. So these plants, they're coming into our wild spaces. How do they get there?

[Shursteen]: Vectors, which is what brings them in, can be many things. So some vectors are that they are ornamental plants. So people plant them in their gardens, their houses. Houses, all those kinds of things, even urban areas and landscaping. They escape from there. They just get in the air if they're wind dispersed or in the water if they're buoyant and they can float downstream. And those are actually typical for what the eradication species are. A lot of them are escaped ornamentals. Other than that, to get into the wild spaces, they hitch rides on us people walking the trails. So cleaning off your boots and your pants when you get back from a hike is super important to not be a vector to a different location. And then there's, of course, animals. So animals do it like we do with their fur. They take seeds into the wilderness. But also birds are a very good vector. They like to eat seeds. It's a very common food source for birds. And they take those and then they sit in a tree and they do their business. And when they do their business, they fertilize and leave. Invasive seeds in really remote locations. And then something that we don't commonly think of is also like wildland firefighting does it as well, not on purpose. What we need them to do is prevent wildfires from getting out of control. But when equipment comes in for other states or other areas, sometimes it's not cleaned by the time they get here, which means they bring seeds with them into those remote locations. And then also when they do water drops, The water could be infested with noxious weed seeds and then they take them and they drop them. And sometimes after fires, you can actually find almost like perfect circles of a new infestation of plants from where a water drop happened because the area around the lake is infested with that plant. Those seeds are in the water. They bring it and they drop it on land that's exposed after fire after a very disturbance heavy event and it causes new infestations.

[Eva]: Wow, that's really fascinating because there's so many different vectors that can spread these plants all over the place. So it's kind of a constant battle to be looking for them, treating them, and also probably looking for like the next plant that is coming into our state or in our county. Are you seeing any new species that are coming in that like have not been here recently?

[Shursteen]: We haven't had any brand new infestations, but a big part of my job is to be the person that's looking for what could be in our county. Don't have any sightings of it yet, but what is on the largest one on my radar right now is both Medusa head and Ventanada, which are both invasive annual grasses that are infesting thousands of acres in the West right now and as close as Wyoming. So for us, that is in Boulder County, we're very close to the Wyoming border. And there is people that recreate in both places. There is animals, livestock that move through both locations. There's vehicles that move through both those locations. So those two grasses are actually like really high on our list of early detection and rapid response, which is watching for them. And as soon as they're located, doing immediate treatment so that they cannot get established in the state or the county.

[Eva]: If I'm a homeowner and I'm going to plant things in my yard, how would I know that I'm not planting a potential species that could find its way into an open space?

[Shursteen]: That's a great thing, and I hope everyone is thinking about that. It's actually really difficult to know, but a resource that is actually really exceptional in Colorado is the Plant Select website. Program that I think CSU is part of, but what Plant Select does is they test their cultivars and other ornamental plants for their invasiveness before they make it onto the list. So if it's like, you know, like looked at, we're at least indicating that it doesn't have a huge invasive potential. 

And then also I would recommend planting natives where and when we can. I know it's not super easy to get natives as a homeowner, but having that shift is also super important because the natives, even if they do escape and they're a little weedy, they're not going to be causing the same impacts in the something that's not from this continent.

[Eva]: Yeah, let's talk about that. If your position wasn't with Boulder County Parks Open Space, if we were not out there treating these plants, what would happen?

[Shursteen]: What would happen? And it's called do nothing. It's actually like a part of the invasive species like paradigm, like looking at what is the cost of doing nothing? And if we were to remove the EDRR specialists, that program, if we were to remove like this early action, getting after these single, they're like really small things that happen is those plants that become come in, they invade, they take over natural lands that take over agriculture. We start to substantially lose biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and then agricultural productivity. So if we took away my position and we weren't getting after these things early, they become exponentially a problem. So, and then they eventually hit a threshold where they're now to a level of like, I'd like to point out like common mullein, like everyone sees mullein, it's all over the place. That's not on the eradication list. That's on the list of trying to prevent, like letting it cause the least amount of damage. Whereas like the eradication level stuff, we're actually trying to prevent it from even causing any problems to begin with. So we don't do anything. They become a problem and then they become a damaging problem either to the ecosystem or productivity.

[Eva]: You mentioned earlier about your job being seasonal, meaning you have kind of a busy field season. What's happening the rest of the year? Not the busy field season.

[Shursteen]: So not the busy field season, which is mostly winter for us. I do a lot of data management and data cleaning. So with eradication species, it's actually state law. We have to collect data on the population level. So I manage, I think it's like 500 polygons at this moment. That's like the exact distribution of each of the eradication species in our county. And those polygons need to know, was it there? Did we treat it? How much did we treat it? How long did we spend there? Is it going up in population, down in population? So I look at all of those things and then plan out next season's work as well as use those polygons and some cool other data analysis to look at where should we be looking next for this plant? Where could it be coming from or where was it spreading to so that we're like catching all of those tiny populations? And then I use all of that to come up with a treatment plan and scouting plan for the next season when my technicians return.

[Eva]: Wow. So it's really rooted in these like scientific properties that you're outputting in the winter months and then implementing in the warmer growing season, right?

[Shursteen]: Exactly. Yeah.

[Eva]: So to do this work, what's your background? How do you, what experience do you have? What education do you have? How do you get into this field?

[Shursteen]: My path is not exactly the path you have to follow to get into this field, but I always loved science ever since I was little and I wanted to think about it. I wanted to do zoology at first when I was entering college. So I was doing a biology degree and then it's like, actually kind of want to do wildlife biology. And then I went to do a master's program to get more experience to like do wildlife biology. And during my master's program, I got sucked into landscape scale. Kind of work. And my program was in Australia and one of the biggest threats to their landscape scale work in restoration and biodiversity conservation is invasive species. And I got sucked right into that and realized like, I like this work where it's where, what is the next threat? What is the threat and how can we prevent it from becoming actually detrimental? I really liked that proactive approach. And so then I came back home to after my first season I was sold I knew this is what I wanted to do and that's a good path like I think a science background wanting to be outside all those things were good but most people in the weed world actually just thought they wanted to be outside and got a technician job and it can be right out of high school like a lot of the stuff that we do is science-based but it's science-based that you can learn on the job so like I always like to like tell people like you don't have to go and get a very advanced degree to do what I do. Like you just have to want to learn it and be in the space.

[Eva]: And I think another really great thing for us to highlight is our volunteer work projects. Can you tell us a little bit about how that intersects with your work?

[Shursteen]: Boulder County has lots of acres. And lots of infestations of eradication species. I mentioned med sage earlier, and that's a perfect example. We use volunteers every year with med sage. Boulder County has, I think it's now over 3,000 acres that we must survey for med sage each year. We have acquired a few new properties so that 3,000 acres keeps growing every year. What that entails, med sage, we have gotten our numbers pretty low for what the infestation used to be. So we're down to a a less than 12,000 plants a year across those 3000 acres. And we need to find every single one of them before they seed. So walking 3000 acres in a two month window is very difficult with just me and my staff. So what we do is we ask volunteers to come out with us and they get in a line with us and we all walk with our shovels and transact that area. And sometimes we don't find any plants, but that's good. That's what we want to be doing. And without those volunteers, we would miss that critical window. Not only for med sage, but for lots of plants, we would miss the critical window, which is to get the plant before it reproduces. So without volunteers every year, we would miss out on hundreds, if not thousands of eradication plants and preventing them from developing seeds.

[Eva]: So you work with volunteers. What other staff do you interact with to get your job done, to make it successful? Are there other teams within Parks and Open Space that you interact frequently?

[Shursteen]: Yes, weeds. No, no bounds. So the weeds team actually interacts with, I think, probably every work group. At parks and open space because our work either directly impacts other teams works in a negative way or when other works or other teams are doing projects they're creating the disturbance that allows weeds to come in so we work very closely with everybody from the wildlife team and plant ecology to doing restoration work and habitat improvement work to make sure that our habitats are supporting the wildlife and then also making sure that our habitats are like the invasive plants are not crowding out the native flora that we really want in those areas. And then all the way, we also work with like the grounds team and trailhead operations because when they do work, either putting in a new trail or grading a trail or fixing a parking lot or adding a culvert, all of that is disturbance and weeds love disturbance. That's how they get into those areas. So we work closely with them for when they finish their work, we make sure we have it on our plate to go in and look and see what works needed after that.

[Eva]: Wow. So you really are like in every facet, kind of from the beginning of a park property and then monitoring it throughout. I love that. I think that's really interesting. If I was interested, so I could volunteer if I was interested in this type of work, you mentioned being a field technician. What type of experience would they get as a field tech? Are they looking at data like you are, or are they more in the field?

[Shursteen]: A little bit of both. So the field technicians, when I do my interviews for field technicians, I tell them you work a 10 hour day and eight and a half of those are in the field. So they are in the field from sunup to the middle of the day, almost every day. But they're the ones actually collecting that data that I then use in the winter to make those decisions. So they get really good at what is needed so that we can make these decisions long term so that we are making sure that we're finding new populations in time to get rid of them. And then so they take that data, they put it in. And then at the end of the year, I always have a lead technician. So lead technician, they stay on and they actually help write the annual report for the eradication species. So they get that little bit of experience on managing the data on the backside of it instead of just collecting and inputting it as well.

[Eva]: Now, you talked about med stage having like a two-month window. Is that true for all species? Is it like this window? Is it always at the same time? How does that work? How do you manage all these different species? Is it in the same two months or is it kind of spread out?

[Shursteen]: Yes, and... They all have a window. Some of their windows are longer and easier to manage. Some of their windows are very short. The way I like to look at it is I actually have a calendar of months that show how many they're called tasks that we have treatments that we have within each month. And so like January, February, March, it's like slow and kind. And then you hit April, you get a big jump. But May, June, July is substantially more busy than any other month of They are double, if not triple, because it's either the early species like med sage is ending. There are species that that three month window is its only window. And then it's the start of the late season as well. So everything kind of cumulates right in the middle of that. It's like everything is busy during there. So that's my busy months is that May, June, July. And we are out in the field. That's when it's the eight and a half hours a day. We're out there every day, all day getting things done. And then it slows back down. We hit August and it looks a lot like like April and then September, October, they slow down a little bit too. So most things are either flowering or getting ready to flower by May. They stop flowering by July. So that's our busy season.

[Eva]: And Boulder County is really unique because of the elevation change. Do you also see changes with what time things are blooming or starting to grow from the plains kind of going up to our mountain properties?

[Shursteen]: Yeah, I think our mountain properties give us about a three-week delay a lot of the time, depending on the year. Like this year will be interesting because we didn't get too much of a winter. So things are kind of happening faster than normal. But we normally get a three-week buffer from if a plant happens on the plains and happens in the mountains. The elevation also, a lot of plants don't happen in both for the eradication species. They're either in one or the other. So that also helps. But it's a three-week delay normally.

[Eva]: I also have a curiosity about like a new property. You mentioned acreage is changing. So if we acquire a new property, what does your team do? Is there like a process to be like, here's this new acreage. Now we need to

[Shursteen]: Do what? We have a process that we go out, not just the eradication team, actually the whole noxious weed team goes out and we do basically like a baseline assessment or inventory of what's out there. So that includes going out and Identifying if any eradication species are on that property, but it also goes out and starts to look at the areas that maybe some of the other noxious weeds are causing a problem on that property. Like, are they in dense enough infestations that they need treatment or is there nothing here? And that's like, what for? forest is there's nothing at forest so I only go back every three years after that to make sure that no disturbance has allowed something to come in so if it's a clean property we put it in a nice little rotating basis where we go every few years to make sure it's stayed that way but if we go and we do the inventory and we realize that there's stuff there that needs treatment we actually try to work that into either that season's treatment plan or the next season's treatment plan

[Eva]: What do you think our listeners would find the most surprising about your job?

[Shursteen]: We walk a lot without finding plants. Like I think a lot of people like pre-radication stuff. Like I sometimes walk like 12 plus miles in a day and I haven't even pulled anything out of the ground. I'm just walking around. And I think that that would be very surprising to a lot of people is how much we walk.

[Eva]: It's probably a good thing that you're not pulling things out of the ground, right? Actually like a good day because you're not finding the species that you're looking for.

[Shursteen]: Yes exactly

[Eva]: Really getting into like every crevice of every property

[Shursteen]: Yes and honestly like the like nice flat easy walking that's not where we're gonna find the plants they're in those like crevices on the mountainous terrain because a lot of the plants the way they're spread their seeds need to be caught and like held there so that they could sprout so a lot of the time where we find them it's not in the easy walking areas it's in the difficult

[Eva]: Ones Are there any recent wins where you're like, you know what, we're doing great at this?

[Shursteen]: Yeah, Myrtle Spurge, which is in a lot of places, like a lot of people are probably very familiar with Myrtle Spurge. You can see it in a lot of areas. We've been actually seeing really good progress with Myrtle Spurge where we're able to treat it early. We're actually getting to the point where we're like tracking to sources. Of myrtle spurge to like try to find where the seed source is where is it all of this coming from but i think as of Thursday because it's Friday so Thursday we had 14 negative assessments which means we went to 14 historically known populations of myrtle spurge and we didn't find a single plant that's amazing it's amazing so our myrtle spurge program is working it's one of those ones where we are starting to really rely on volunteers because we have a lot of it but what we're doing is working so it's good to see

[Eva]: Well, we're at the point where we're going to play some games. Are you ready? Yes. We're going to do a little rapid fire, so I'm going to ask you some questions. You're just going to give me the first thing that you think of. So are you a coffee or tea drinker? Tea. Best animal sighting on the job?

[Shursteen]: It's a saw-wet owl, and I saw him last year, and he was so cute.

[Eva]: Wow. Was it in a tree?

[Shursteen]: He was actually, I was looking for yellow flag iris and I was walking towards one and he was just on the log right behind the yellow flag iris and he had a vole in his feet. He was, it was beautiful.

[Eva]: Oh, wow. So it caught some prey. Yes. That is amazing. You don't see owls often. And certainly these are really small owls for those who don't know that are very secretive and quiet during the daytime. What's a central piece of work gear that you're going to always have on you?

[Shursteen]: I always have a little clicker counter because for eradication species, we have to count the amount of plants we remove so that we can track population dynamics. And I'm not great at keeping that in my brain. So I just carry around a little counter.

[Eva]: You're taking 10, 12 miles a day. What's your favorite plant to see out on the landscape?

[Shursteen]: It's a wood lily.

[Eva]: Wow. Tell us what's a wood lily. Where would you find it?

[Shursteen]: So a wood lily is a, it's a native lily, and it happens in like wet riparian corridors. A little bit higher, I think, in elevation. I think you can see it down on the plains, but I definitely see it up in our mountainous properties more. And it's actually a species of concern in Boulder County. We have a conservation plan for it. Our plant ecologist planted. I absolutely love to see a wood lily.

[Eva]: When you're going out on the trail, not at work, because that's the great thing about Parks Employees. We're out there even on our days off. Who do you like to go on the trail with?

[Shursteen]: So actually, it's my dogs. I have two dogs, Yeti and Ozo, and they are both herding breed dogs. So they can keep up with me and actually force me to do a little bit more hiking than I'm wanting to do. Love that.

[Eva]: Favorite snack on the trail?

[Shursteen]: It is trail mix that I make myself with like little mini peanut butter cups inside of it. I could just eat it every day.

[Eva]: Wow. So like Shursteen’s special blend? Yes. Favorite activity? You said walking with your dogs. Is there any other kind of recreation you like to do? I also

[Shursteen]: Love paddle boarding up in some of the Alpine lakes. I love to get out and get up there and just be at peace in the water.

[Eva]: All right. We have a new game this time. Oh, okay. Now, I'm a WNBA fan. That's women's professional basketball. And this is inspired by that. So it's a game called Start, Bench, Cut. We're going to play it a little bit different. Okay. Okay. So the cut is we're going to eradicate the species off the boulder county landscape okay we're going to bench meaning we're going to suppress it okay and we're going to start it meaning we're kind of going to have to let it go oh okay maybe we try but we're going to be a losing battle to okay actually even suppress it okay are you ready yes so start bench cut and this is your chance to like just eradicate one with words really easy

[Shursteen]: I like that. No walking included.

[Eva]: So first up, Oxide Daisy, Curly Duck, Mullen.

[Shursteen]: So Oxide Daisy is going to get cut. Curly Duck is going to be benched. And we're going to have to start that Mullen. Yeah. Yeah.

[Eva]: Why cut the oxeye daisy?

[Shursteen]: We're going to cut the oxeye daisy. I know it's a very beautiful flower. I know a lot of people really love what it looks like. It is a beautiful daisy. I don't disagree with that. But with its rhizominous roots and the way it spreads, it can cause carpets. Like it... It becomes a monoculture and it can even out-compete some of the grasses out there. So it really likes those riparian corridors. And those riparian corridors, especially in Colorado with us being as dry as they are, are critical to both native flora and fauna because we don't have a lot of that habitat. So allowing the OxiDaisy to continue and be here, we're going to lose a lot of very important plants as well as degrade the habitat for animals that really rely on riparian corridors.

[Eva]: That makes a lot of sense. All right, here's our next start bench cut. All right. Myrtle spurge, hairy willow herb, rush skeleton weed.

[Shursteen]: So we're going to have to cut the rush skeleton weed. It can't stay. This one's way harder. I think we're going to start myrtle spurge and bench hairy willow herb. Those ones are difficult because in Boulder County, I feel like they both have relatively the same population dynamics and trends. So, but I think we will start myrtle spurge and bench hairy willow herb.

[Eva]: Now, you said rush skeleton weed cutting like... It has to go. You didn't even flinch. You were like, this one I'm cutting. Tell us why.

[Shursteen]: So until last year, we were the only active population of rush skeleton weed in the state of Colorado, was in Boulder County. We were... 

Trying to be the place that either lets it get away and invade the entire state or suppress it, eradicate it, contain it enough so that we're not having that problem. And the reason I find that so important is that where in the West Rush Skeleton has escaped, which is several Western states, Idaho, Washington, there's some in Wyoming, I think. Montana, I think, even has it too. Utah now has some too, where they have allowed, not even allowed, but it has escaped. It is infested hundreds of thousands of acres of rangeland in a way that is extremely detrimental to the agricultural community, as well as to just rangeland that is available for native animals. The Rush skeletonweed plant When it gets into pasture or gets into rangeland, it spreads rapidly. And like, say you're going to go out and hay that meadow, use that meadow. It has a sap inside of it that is a sticky sap and it gums up machinery in a way that like they can't cut those fields. So then they start abandoning those fields. And those fields, the rush skeleton weed starts to out-compete stuff. Cows, cattle, horses, all those, they don't seem to really like it. They're not going to eat it. It has that sap inside of it. So if we were to bench or start rush skeleton weed, the Boulder County population would spread dramatically in the eastern part of our county and then the rest of Colorado. And I could just see it being extremely detrimental to our agricultural producers out on the eastern plains.

[Eva]: So we've talked about multiple different species in this episode, but are there any plant species that you would like the public to know about other than kind of the ones that we've been chatting about?

[Shursteen]: Well, there's a whole list A. Yeah,

[Eva]: Tell us what list A means.

[Shursteen]: So the list A species are... 

Determined by the Colorado department of agriculture to be like eradication species and these are eradication species statewide and some of those species haven't even made it to Colorado yet so like ventanada that i mentioned earlier is on that list and i think any member of the public that is very interested in this getting familiar with anything on the list day what it looks like what native lookalikes there are where you find it so that when you're out and about you can see those things but to pick a single one off of the list it would be orange hawkweed We don't have a lot of it in Boulder County. Luckily, we're doing very good on that front. And the populations that we have, we're either seeing extreme decreases or no abundance found. So we're doing very good in Boulder County with it. But it can very easily take over alpine meadows, which are one of my favorite ecosystems. So I would like everybody to know what orange hawkweed looks like. It does have a native lookalike. So if you're interested, telling the differences is that the orange hawkweed has tiny black hairs on it. The native does not have. So if you see a very vibrant orange flower out in a meadow that has black hairs on it, please get in contact with your local county weed manager.

[Eva]: Yeah, that's a great call to action. And for folks who don't know what list A species are, they can look that up online and get those on our radar so that when we're out there recreating, we can be community scientists and let people know.

So last start bench cut. This one's going to, we're going to switch gears and I'm going to let you off the hook with the eradication. This is just a fun one. So we're going to actually start, meaning it's like your favorite bench, meaning it's your second and cut is like, okay. Take it a little bit. We're going to do three open space properties. Okay. And you can pick and choose what's your favorite based on your parameters. It could be your favorite to work at. It could be your favorite to recreate at. It could be your favorite to look at. Whatever you want. So start, bench, cut... Heil Valley Ranch, Mud Lake Open Space, Walden Ponds Wildlife Habitat.

[Shursteen]: I work at all of those ones quite a lot, actually. I tried to

[Eva]: Pick some I thought that maybe you work at. I'm

[Shursteen]: At all of those ones quite frequently. I'm going to say start... Heil Valley Ranch, bench Walden Ponds, and then cut Mud Lake.

[Eva]: All right. These are three very popular parks.

[Shursteen]: I know.

[Eva]: And I also tried to pick one that's like, you know, wetland, one in the very beginning of the foothills, and then one of our more mountain properties. So I was surprised you cut the mud lakes, saying that you love alpine meadows.

[Shursteen]: I know, but I think because I'm counting it as mud lake and not including caribou, if you had done the complex all together, it probably would have been started.

[Eva]: That's true. Mud lake is a much smaller property than either of the other two. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, Shursteen, thanks for being on the podcast today. We loved hearing about what you're doing, how you're making our parks a better place for people, animals, agriculture. Everything that you're kind of working with has these direct impacts that a lot of people don't see. So I love that we were able to kind of pull the curtain back and be like, this is how one person is really impacting our usability on the parks and how we operate on our open space properties. So thanks for being our guest. I hope that you have a great field season.

[Shursteen]: Thank you. We're right in the middle of it right now.
[Eva]: And for folks that want to join you, look for those volunteer work projects. They are on discover.bouldercounty.gov. They can sign up and join you and some of your staff. I know we have lots of projects coming up all through the summer months that directly support your team.

[Shursteen]: Yeah. I think it's like one every week once we get busy. So come and join us.

[Eva]: Thank you to Longmont Public Media. I hope everyone enjoyed this episode and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.