By Joel Quevillon
Hayman Fire restoration continues as workers collect seed cones
from Ponderosa Pine trees at the Manitou Forest Experimental
Station.
The cones, collected by Hanson Tree Service of Florissant, will
be sent to U.S. Forest Service’s Bessey Nursery in Nebraska where
the seeds will be harvested and planted. After about 16 months in a
green house the seedlings will be transported back to the Hayman
Fire burn area and replanted, probably in the spring of
2008.
Gary Roper, U.S. Forest Service timber program manager, said the
intensity of the Hayman Fire left little to no seed source in an
estimated 66 percent of the burn area. With no seed source a forest
cannot grow back.
“We’re trying to provide a seed source for future generations,”
he said.
Lee Redmond, U.S. Forest Service project manager for the cone
collection, said seeds from a Ponderosa Pine can only travel up to
1 1/2 times the heighth of the tree they come from. If any of those
seeds grew to healthy trees, in 20 years, then its seeds could
travel a short distance. If left to this natural pattern, the
Hayman burn area would take thousands of years to
regenerate.
Roper said the U.S. Forest service will not plant trees in the
entire burn area, but if funding continues, it will plant a total
of 7,000 acres in specially selected areas.
“We are concerned with protecting the watershed,” he said. “This
is not a big timber producing area.”
Depending on the location, the forest service plants between 135
to 250 trees per acre. The seedlings have an 80 percent survival
rate, Rober said.
Redmond, who has been watching the cones for the past month,
said the cone picking season is short, only 14 to 20 days. He said
the goal for Hanson was to pick 250 bushels of cones.
Hanson Tree Service was actually hired by the Coalition for the
Upper South Platte, from a grant by Black Hills Energy
Corporation.
CUSP executive director, Carol Ekarius, said the U.S. Forest
Service cannot accept corporate grants for projects like
this.
Because CUSP is a non profit organization it can accept grants
and provide services that benefit the watershed on both public and
private land.
U.S. Forest Service spokesman Terry McCann said, “So much of
this could not be done without the work of CUSP.”
Rober said it costs about $700 to $800 an acre to plant the
seedlings. This includes all the work – scouting for seeds,
collecting, growing, transplanting and a few checkups on the
planted seedlings.
It is much cheaper than transplanting trees, said Jonathan
Bruno, operations director for CUSP.
“(Transplanting) is not realistic on a large scale. It takes
lots of time and money,” he said.
As fire recovery efforts continue, Bruno said, “It is hard to
calculate the true cost of a fire.”
He said the forest service can tell us what it costs to actually
fight the fire, usually in the millions for a large fire. But,
there are other costs. The loss of tourism and recreational
opportunities, the decline in real estate values, the increase in
insurance costs and the hit taken by local retailers all play into
the economics of a large forest fire.
“It takes ‘x’ amount of dollars to fight a fire,” Bruno said.
“It’s cheaper to mitigate the forest, (prevent fires).”
With that, Bruno said people don’t like to hear about thinning
the forest. Most forest service employees agree, including Roper,
that our forests are unnaturally overgrown, which could create more
devastating fires.