With warmer temperatures, more frequent drought and the severity of wildfires on the rise, scientists say seed collection and reforestation efforts are becoming more important.
A crew outfitted with spurs, ropes and hard hats scaled hefty tree trunks and used long clippers to snip branches loaded with the prickly orbs.
"We've had so many large, high-severity fires in the state, and without our intervention there is a possibility that some of those areas will never be forests again," said Sarah Hurteau with The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico."What we're trying to do is collect the seed to help reforest these areas. This is a huge effort.
In comes Steven Sandoval and his forestry crew from Santa Clara Pueblo, one of dozens of partners in the seed collecting effort. Sandoval's crew has been charged with scouting parts of Bandelier National Monument to locate those ponderosa stands with the greatest potential. Labor- and time-intensive, but necessary, says Meredith Prentice who leads a seed crew with the Ecological Restoration Institute.
Overall, the number of fires in the U.S. has decreased slightly over the past three decades, but the number of acres burned is on the rise. Every year since 2000, an average of 10,900 square miles have been charred, according to figures compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center. Santa Clara Pueblo has been among the hardest hit in New Mexico, with much of its watershed destroyed by fire in 2011. Sandoval said the tribe is fortunate because it began collecting native seed years earlier and had built up its own seed bank of ponderosa, Douglas fir, spruce and other pine variations.
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