Session: Native Seed – Making a Difference in Land Management
Tuesday 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Ballroom 2
Bud Cribley, Moderator
10:00 a.m.
Management Decisions Related to Using Native Seeds for Wildlife Habitat in Eastern Oregon
Jeff Rose
Presentation (PDF)
Sagebrush is the dominant woody plant on over 70% of the lands administered by the BLM in eastern Oregon. Sagebrush ecosystems have also been identified as one of the most imperiled ecosystems in North America. Major threats to sagebrush ecosystems include development, conifer encroachment, and invasion of introduced annual plants, primarily cheatgrass. Public and private land managers must consider these and other threats when planning and implementing restoration activities. One of the most difficult decisions involved in the restoration of these ecosystems is related to the potential success of proposed activities. Natural recovery following disturbance is the most desirable situation. Under this scenario residual plants are allowed to recover with minimal management actions. However, in most situations the level of disturbance and past management actions requires seeding or planting to occur in order to meet wildlife habitat requirements. The key decision points related to natural recovery, selection of species to seed, and the decision to postpone restoration actions related to wildlife habitat will be discussed.
Jeff Rose is currently the Sagebrush Conservation Coordinator for the OR/WA State Office stationed in Burns, OR. Jeff’s primarily responsible for coordinating the Step Down process for the Northern Great Basin Ecoregional Assessment in eastern Oregon. Jeff previously was the Fire Ecologist for the Burns Interagency Fire Zone and the lead for Emergency Stabilization and Restoration projects on the Burns District of the BLM. Prior to moving to the BLM, Jeff worked as a Research Associated for Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Burns. While working at EOARC, Jeff worked on a number of projects related to sagebrush, western juniper and fire ecology. Jeff has a MS in Rangeland Resource from Oregon State University.
10:30 a.m.
Seeds for Renewable Energy
Jessica Rubado
Presentation (PDF)
Federal government agencies manage more than 600 million acres of land, which is almost one-third of the American land mass. The success of these Federal land managing agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management, is closely connected to the diversity of native plant communities which provide sustainable economic prosperity and factor into the quality of life for all people. There is a critical conservation need to develop native plant materials because the current market does not supply the diversity or ever increasing quantities of native plants needed to manage the American landscape, including BLM’s renewable energy program which has the potential to reduce green house gas emissions. President Obama, Secretary Salazar, and Congress have stressed the critical importance of renewable energy to the future of the United States reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mitigate climate change, and protect the global environment. This presentation will provide an overview of BLM’s renewable energy program, and possibilities for the integration through mitigation and other means of BLM’s renewable energy program with the Native Plant Materials Development Program to more effectively manage the American landscape and support BLM’s efforts to address climate change.
Jessica Rubado is a Wildlife Biologist for the Bureau Land Management’s National Office, serving as the liaison to energy for the Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation. Prior to returning to the BLM, Jessica worked in the private sector as a senior biologist and project manager for large energy projects. Jessica began her career with the BLM in New Mexico where she was a Wildlife Biologist for the Albuquerque District Office and a Surface Protection Specialist for the Roswell Field Office.
11:00 a.m.
Roadside Revegetation: An Integrated Approach to Establishing Native Plants
David Steinfeld
Presentation (PDF)
For over a decade the Forest Service and Western Federal Lands Highway Division have been partners in revegetating roadsides to native plant communities. The success of this program resides in the collaboration between engineers, environmental staff, and natural scientists from the inception of the project, through planning, implementation, and monitoring. This presentation outlines some of the lessons learned in trying to revegetate highly disturbed sites with native plants.
David Steinfeld is a revegetation specialist with the USDA Forest Service. He started as a field soil scientist in Oregon and Utah, then became nursery culturist and assistant manager at the J. Herbert Stone Nursery in Oregon where he helped start the nursery’s native plants program. Over the past ten years, David has worked with the Federal Highway Administration on revegetating road construction projects with native plants.
11:30 a.m.
Restoring Disturbance in the National Parks Using Native Species
Sarah Wynn
Presentation (PDF)
For twenty plus years the National Park Service has collected native seed from areas slated for disturbance in western parks in order to carry out restoration projects. Since 1989, the Park Service has increased native seed in partnership with the Natural Resources Conservation Service Plant Material Centers. Hundreds of pounds of park-specific native seed are then planted back onto these areas once disturbance has ceased. The National Park Service has developed a suggested workflow process for carrying out restoration projects including a project plan outline. The NPS Federal Lands Highways Program has supported this revegetation-restoration program as a critical element of Sustainable Park Roads design. While the Denver Service Center’s Transportation Division contracts hundreds of pounds of native seed a year with NRCS, individual parks contract with the Plant Materials Centers as well. With the effects of climate change increasingly being demonstrated in the parks, we are concerned that we use species that display adequate plasticity to positively respond to these changes. We anticipate this may lead to collecting and possibly increasing-producing seed with our adjoining land managers.
Sarah has worked in the National Park Service in Planning, in GIS, and currently in revegetation-restoration in the Denver Service Center’s Division of Transportation. In between Park Service stints, she worked for the Bureau of Reclamation as the research coordinator and as an invasive species researcher. She has degrees in History and English, Botany and Landscape Architecture, and Environmental Monitoring, all from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She and her husband live on 5 acres with 3 dogs and 2 cats and have 2 twenty-something children.
