BOISE, Idaho – Just as firefighting manpower and equipment have been pushed to the limit battling blazes that have burned more than a million acres in the West, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) expects the same strain on resources, including grass seed, once the flames are extinguished.
A group is preparing the bureau's warehouse in Boise for an unprecedented demand for seeds that will restore life to the blackened lands. Natural resource specialist Cindy Fritz – pictured at right pulling a sample of seed from a newly-arrived lot to test for seed purity and the presence of noxious weeds, at the BLM seed warehouse in Boise, Idaho,– predicts shortages of people, tools and seeds. "We'll have the same resource limitations this fall as we have on the lines right now," she said.
Every spring, the warehouse stockpiles millions of pounds of seed from two dozen growers to support range rehabilitation throughout the Western Great Basin. Last year, more than 7 million pounds were used.
Located near the National Interagency Fire Center, the industrial-sized complex is filled with stacked pallets of seed bags. The air is heavy with the aroma of 62 varieties including sagebrush, bitterbrush, alfalfa and wheatgrass.
Every district in the region already has claimed its regular allotment, which totals just over 2 million pounds. Fritz is seeking millions more in the aftermath of one of the worst fire seasons in half a century.
As of Aug. 18, 68,000 fires this year had burned 5.2 million acres, mostly in the West where the bureau manages the most federal lands.
The rehabilitation specialists have two goals this fall – stabilizing watersheds to control erosion and limiting the invasion of noxious weeds like cheatgrass and medusahead wild rye that push out native grasses and degrade the ecosystem.
Bureau ecologist Julie Kaltenecker called weed control critical to the health of the range. The invasive weeds may have fueled the fires by overtaking normally open space between shrubs on the range, she said.
A rehabilitation plan that gives native grasses the maximum chance for survival is the trick to controlling the weeds, Fritz said.
Some Eurasian imports are capable of standing up to weeds from the start and are cheaper. "Science, I think, would say pretty strongly that we have a much greater chance of establishing some of the introduced species that are aggressive as seedlings," said professor Ken Sanders at the University of Idaho, a specialist in rangeland ecology. "Natives don't have that. Cost aside, there's just not the source of seed to cover the acreage."
Kaltenecker said the bureau views using native species as smart ecological policy. "Obviously, using native species to revegetate rangelands more closely mimics the diversity and hopefully the function of the community," she said.
Bureau biologist Signe Sather-Blair says it costs about $60 per acre to rid burned areas of cheatgrass and rebuild stands of sagebrush and natural grasses.
But the price of rehabilitation causes disagreement. Native species tend to be more expensive. Kaltenecker said though that the gap is closing as more growers produce native seed and the government buys it.
The author is an Associated Press writer. Photo by Troy Maben (AP).