Cone Collection Aids Critical Reforestation Seed-to-Tree Pipeline
“Watch the cones,” Randi Paris, Forestry and Fuels Program Director, instructed her leads. “We need to gather them before they open.” In late August, the sugar pinecones, dangling from the tips of the branches like ornaments decorating the forest, were just right to harvest.
Truck beds full of burlap sacks stuffed with pinecones were transported first to a warehouse in Hayfork, then to a USFS nursery in Placerville.
Nature’s clock, unbidden to our invented subsects of time, required all hands on deck for a flurry of gathering, organization, and storage over the course of a weekend. The Forestry crew, along with partners Mountain Tree Care, LLC from Medford, OR scaled the trees with climbing ropes and shook the cones loose from their branches. All told, 550 burlap sacks were filled with cones, placed in a large warehouse owned by the Evans brothers in Hayfork, and meticulously turned over twice per day by both the Botany and Forestry crews to ensure the cones dried evenly. “We’re taking great care to make sure the cones don’t mold,” forester John Cluck stated. “With several pairs of hands it takes about half an hour to flip all 550 bags. So far, the cones are drying nicely.”
Several test cones were sliced open to assess the quality and health of the seeds inside. In September, Heather Murphy, Xander Winter, and John Cluck made the trek to shuttle the dried cones and seeds therein to a USFS nursery in Placerville to be raised into sugar pine seedlings. After unloading the cones, the Forestry team was generously offered a tour of the processing facility and a look into the Forest Service’s “seed vault,” where seeds are stored in meticulously labeled boxes on racks that reach to the ceiling of the cavernous building, which is kept at a consistent 0℉ so that seeds can be stored safely for decades. They also took the opportunity to check on the ponderosa pine seedlings being grown for a reforestation project on the Mad River Ranger District near the town of Ruth, in the headwaters of the Mad River. As of publishing this blog, those ponderosa seedlings have successfully been planted by the Forestry Crew!
Our forests are at risk of conversion to woodlands and shrubland due to wildfire, drought, rising temperatures, and impacts from pests, like the bark beetle, and disease, like blister rust. Due to these environmental stressors, conifers need our assistance to re-establish their populations in certain locations.
A tree climber from Mountain Tree Care, LLC shakes cones loose from the branches.
The U.S. Forest Service has set an ambitious goal to reforest 64 million acres by 2040 across the entire United States (Kildesheva, et al., 2023). To meet this goal, the seed-to-tree pipeline must be dramatically increased. An estimated 30 billion trees would need to be planted during this timeline, which is double the current rate of annual nursery seedling production (Kildesheva, et al., 2023). In the Western states specifically, 24 million acres could potentially be reforested, requiring 7.5 billion seedlings to be raised and planted. The task will prove arduous for multiple reasons.
Once planted, these young trees will need to survive dry summers, competition for growing space with brush and grasses, being nibbled on by forest herbivores, and additional wildfires that might revisit their location. Seedlings will need to be overproduced to compensate for the inevitable loss that will result from harsh growing environments.
Beyond the ecological factors that will impede seedling survival and growth, there are logistical hurdles that must be cleared. Achieving these massive seedling production goals will necessitate cooperation with people possessing specialized skill sets, like tree climbing, to collect the cones and stock nurseries with priority species within markedly short time frames. Currently, the Watershed Center contracts with specialized companies, like Mountain Tree Care, LLC, to climb the trees.
All 550 burlap sacks filled with cones were turned over twice per day by the Botany and Forestry Crews in a warehouse owned by the Evans brothers.
In a nutshell, we need more hands on deck. Broadly speaking, federal land management agencies don’t have enough seed stock to support reforestation. The need has outpaced the effort due to the scale of the fires, a generation of downsizing the agencies that manage our public lands, and the overall lack of resources that are available for these treatments. Cone collection and reforestation is being scaled up to meet future seedling demand and maintain forest cover. Nonprofit organizations like the Watershed Center are helping support our federal land management partners with these activities.
This task is not impossible, but its magnitude is daunting. By continuing the investments in forest thinning, post-fire restoration, reintroducing prescribed fire, cone collections, and reforestation, forest cover in the arid West will more likely be maintained. We have the potential to reverse forest loss and manage our landscapes in a way that improves ecosystem function and resilience.
We are grateful to our staff and many partners, especially the Evans brothers, U.S. Forest Service, and Mountain Tree Care, LLC, for enthusiastically tackling this ambitious goal.
Photos were provided by Heather Murphy, Xander Winter, and John Cluck of the Watershed Center Forestry Crew.
Kildesheva, O., Hobbs, S., Dobrowski, S., Sloan, J., Shaw, N., & Aghai, M. (2023). Got Seeds? Strengthening the Reforestation Pipeline in the Western United States. Tree Planters' Notes, 66(1), 4-17. https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs_journals/2023/rmrs_2023_kildisheva_o001.pdf