How pine cones collection helps renew Oregon forests after wildfires

Medford, Oregon — In the bosom of Southern Oregon's Fremont-Winema National Forest, crews are going to caller heights to harvest a precious commodity.

"We're looking for the ripe cones connected the apical of the tree," said Brian Kittler, main programme serviceman for the Resilient Forests programme astatine the nonprofit conservation radical American Forests.

Using assistance operators and climbers, Kittler and his squad showed CBS News however his squad hunts for pine cones.

"The much that we suffer forest, we're losing our cleanable aerial and cleanable water, our quality to region c from the ambiance and code clime change," Kittler said.

The menace comes from the West's unprecedented breed of megafires which, fueled by clime change, person destroyed much than 33 cardinal acres since 2020, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That's astir the size of the authorities of Arkansas.

If thing is done to reconstruct a wood aft a wildfire, a vicious rhythm begins. Fewer surviving trees means fewer conifer cones for humans to prime and plant. That's what happened successful the Fremont-Winema National Forest during the Barry Point Fire successful 2012, Kittler said.

"There's fundamentally nary unrecorded trees, and there's nary earthy regeneration happening," Kittler said.

Once the conifer cones are collected, they're brought to a web of nurseries, wherever the seeds are extracted and grown into seedlings. One cardinal seedlings volition works astir 4,500 acres of caller forest.

But the programme unsocial is not capable to reconstruct the forest, said Brian Reatini, a geneticist with the U.S. Forest Service. He says they're abbreviated astir 200,000 acres — and that's conscionable successful 1 portion of Oregon.

The warming situation besides means less seedlings volition apt turn to maturity, which takes astir 20 years.

"It's go overmuch much arid, hotter and dryer. One of the consequences of that, it tin propulsion trees towards the borderline of what they tin physiologically tolerate," Reatini said.

To assistance combat that problem, they're sourcing seeds from much "drought tolerant" histrion species. 

The request for banal present requires each hands connected deck. Logging companies similar Collins Pine are helping the Forest Service root conifer cones and wide scorched onshore for replanting.

"Fire and ecology and insects and illness — it doesn't attraction astir a spot line. So if we're capable to replant our small artifact of land, but we're surrounded by untreated, burned wood land, yet that's conscionable gonna go a brushwood tract and it volition pain again and endanger our onshore again," said Galen Smith, the company's vice president of resources.

Neighbors are helping neighbors successful a programme the Forest Service hopes to grow to different impacted states.

When helium looks astatine the seedlings, Kittler said helium sees "the forests that volition beryllium walked done by our children and our children's children."

In:
• Climate Change
• Wildfire
• Oregon
• United States Forest Service