NEWS RELEASE

United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Salmon - Challis National Forest Rural Route 2, Box 600 Salmon, Idaho 83467

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kent Fuellenbach (208) 756-5145 or Gail Baer (208) 756-5100

Forest Service and BLM seed the Fenster Fire

Salmon, ID, December 2000 – The helicopter you noticed flying over the town of Salmon on Friday and Saturday December 1 and 2 was performing the seeding on areas within the 3,500 acre Fenster Fire. About 860 acres were aerially seeded with a native seed mix as recommended by the rehabilitation team from the local Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management offices.

The Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation team identified the specific areas to seed during their analysis of the burned area this summer. The areas identified were the non-timbered low vigor areas with a south or southeast aspect. These areas were not expected to have a reliable seed source due to low on-site productivity combined with the presence of knapweed and cheat grass, as well as the areas being within big game winter range and a summer cattle grazing allotment.

Normally areas are seeded for the primary reason of preventing soil erosion, this was not the case in this project. The areas seeded did not burn as hot as areas normally associated with a high potential for soil erosion. The primary reason was to get a jump on the weeds. “We want to give native vegetation the competitive edge over weeds” said Pat Hurt, implementation coordinator for the project. The seed mix included blue bunch wheat grass, Idaho fescue and Wyoming big sagebrush. These species were chosen because they are native to the site.

The seeding was planned to occur after a small amount of snow was on the ground. The reasons for this include: that if seeding is done early and the weather gets warm, the seeds may germinate and then the plant could be killed by a frost in just a few weeks; if too much snow is on the ground, the seeds could rot, or be carried down slope with the spring runoff. The most important reason is that with a small amount of snow the seeds are near the ground and will be left at the site when the snow melts, thus allowing the seed to be in the right place at the right time when the soil begins to warm up in the spring and conditions are optimum for germination success.

The rehabilitation team recommended applying the seed at 12 pounds per acre. This number accounts for dead seeds, hulls and other “stuff” in the mix. The major species seeded was blue bunch wheat grass at 7 pounds per acre, next was Idaho fescue at one pound per acre and the least was sagebrush at less than one pound per acre. In all the seed cost $65,000. This does not include the cost of contracting the helicopter and paying all the personnel involved.

A privately owned helicopter company out of Twin Falls, ID was contracted to perform the seeding. The pilot uses a gps unit (global positioning system) in his helicopter. He has a computer screen which has the seeding units displayed on it while he flies. As he covers parts of the unit, a “line” is automatically drawn on the screen and he knows when to turn at the end of a line by watching the screen. He is finished with a unit when it is all “lined” in. This a handy tool as the areas to be seeded are not marked on the ground, rather boundaries were determined from aerial and ground surveys last summer, then drawn on topographic maps and gps’d, thus providing the units for the pilots screen. He also calibrates the amount of seed that is dispersed by flying a certain speed. According to Pat Hurt, he was right on using the correct amount of seed for each unit.

This concludes the rehabilitation work in the Fenster fire burned area. There are many other rehabilitation projects planned for the Clear Creek fire and wilderness fires burned areas. Information on those projects will be distributed throughout the winter, as more information arises.

For more information please contact the Public Lands Office formally known as the Salmon-Challis National Forest Headquarters office at (208) 756-5100.