MEDFORD, Ore. — Crews are reaching new heights to harvest valuable agricultural products in the heart of Southern Oregon’s Fremont-Winema National Forest.
“We’re looking for ripe cones at the top of the tree,” said Brian Kittler, chief program officer of the Resilient Forests Program at the nonprofit conservation group American Forests.
Kittler and his team used elevator operators and climbers to show CBS News how the team searches for prey. pine cone.
“The more forests we lose, the more we lose clean air, clean water, and the ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and combat climate change,” Kittler said.
The threat comes from a massive fire of a type unprecedented in the Western world. driven by climate changeAccording to the National Interagency Fire Center, more than 33 million acres have been destroyed since 2020. That’s about the same size as the state of Arkansas.
If nothing is done to restore forests after wildfires, a vicious cycle begins. Fewer trees will survive, There are fewer pine cones Humans pick and plant them. That’s what happened in the Fremont-Winema National Forest during the 2012 Barry Point Fire, Kittler said.
“There are basically no living trees and no natural regeneration occurs,” Kittler said.
Once the pine cones are collected, they are transported to a network of nurseries where the seeds are extracted and grown into seedlings. One million seedlings will be planted in approximately 4,500 acres of new forest.
But this program alone won’t be enough to restore forests, said Brian Reatini, a geneticist with the U.S. Forest Service. He says there is a land shortage of about 200,000 acres, but that’s just a portion of Oregon.
A warming environment is likely to result in fewer seedlings growing to maturity, which takes about 20 years.
“We’re getting a drier, hotter, drier climate, and one of the consequences of that is potentially pushing trees closer to their physiologically acceptable limits,” Reatini said.
To combat this problem, they are sourcing seeds from more “drought-tolerant” tree species.
We need to be fully committed to inventory demand right now. Logging companies like Collins Pine help the Forest Service source pine cones and clear burned land for reforestation.
“Fire and ecosystems and insects and disease, it doesn’t care about property lines. So even if you can replant a small plot of land, if it’s surrounded by untreated burnt land, eventually It’s going to happen,’ and it’s going to flare up again and threaten our land again,” said Galen Smith, the company’s vice president of resources.
Neighbors helping neighbors in a program the Forest Service hopes to expand to other affected states.
Leatini said when she looks at the saplings, she sees “the forest where our children and our children’s children will walk.”
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