VALLECITO
Decades ago, ripe cones were plucked from the tops of conifer trees in the San Juan National Forest and sent to Nebraska for storage in a U.S. Forest Service nursery. This winter, tiny seeds from those cones have been sown in the nursery with the big mission of returning home to create new forests in Southwest Colorado.
Donations to the San Juan National Forest Plant-A-Tree Program will help return the little trees to their native environment in 2015, when 250 acres burned by the 72,000-acre Missionary Ridge Fire will be replanted. About 300 ponderosa pine and 50 Douglas fir seedlings will be planted per acre on the east side of Vallecito Reservoir, in addition to about 1,000 limber pines.
“The limber pines will be planted in the more rocky areas,” said San Juan National Forest Forester Gretchen Fitzgerald. “The Douglas fir will be tucked into north- and east-facing slopes because they like cooler, moister conditions. The pines can go just about anywhere; they’re very drought tolerant.”
Some of the forests burned by the 2002 wildfire have had a hard time regenerating naturally. Although a few young trees have recolonized the burned slopes around the reservoir, Fitzgerald hopes to augment the natural process.
“We’ve seen pockets of natural regeneration where surviving trees have dropped cones or squirrels have dispersed cones,” she said. “But on southwest-facing slopes, where we have the harshest conditions, natural regeneration is harder to find.”
It’s also hard for ponderosa pines to recolonize areas where grasses and oak have come in, because their seedlings need bare mineral soil to germinate.
Hundreds of seedlings are planted per acre to rebuild a healthy forest.
“We’re hoping for 50 to 60 percent long-term survival rates, or about 150 to 200 trees per acre,” Fitzgerald said.
Seeds harvested in 1970s
The circle of life for the native seedlings began back in the late 1970s, when ripe ponderosa pine and Douglas fir cones were picked in the Beaver Meadows area. The cones were dried and shipped to the Charles E. Bessey Nursery in Halsey, Neb., where their seeds were extracted, cleaned and put into cold storage. Just last year, the same process was followed with cones collected from limber pines at Vallecito.
“The nursery has tested our seeds for viability and is planting them right now in greenhouses,” Fitzgerald said. “The seedlings will get artificial light and extra water to grow faster than they would under normal conditions.”
A year from now, after the seedlings have been tricked into thinking they’ve grown for two full seasons, they’ll be pulled from their cozy greenhouses and put outside. For two months, they’ll receive little water as temperatures drop and sunlight shortens. After they go dormant, the seedlings will be packed in soil and frozen for delivery to the San Juan in a refrigerated semi-trailer.
“We’ll store them at just above freezing in a refrigerated trailer at the Vallecito Work Center,” Fitzgerald said. “The seedlings won’t start growing until after they’re planted, when our outside temperatures reach about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.”
A precise process
Coordinating the timing for this process leaves little room for error. Before the seedlings’ arrival, Fitzgerald will flag the perimeters of the area to be planted and produce a map for contractors, who will be hired to plant the baby trees.
“To be successful, we have to get them in the ground within three weeks from the time they thaw,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ll plant in late spring 2015, so the little trees can capture moisture from snowmelt to get off to a good start.”
Each seedling will be carefully planted by hand by contract workers who travel the U.S. planting trees, fighting fires and conducting fuels reduction for the government and private companies.
“A good planter can plant 1,000 seedlings a day,” Fitzgerald said. “They carry 150 to 300 seedlings in a bag at their hip and use a heavy steel tool called a hoe-dad.”
The work is specialized and exacting. Planters must move quickly across steep, uneven ground and choreograph their movements so that each seedling is planted to match agency specifications.
“The first step is to remove all vegetation within a 1-foot diameter,” Fitzgerald said. “The scalped area has to be large enough so the seedling doesn’t have to compete with surrounding grasses and vegetation.”
This takes a couple of swings of the hoe-dad; then the tool is flipped over to dig a hole that must be exactly the size of the seedling’s root ball. If the hole is too deep, air pockets will kill the roots. If the hole is too shallow, the roots will double over and the seedling won’t grow.
“Roots also have to be covered to the soil line right at the bottom branches, and the soil must be packed tight,” Fitzgerald said. “If it’s too loose, freezing and thawing of the soil can expose the root crown, and the little tree will die.”
Location is also key to seedling survival. Seedlings must be planted on the northeast or northwest side of something that will shade but not compete with them, like a log, stump or standing dead tree. Site selection also requires that seedlings be planted at least 9 feet apart to allow for adequate spacing as the forest grows.
Foresters walk behind the planters to inspect their work above and below ground.
“They don’t get paid unless 90 percent of our test sampling shows all of these steps were followed,” Fitzgerald said. “Once you plant seedlings, you cannot undo the work.”
Ann Bond is the public affairs specialist for the San Juan National Forest.
Give the gift that keeps on growing
Since the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire, the San Juan National Forest has been able to replant about 1,000 acres of burned forests between Missionary Ridge and Vallecito Reservoir. Seedlings placed in the ground eight years ago are now about 3 feet high. Additional acreage has been replanted with the help of the Kids 4 Trees Program and Vallecito Service League.
The planting project planned for 2015 will see 87,500 seedlings planted on 250 more acres around Vallecito, at a cost of about $735 per acre. But the agency has identified thousands of additional acres that need help regenerating.
San Juan National Forest Forester Gretchen Fitzgerald hopes that holiday donations to the forest’s Plant-A-Tree Program can help expand the program.
“Each $20 donation to the Plant-a-Tree Program will result in 10 real trees going into the ground, so every donation will allow for more to be planted,” Fitzgerald said. “It costs us about $2 per tree to collect and store the seeds, grow the seedlings, ship them back and plant them.”
Donors to the program receive a certificate suitable for framing on behalf of a person or family, which can be presented as a gift. Donations can be made at San Juan National Forest offices by cash, check or credit card.
Credit card donations also can be made over the phone, or checks can be mailed to San Juan National Forest Plant-A-Tree Coordinator, 15 Burnett Court, Durango, CO 81301.
Checks should be made payable to USDA Forest Service, with “Plant-A-Tree, San Juan National Forest” noted in the memo portion of the check. The program is considered a charitable donation by the IRS. Requests may take a few days to process, and contributions cannot be refunded. The donor receives a personalized certificate to document the gift.
The U.S. Forest Service established the Plant-A-Tree Program in 1983 to allow donors to contribute money toward reforestation on national forests to memorialize loved ones or commemorate births, weddings or special events, while helping to improve the environment. Seedlings planted with the donations are not designated on the ground as a memorials or individually recognized but instead become part of the forest ecosystem.
On the Net
San Juan National Forest: www.fs.usda.gov/main/sanjuan/workingtogether
