TWIN FALLS, Idaho — The Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) is looking for volunteers to plant sagebrush in southern Idaho on April 1 and April 22.
IDFG hopes to plant 13,000 seedlings over the span of two weekends to help restore land damaged and burned by wildfire.
Sagebrush takes much longer to grow back than other wild plants and having volunteers plant the vegetation speeds up the process of land recovery.
“The thing with sagebrush is once sagebrush burns, it doesn't re-sprout. It's gone and the only way sagebrush comes back into that ecosystem is by seed. Well, that takes many many years, sometimes 100 years or so with our seedlings that we're going to go plant out there. Hopefully, it doesn't take 100 years. Hopefully, we have a good ceiling of survival and it's going to recolonize in 30 years,” said Brandon Tycz, Regional Habitat Biologist.
April 1, IDFG and the Bureau of Land Management are planting in an area that burned in the Blue Gulch Fire near Balanced Rock. On April 22, they plan to continue their efforts of restoring the area burned by the Badger Fire back in 2020.
“If we get a 30% survival rate on our seedlings, we call that a success and it's all water dependent. Some years, like this year, I think we're going to have high success, just because it's cool and it's wet so we're putting these seedlings into wet soils,” said Tycz
For more information on this volunteering opportunity, click here.
