Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Matters, the podcast that covers all aspects of wildland fire management for the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. We talk with the people who help manage and protect our public lands, many dedicating their lives to the profession. Today, Jennifer and I are talking with Jake Ferguson, the National Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation Program lead, and Brandon Brown, national seed coordinator for the National Seed Warehouse System for the Bureau of Land Management. Welcome, Jake and Brandon.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Welcome, guys. Glad to have you guys on today.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you. Thanks.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So first off, before we get going into what you both do and how it relates to each other, I'd like to start off by talking about your backgrounds and how you got into the business. So we'll start with you, Jake.
[00:01:07] Speaker D: Yeah, so I like to say I kind of grew up in the BLM. I got to start while I was still in school at the University of Idaho. An announcement came out on our email that the Hawaii field office over in marsing, part of the Boise district, was looking for a wildlife technician. So I threw my name in the hat. It was already kind of late in the season, about June, and they picked me up. So I apparently didn't do too good of a job that first summer. So they asked me back and I got to return. I think I did seven seasons there. I finished college. I started under the student temporary employment program, the old step program, and then after graduation, they brought me on as a seasonal employee. So I did seven seasons there, working in range and recreation, a little bit of everything wildlife. And before I moved on to my permanent job, my first permanent job with BLM was down in Ely, Nevada, as a rangeland management specialist. So went down there, joined the Ely district, learned a lot. A lot of things happen fast and furious in Nevada, but I got to come back home and I'm born and raised here in the treasure Valley. So it was important to me to get back home and came back home, worked for the Vale district as a rangeland management specialist for a couple more years. And then I really got kind of what it was at the time, my dream job. I was able to move over to a wildlife biologist for the fuels and emergency stabilization rehabilitation program there in Vale district. And so there I got to be a plan lead for ESR plans, ID team member, interdisciplinary team member, and just be part of the fuels and the ESNR side of things versus just that normal field office day to day stuff. From there, jumped over to be assistant field manager back at the Yahoo field office. So I came full circle from seasonal employee to assistant field manager and got to go do that for a couple of years, and then this position presented itself and threw my name in the hat, and here I am. Got here in July of last year, so I'm still getting things figured out. It's way different being at headquarters level versus in the field offices. So, yeah, I'm excited for this new chapter of my career and looking forward to the future.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah, the step program. I started that same thing at Church of Valley Community College and got my first job through the step program on an engine. So, yeah. Cool to hear that everyone has their story for sure. So it's always nice that people are coming through college that way.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. How about you, Brandon?
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Yeah, so my story is real similar to a lot of people in the BLM, but I started out on a fire crew in Shoshon, and I used that as a way to pay my way through college, got my degree, and it just kind of turned into a career. And from fire crew, I ended up. The timing was great. The hazardous fuels program was just starting up as I was graduating college, and so I got an opportunity to go into the fuels program, and I spent about 20 years, worked my way up through the fuels program, got to the point of being the district lead, did a lot of treatment, that program, really good opportunity to actually do a lot of healthy things for the land. So that was a really fun part of my career, is doing some of that proactive restoration work. From there, I moved over to the ESR program for the last five years or so, which is more the reactive side, but a lot of the similar, same type of work, doing a lot of seeding, a lot of land restoration type work. And after about 25 years or so of doing that in the field, I moved over to the national seed warehouse system as the national seed coordinator, and I've been doing that for about a year now. So, like Jake, I'm kind of still filling out the new position, but it's a great opportunity and an opportunity to really help the agency from a larger perspective.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Well, we're glad to have you both here and relatively new jobs, so this will be fun to talk about to promote what you do.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah, tell a story.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yes. So, Brandon, tell us about the national seed program and warehouse system.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Yeah, so the national Seed program. National Seed Warehouse system is a program that was developed a number of years ago as a way to streamline the buying process for seed, for the agency to be efficient and effective at buying seed, and really to make sure that we're getting really high quality seed for the field. So what we do is we act as a consolidated source for seed for all the Bureau of Land Management. So we service all BLM states. We have two warehouses currently, one in Ely, Nevada, and one in Boise, Idaho. And we have a total capacity of about two and a half million pounds of seed that we can store, and we go through about two to 3 million pounds of seed a year. And that goes out to a lot of different customers. We call them customers, but basically, it's the agencies. And our biggest customer, obviously, is the Bureau of Land Management. But we also assist with getting seed for some of our sister agencies, like the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and then also some state agencies and some nonprofits that have agreements with the Bureau of Land Management. So we try to be kind of a one stop shop for seed needs for all the agencies, all of our partners. And like I said, we go through about two to 3 million pounds of seed a year, and that's a huge volume of seed. And out of that, about 80% of that is actually native seed, which is what we've shifted over the years to more native, trying to address some of the goals of the national seed strategy. And so we've really focused more on natives in the past and trying to get those needs to the field. So we try to get new species available for the field that haven't been commercially available in the past. So that's one thing we really work on. And right now, we offer about, just close to about 200 different species of varieties to the field through our warehouse system that are commercially available. We also have some other contracts out there where we're trying to get new species in production with commercial vendors to try to give us a more diverse option in the future.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: So what are the types of common seeds that you might see or that you have at the warehouse?
[00:07:01] Speaker C: Yeah, so we deal with all of it. And like I said, the main focus is native seed. So a lot of the seed that we go through, most of it is grass seed, is the number one type of life form of.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: There's tons of different types of.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: Yeah, there's all different kinds of varieties and cultivars and source identified seed, and it gets really technical, but the bulk of it is grass seed. But we also go through a lot of brush seed, particularly sage, bitter brush, things like that, that are important for wildlife habitat. And then a lot of forbes. A lot of native forbes. And that's really where the diversity comes in, is where we're trying to really expand those opportunities for the field.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: And so in the field, they contact you? Do they contact you with the seed they want, the mixture of they want, and then you provide that to them?
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Yeah, correct. So when a district or an office or one of our partners has a project they want to do, they submit what we call a project seed request form, and all the seed mixture and what they want to plant is derived completely from the field. It's driven from the experts on the ground that know what seed needs to go where, and the timing and how it needs to be applied. They put their request into us, and then we try to do the best job we can, filling that seed out of our current stock in the warehouse. Or if we can't, we'll go out on the open market and try to buy that commercially for them. And then we provide the service of mixing as well. So most projects that are done come, they do them as a mix of a bunch of different varieties of seed. So we get as much of that as we can. We actually mix it, we package it and get it sent to them. By the time they're starting their seeding contracts, or if they're doing it in a house or however they're going to do it, we try to make sure we have that seed to them by the time they're going to start their projects.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: And does seed have, like, a lifespan there? You have to use it within a year, like an expiration date or anything?
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Yeah, that's actually a really good question. It's something that we really have to monitor closely. A lot of seed, particularly the grass seed, is good for years. For years and years. Some of it you can have on the shelf seven, eight years easily with no issues. Some seed, like sagebrush, is really sensitive, and we try to buy that the year that it's going to be used, what we call new harvest seed, because that stuff just doesn't last very long. We do have within our 2.7 million pounds that we can store. About 150,000 of that can be in a cold or freezer storage. And that's where we keep some of those more sensitive species, like sagebrush and some of the Forbes, that don't last as long.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: So it's kind of in hibernation.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: What are they? Dormancy.
[00:09:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: I'm like, hibernation is not the right term for that, but, yeah, dormancy.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Yeah. One thing that's interesting about it is we actually, and this is well known within the seed industry, but a lot of seed actually does better. If you do store it for a year or two, it actually helps it break dormancy. So some of those grasses actually do better if we buy them a couple of years in advance and let them sit in this warehouse.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: So do you know if once the field, like plants, seed and if doesn't come up that next season, is it possible it's still good in the ground, might come up at a different time?
[00:09:56] Speaker C: Yeah, that goes back to actually my previous jobs where I was doing a lot of seeding work. But the work we do in the Bureau of Land Management is very different from what people are used to with plannings and seed. We're not planning a field where we have irrigation. So we're at the kind of the mercy of mother nature. Right.
But that's the good thing about these native seeds. They have traits that provide for that. So in my experience doing seeding, yeah, a lot of times you'll go out and do a seeding and it doesn't look good for a year or two, and a lot of times it might take four or five years for that seeding to actually express itself. And monitoring does show that. And so, yeah, a lot of times you might do a seeding and it just doesn't look good for a couple of years. But that seed's there and it's just waiting for the right timing, the right opportunity, the right conditions, and then it'll start growing and then that's where you see your success.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Right. And so how does that integrate with emergency stabilization rehabilitation program, your seed program?
[00:10:46] Speaker C: Yeah, so like I stated, we go through about two to 3 million pounds of seed a year. Our number one customer by far is emergency stabilization rehabilitation. They're the biggest user of seed in the bureau and I would guess probably in the nation. Between ESR and the fuels program, that's probably about 90% of the seed that we put out is for those two programs with the biggest user being ESR.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: So, Jake, tell us a little bit about ESR program.
[00:11:13] Speaker D: Yeah, so for kind of the program rundown, it really is split out into two programs. You have the Es side, the emergency stabilization, and that has its own funding source and its own timelines and whatnot. And the ES side of things is really to prevent further degradation of natural and cultural resources and to protect life and property. When you get onto the bar side of things, that, again, is a different funding source. And that's where we're trying to protect and repair those landscapes that are unlikely to recover naturally within a normal time frame, that's acceptable.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: And the bar is burned area response or rehab.
[00:11:47] Speaker D: So the bar is the R side of ESNR. So that's burned area rehabilitation and in BLM, we just kind of use that as the r of our ESNR acronym.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: You just knock off the yep, yep.
[00:12:01] Speaker D: And that's different in some of the other bureaus, but for BLM, that's kind of how it is.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: And that bar happens immediately after or during, when the fire suppression, they're still there. Is that correct, or is it still afterwards?
[00:12:15] Speaker D: So your es is what you're looking at first. That's your emergency stabilization. A lot of times those crews aren't out until after containment. And there's multiple ways to form those teams, those assessment teams. We have burned area emergency response teams already put in place. That's an annual application. And so folks apply, and we have a roster, and so we can send out teams for districts that need that help and that expertise. Oftentimes in BLM, they're equipped with a local team that knows how to handle, they have experience, and so they're not needing to order an outside team to come in. And so depending on our fire qualification levels, red card, whatnot, that allows them to go out during, between containment and control. But sometimes it has to wait till after control to get folks out on the ground to assess the damages caused by the fire.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: And what kind of specialists are on those teams.
[00:13:06] Speaker D: It varies, right? It varies on the resources that are present. Oftentimes in areas where we have grazing, you'll have a Rangeland management specialist, some ecologists, wildlife biologists. If you have repairing areas, you might have some repairing ecologists. We have different folks in different positions that kind of wear multiple hats. It really does vary by the field office and then pulling in those spare teams. We have folks that are experts in hydrologic models and things like that to really assess, especially for that emergency stabilization side of things. Right. Like what's the potential if we have a high rain event or whatever within the next year or two, and flooding and damages caused by that.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: So it really depends on the landscape or where the fire burned, how it burned.
[00:13:48] Speaker D: Absolutely. Landscape. The timing of the fire has a lot to do with it, how hot it burned. And, yeah, just all those factors come into play.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: So do we need emergency stabilization and rehabilitation for every fire that burns?
[00:14:03] Speaker D: We don't. So we encourage, if natural recovery, if that burned area can recover naturally without our input, then that's preferred. Oftentimes. Referring back to your episode two with Jolene about fuels, in the great basin, especially, we're losing so much of this habitat faster than we can recover it or rehabilitate it. And then we have these invasive annual grasses coming in, cheat grass and medusa head and ventinata. And so they're really driving a lot of this on the es and the bar side of things, of these funding requests. Right.
We have to stay ahead of them. If we lose that burned area and that cheat grass gets established or that Medusa head, it's often just almost impossible to recover from that.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: So that probably depends on intensity of the burn and that kind of thing in size.
[00:14:54] Speaker D: Yeah, intensity. A lot of it has to do with preexisting conditions. Right. Was cheat grass already there and what level of density? Right. Was it just kind of part of the ecosystem there, of the composition of the vegetation? Or was it already a dominant player in there when it was dominant beforehand? We've seen time and time again we kind of know what's going to happen every time we burn. And oftentimes we're burning multiple times. Within a few years, our fire cycle frequency is getting more, getting greater and it's really challenging. We do have a lot of tools out there that are helping us. We've got herbicides. A lot of folks have been using plateau or mazepic as an herbicide to control those invasive annual grasses. And it's really important to some folks to get that. They're seeing the best results to get it on the ground as soon as possible that fall after the fire and they're having luck with that, giving us a window of opportunity to then buy those seeds. And hopefully native seeds is what we're shooting for. But sometimes it might not be native seeds. We want to give it the best chance to recover and that kind of goes back to that. Right seed at the right time, right place.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it seems like the fire regime frequency is really kind of whacked out these days with all the number of fires we keep having in areas. So how does the native seed compete with like cheat grass?
[00:16:11] Speaker D: It varies on species, right? There's some that are still native, but they've developed them to be more competitive. A lot of the great basin are native species at some of the lower elevations. You'll hear folks talk about like that 4000ft elevation a lot. That seems to be a break somewhere in there, 4000, 4500 where things below that, just the amount of moisture we get and those species there are not competing well against these invasive annual grasses. Higher elevation fires into different communities. They seem to be able to do fine, but it is a case by case, especially if you have something that's burned multiple times. And that's where it's really important to have pre existing data. We've got a lot of programs out there outside of Es that are monitoring, collecting data. And so that really helps if we have some recent vegetation data prior to the fire happening.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: So I'll ask you that. Brandon, too, that same, like you do have the invasive species, especially cheat grass. We see that in the great basin. It's a huge problem. How do the natives compete? Like, if you have an area that's burned, that's been mainly cheat grass, and you want to. I mean, I know the ESR program, you're not really supposed to change historically, but what was there before, but historically, Cheek rats wasn't there, and then you're trying to replace it or have the natives come back. I mean, how does that work?
[00:17:33] Speaker C: Well, it gets back to what Jake said as far as tools. There's a wide variety of tools that we have in the toolbox to address these issues and challenges on the ground. And the reality is, the BLM is a huge geographic area, right? So it's all different kinds of vecotypes and all different kinds of areas and terrain. And so from the seed warehouse standpoint, we just try to have the widest variety available, and that really gives the field, the people in the field that are the experts that are making the decisions. A menu to pick from, for lack of a better term. If we have 200 different species in the warehouse, there's going to be some that will work for whatever site they have. And the reality is some natives don't work well in areas where there's a lot of competition, but in other areas, they might work really well. So it's really the people on the ground, the experts, deciding what the right seed is for, the right place, the right time. Our job is just to make sure that stuff's available, that we have really high quality seed, and that we give them a good variety of options. So as they pick what the right seed mix is for that project, we're going to have success because we know the seed is really high quality, it's good, high viability seed and doesn't have weeds in it. So that's kind of where we fit in.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: I have a vision of, like a McDonald's menu, and you're like, sliding through a picking seed, going with whatever, and, yep, there it is. And it spits it out.
[00:18:52] Speaker C: Well, we actually do actually have something kind of like that. So we have a site where people can go into and see all the different varieties that we have, and they do. They just fill out a request based on. It's like going to any big box store where you fill out your order and they do. They just identify how many pounds of what species they want and they send it to us, and that's what we try got to get for them.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: So, and then that's based on what you all do, too. And you're working in emergency stabilization and, like the assessment part of the program. Right. As far as determining what seed, how much you're going to need for that area to possibly recover.
[00:19:28] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. The folks on the, I'll refer to them as the interdisciplinary team because usually it's a group, it's a team effort. They're the ones on the ground. They're the ones looking up whatever information they have, previous vegetation types, presence of invasive annual grass, as well as noxious weeds. And so they're really the experts on the ground to come up with that seed mix. And so they're putting that plan together. And that plan, it's bigger than just seed, too. Right. You got a whole gamut of things that could be involved, erosion control structures. A lot of it has been a multi step process. When you talk about seeding in these great basin areas where these invasive annual grasses are, a lot of, it's kind of a spray, wait and see, and then seed, and then even a follow up seeding or a follow up herbicide treatment at times. And so we're looking at these areas changing over years. The funding does have a time limit. Right. Emergency stabilization is for that one year, one year following the fire. There are some ways to extend that, but that's really what it's geared for, those emergencies, those erosion control structures protecting life and property. But your bar side of things, your r, we can fund projects for out to five years, out to five years from the fire. And so those retreatments oftentimes they come up on that year three or four. And so it's important to stay on those and protect that investment.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: So I think it's also important to note that this happens on federal land, that fires that burn on federal managed land, but it also can benefit the private landowners and the communities by actually doing this work, protecting the other land, by doing work on the federal land side of things from erosion and all that.
[00:21:15] Speaker C: Well, and in a lot of the projects that we do as an agency are done in partnership across the landscape. And so, yeah, there's a direct benefit to adjacent lands. But I know, like for the seed warehouse, we do sell seed to state partners and nonprofits that have joint projects with the Bureau of Land Management. So we can go across ownership boundaries.
[00:21:34] Speaker D: Yeah, and. Absolutely. And thinking back to my days in the field office as a plan leader or a team member. We're often reaching out to those other areas of those other jurisdictions that that fire burned right at the state. The private landowner, oftentimes that's a grazing permittee. And so we're sharing what our plan is looking like and our thoughts with those folks in hopes to butt those treatments up across boundaries, because the fire didn't care about the fence lines or the property boundaries.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: So working in cooperation and coordination with other entities.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: And I had a question, too on it being applied to the land, there's different ways. I know there's aerial seeding and drilling. What are other ways that the seed is applied to the project areas?
[00:22:19] Speaker D: So you hit the two big ones, right. It's aerial seating, whether it be. And really, that's a type of broadcast seeding. So oftentimes it's a helicopter or fixed wing aircraft. There's broadcast seeders that we can put on the back of tractors or bulldozers or utvs. And then your drill seeding. Right. You're actually creating furrows, disturbing the soil to try to get that seed, to get some better soil contact. I'm not going to say that. I'm maybe not missing one, but those are kind of our main ones.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: So can you take us through a process of actually what happens when we have a fire and you're going through the assessment process?
[00:22:57] Speaker D: Yeah. So it could be different for others. I'll kind of share. My experience is we have a fire. We oftentimes know at the local unit that we already are going to be requesting some funding. We know that there's going to be a need. That's usually kind of that rehabilitation side of things. Right. Seeding, herbicide, whatnot, other areas where you need those teams with more expertise, like I mentioned earlier, hydrologic modeling. That's when you, as an id team in the field office, oftentimes the fire is still going and you're assessing what you need. And if you know you can handle it in house, great. If you feel like you need help, that's where the bear teams really come in and they're available. So folks will then call me if they feel like they need a bear team, and we'll set up a team and our team can shrink or grow as the needs are identified.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: And the bear teams are those burn area emergency response.
[00:23:49] Speaker D: And the bear teams are really for that es side of things. Now, that's not to say that they don't help plan for the bar side of things, but really, that's what their job is, to come in and assess those emergency responses. And so depending on whether it's a bear team or the local unit, it's really, we're getting at the same goal. Right. We're trying to develop a plan which is ultimately describing what you want to do over the next five years and how much things would cost. Right. It's a funding request is what we're ultimately getting to. And so those teams, they do have a tight timeline for the emergency stabilization side of things. They have to have an initial plan that can be very broad. It's just, here's what we're seeing. Here's what we're getting ready to assess and look at in detail. That's due to me within seven days. And then for the emergency stabilization part of the plan, they have 21 days after containment. For that, we can approve extensions. I know that doesn't give a lot of time, but these emergencies, a lot of times we need to act fast. And so from getting to that point of getting the plan in for approval and then getting money back out to the districts takes some time. Right. And so we want to make sure we're covering those emergencies as approved.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: And when funding comes in, does the agency do the work or is some of that contracted out?
[00:25:11] Speaker D: So it's a total mixed bag. Again, some districts are really equipped to handle that on their own. They have the folks on staff and say they're doing good examples. They might contract out the herbicide, broadcasting herbicide, and then the seeding. Oftentimes they have staff on hand. Ends up being, a lot of times firefighters. Right. That are off season. So we're often seeding in the know, October, November, December, January, depending on where you're at. And so a lot of times we're using BLM equipment, BLM dozers, BLM tractors, and we do have the Vale drill shop. Right. There's BLM drill seeders available to us. And so those are often used for all of our drill seedings. But there's other districts that aren't just, they're not equipped. They don't have the staff on hand or the expertise. And so contracting is certainly an option. That's just seeding side of it. Right. There's all sorts of other actions that can happen that might require contracting. We've done agreements. A lot of monitoring was done through assistance agreements in the past years. So it really is depending on where you're at, what the need is and.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: The scale, what does monitoring involve?
[00:26:21] Speaker D: So that's something we're really important to me, being new in the position is we don't have any sort of standardized monitoring. Monitoring is required. Right. Like that's part of getting this funding is showing what happened with the funding. Did it work? Did it not work? But there's no standardization yet. There's other programs I can think of. Fuels is a little ahead of us there. A few years ago they kicked out an iam. That kind of is driving the fuels program to look at the assessment, inventory and monitoring program, BLM's AIM program, and use some of those core methods out of there for monitoring. And that's kind of know standardized so we can maybe put the data in the same place. And when you're pulling data, it's comparable usable across programs. So really what we want to know, were the treatments successful? Right. Did it work and why not? That could be an assumption. We don't always know why there's so many other factors, environmental factors that come into play during these, when we're trying to get these areas back, whether it's receding herbicide or natural recovery, but just learning, trying to learn from things we've tried and sharing that with others. There's a lot of new folks in the program with the BLM as a whole, but a lot of these folks don't have the expertise yet. And so the more information sharing we can do and provide places that they can go and read and see what others are doing is really important.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Well, kind of like what Brandon said earlier, the seed could be in the ground for a while because maybe you don't have the rains that you need or there's other environmental conditions, like you mentioned, Jake, that could prevent the maybe land from recovering quicker. So I think, yeah, monitoring would be important to ensure just. Okay. Is it still stable? I guess seeds still there? It didn't get washed mean, because it could probably potentially get washed away too, couldn't it?
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Well, in some areas, yeah.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Depending on the terrain, that's really bad flooding or something.
[00:28:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Or rodents.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: They want the seed.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
They've lost all their vegetation, so they're going for the seed.
[00:28:34] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's like Jake was saying, with seeding projects and particularly with ESR, the timing is so critical and there's so many variables that we can't control, whether it's ESR or fuels or wildlife project. There's just a lot of variables. We're dealing with Mother Nature. Right. So it's important that we have the one thing we can control, we should be able to control is there in the quality of it. So that's one of the big goals and then the timing.
A lot of the projects, the ESR projects Jake's talking about is the best time to seed is directly after the fire in a lot of cases. So we need to have the seed that the field needs available when they need it, which is usually a pretty quick turnaround. Like Jake was saying, they're putting a plan together in 21 days, and a lot of times after wildfire, they'll be out there seeding within a month or two months. So to try to get that seed available to them in the quantities and the varieties they need is really key.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: That's made a lot of fall work for firefighters doing the rehab work, for sure. So, Jake, tell us about some of the goals. I know you've talked about monitoring. That seems pretty passionate to you, but what are some of the goals for the emergency stabilization and rehabilitation program?
[00:29:45] Speaker D: We're really trying to prevent further degradation of these natural and cultural resources. And for the r side of things, we want to initiate these longer term actions to repair those damages caused by the fires in these areas that they're not likely to recover naturally or within those acceptable timeframes.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: How about, Brandon, how about some of your goals for the Seed program?
[00:30:08] Speaker C: So our biggest goal can just be summed up as just trying to be there to support the efforts of the ESR program, the fuels program, and all of our partners as they try to do these projects.
Our goal is, as I've already stated, is to have a wide variety of options, especially on the native side of seeds that are available, that people can select from, have them available on time when people need them. And then the high quality, we have really stringent testing, sampling and testing protocols when we buy seed, and we actually reject a lot of seed that we buy, about close to 20% of the seed we buy, we actually end up rejecting because it doesn't meet our standards. So that's a big key to us, is making sure that when Jake's program is putting a lot of investment out on these projects, that they know the seed is going to be good quality. So that's definitely one of our goals, is to maintain that level of a high standard. And then another goal that we're really focusing in on and tying it into the national seed strategy is trying to work with the seed industry to increase the amount of natives that are available. It's really difficult to get a new species established commercially. A lot of these native species, they don't grow in a field, and as wildfires impact their populations, more and more, they get more difficult to collect in the wild. So it's a challenge, try to get these seeds for specific species more available into the future. But that's one thing that we're working on through different contracting mechanisms, is trying to ensure that we can increase the diversity of options.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: So you kind of mentioned that was one of the challenges, too. So what are some of the challenges, other challenges the seed program faces?
[00:31:42] Speaker C: Yeah, it's multifold, and I think one of the biggest challenges is, like Jacob's talking about, with increased fire, whether it's fire size, intensity or frequency, undoubtedly there's been just more fire on the landscape. And as that happens, the demands for seed are just going to grow.
So that's one thing that we really are focusing in on, is what is this program going to look like 510 years from now, and how big do we need to be? Like I said, we go through two to 3 million pounds of seed right now, but in ten years, that might be 10 million pounds of seed. And as other programs expand outside of ESR, even with wildlife and some of the partners, we just see a bigger and bigger need every single year. And so increasing our capacity with warehousing capacity is a big challenge for us. We need to have enough seed on hand to manage two to three years of projects. So we're working towards that. But just trying to deal with the volume of seed and the demand in the future is going to be probably the biggest challenge. To me, it ties into climate change. 30 years ago, the BLM was seeding crested wheat across the landscape. And that's not the goal anymore. It's to try to restore native ecosystems. And it's a challenge. As the climate is changing, we're having bigger fires, species are becoming scarcer to harvest and collect seed from. So those are all impacts that we're dealing with and we're trying to navigate as we increase capacity.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: And you said there are strict testing standards, too, for the seed. Can you explain what you look for?
[00:33:10] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: So when we get a seed lot, which is a batch of seed in, we pull samples from that and we send it off to usually multiple laboratories, state run laboratories, and they do a wide variety of tests for us. They test for purity, they test for viability, basically what we call pure live seed, which is what percentage of that seed is actually viable and is going to grow. And then they also do exams for noxious weeds, make sure we're not introducing noxious weeds onto a new site, and then also for common weed contents and things like annual invasive bromes so that we know that when a seed goes out of our warehouse onto a project, that we're not going to be introducing bad weeds onto a new site.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense more when you're trying to fight it already.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: And you talked about companies producing some seed because it's getting harder to collect native seeds. I remember when I started at the BLM in 92, there's opportunities to go out and do seed collection certain times of the year. Does that still happen?
[00:34:08] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Probably volume wise, poundage, the majority of the seed that we buy comes from fields. It's field grown. It's basically grown in a farm like setting, but species wise, the majority is probably collected in the field. Wildland collected what we call source identified seed, where they go to a specific site or a group of sites and collect it so we can match up that seed transfer zone to where it needs to go on a project. So it's kind of twofold, but so a lot of the workhorse species are grown in the field and that's the grasses that you can actually grow and harvest with the combine, that kind of stuff. But then a lot of the Forbes, a lot of the smaller, more unique varieties, those are usually wildland collected and generally that's done through contracting.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: So, Jake, what are some challenges the ESR program faces?
[00:35:03] Speaker D: Yeah. So really echo a lot of what Brandon just said. A lot of that applies to know climate's changing. These fires are that we've talked about it multiple times. The invasives, the invasive annual grasses especially, they're really increasing. And I don't think we're combating them fast. Know they're outrunning us, outpacing us, not.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Being able to keep up with them.
[00:35:23] Speaker D: Yeah. And so I think that's the bigger challenge. Also, I talked about the available science and technology that we have. That also is a benefit and a challenge. Right. There's so much out there that folks in the field office are being flooded with all this information and all these models and try this, try that. And you're trying to put a plan together in 21 days. And what do you use? What do you not use? What works in your area. And so it kind of goes back to that information sharing. But that's the solution. I think the challenge is that we almost have too much. It's an overload of information and so.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Kind of just sort all that out.
[00:36:03] Speaker D: Sort it all out. Navigate and use what's most applicable to you. And it might be not only to your district, but to that fire. Right. That fire might not be equal to another fire within the same field office or district. And then the other thing is, right now we're in a good time with funding. We have the bipartisan infrastructure law substituting our funding, doubling our bar funding, really for five years, for 22 through 26, we hope years ago we were competing for that money. Like field offices were having to really show why their burned area rehabilitation plan was important. And unfortunately, some we had to cut. Right. We didn't have enough funding. And so I think we're really in a good place right now. The last few years, we've been able to pretty much fully fund those approved requests, and I hope that stays, but that could be a future challenge.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: So what do you see as some successes that the programs had?
[00:36:57] Speaker D: Well, it kind of comes back to the science using folks are using, and I hear good things about it. We're learning. And so some of the successes know some of this herbicide. I don't know how long plateau's been around and available to us in the BLM, but I hear a lot of really good things about that. Right, like that versus no herbicide. They're seeing benefits from that. And there's a lot of instances where the seeding did take and it looks great. So celebrate those, but also don't be afraid to share the failures and try to figure out why.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: How about some successes for the seed program?
[00:37:34] Speaker C: Well, our success is 100% contingent on the field success, in my mind. And if they're having success with their project, like Jake's saying, if they can go out and do their monitoring and see that they've had a good positive effect on a project, then that means that we were successful because we got them the seed that they needed when they needed it.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Anything else in closing?
[00:37:55] Speaker C: Well, I would like to say something else about the work that we do. And it's not just a seed warehouse. It's just about all of the fuels work, the ESR, all the restoration work we do, and the seed warehouse as a part of that group, it's incredibly challenging and difficult work, but it's also incredibly rewarding. I've been doing this for close to 30 years now, and I've seen the landscape change in my career, and I think most of us have that have been around a while. And as a public land user myself, I see that, and it's really rewarding to me and our staff to be a part of the solution. And we can go out and look at projects that we did ten years ago, five years ago, or even 20 years ago and see that we've had really positive impacts on the landscape, for the landscape, for our public land users and our partners. And it's really rewarding to be a part of that, whether you're on the ground actually doing the seeding work or you're in the warehouse with my staff actually trying to get the seed to them. That's one thing that I think we can all look back on in our career and see that we've actually had some really positive impacts on the public lands.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Have you seen where a project that has been completed on a burned area, and then years later and natives have come back and then maybe it burned again? Does something like that? Like, would the natives come back naturally or could they come back naturally?
[00:39:17] Speaker C: Well, unfortunately, in my previous position, I have a lot of experience with that. A lot. And Jake will have a bigger perspective from nationally, but I can speak from a district perspective. And when we had those situations, it was both positive and negative. Generally, if we had a good seating established, the fire actually could benefit. We actually saw a release of things like grasses and forbes. And a lot of times the seeding would look better after a second fire. Sometimes it wouldn't. It just kind of depends on the situation. But the frustrating part was sagebrush. It takes 20 years plus to get sagebrush reestablished on a site, and a fire comes through, it wipes it out. And that's what we would see, is we wouldn't impact the grasses and the Forbes. They would do okay, but we'd lose that brush component completely. And then we're back to square one on trying to get that reestablished. And we've seen that repeatedly. And that's really frustrating.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, what is the natural fire regime for sage brush? Is it like every 30 years I've heard something, or do you even know? I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there.
[00:40:22] Speaker C: What's the historic fire regime cycle?
[00:40:24] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, it depends. You have your Wyoming big sager brush communities, and then you got your mountain big sage brush communities, you got your low sage, black sage. They all have a little bit different. I mean, I've read a lot of different literature, and I think it's anywhere in, like, Wyoming big sage, 75 to 150 years. This kind of general consensus mountain sagebrush communities can burn more often. Closer to 50 years. 75 to 50 years, I believe. I don't think there's any known one answer, but fires were smaller and more of a mosaic and still common. But these mega fires that we're having today, I don't know where the cut off is, I think it's over 50,000 acres or 100,000 acres, but we're having lots and lots of fires that are over 100,000 acres, and that wasn't real natural for those ecosystems.
[00:41:15] Speaker C: And part of that is the frequency. Right. So a lot of these species, like Wyoming sagebrush, they're not meant to burn every five years. And some of these areas in the lower elevations, we're getting fires every four or five years. And so they just don't have time to recover. Some native species are okay with that, but there's a lot that they just don't respond right.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: And I can see with the cheat grass coming in, you have that continuous fuel where some of the bunch grasses, some of the natives are more bunchy. So you don't have that continuous fuel to, like you said, create that mosaic burn. It just burns.
[00:41:50] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: A lot of issues with invasives.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: And that's where I think where Carrie and I go back to our old days of our prevention mitigation education. Hats, is that, yeah, Mother Nature definitely starts fires, but we also have that human component, and that's where we're seeing a lot of that. You're parking on, know, dragging chains, things like that. Those are the ones that are igniting those fires. And so I think it takes all of us to think about and just be cautious of the impacts that those wildfires have to these sage rush communities or any of these communities, because it's literally generations to restore those if it comes back in its native state.
[00:42:26] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: So when you're out recreating on public lands, just remember to be very careful with everything you do.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah. We're all public land users, and so we want to be able to enjoy that and see those, especially after all the hard work, too.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: And that brings up something else, too. So for recovery efforts, like people out in burn, I mean, really, they should be staying off of burned areas because maybe we've done seating. You want people running around out there. Right. So what happens with that, Jake? Like, put up signs?
[00:42:57] Speaker D: Yeah. So oftentimes that's a part of emergency stabilization is signage or increased law enforcement patrols because. Yeah, really, that's what we want. We need to give that landscape time to heal, let the treatments that we're doing get a chance to work. And so, unfortunately, often you have this big burned area now, and off road travel is suddenly easier, and folks don't always stay on the roads and trails. And so that can be a big impact. Those soils are burned, the vegetation is burned. It's sensitive to that. And so you can cause a lot of harm by off road travel.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: That's a very important point because people don't sometimes give it time to recover and wonder why it's burned. So what's the problem? But could be some recovery issues with that.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Well, and also too, I think those atv are off of vehicles and all that stuff. I mean, you went somewhere else with cheat grass, so now you're going to bring that cheat grass and those bases back into that area, which they're just rehabbing with the training with the native seed. So you have to think about that too. It's just not offroading and having fun. It's also what you're bringing to the area, I think.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you, Jake and Brandon, for joining us today for the 24th episode of Wildfire Matters. It's really interesting to get an introduction to the emergency stabilization and rehabilitation program and the national Seed warehouse system. People probably don't know that these things exist out there. They see the big fire, it burns well, what happens after the fire? And these two play a big role in land recovery. So appreciate you taking the time to tell us a little bit about your programs.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate it. It's been very interesting. And so thanks a lot for joining us today.
[00:44:39] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you.
[00:44:40] Speaker D: Thanks.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: If you have questions, comments, or even suggestions on different topics for our podcasts, please email them to BLM underscore FA, underscore nifcomments at BLM. Gov and use wildfighter Matters podcast in the subject line. To learn more about Nipsey or the BLM, please visit our website at www. Nipsey. Gov and follow us at BlMfire on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: And thank you, everyone for listening. Please join us next time when we spark a conversation with Michelle Christ. She's a BLM fire ecologist who studies landscape changes in the environment, including research on non forested burned areas, invasive species, and sagebrush conservation design. So we'll learn a little bit more about that on the next episode.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we're going to continue our science conversation.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: Until then, stay safe and be wildfire aware.
