Sage Grouse on the 890-square-mile Idaho National Laboratory site have cause to celebrate this spring. Last fall, the U.S. Dept. of Energy staffers planted sagebrush seedlings where wildfires scorched the property. That includes about 5000 seedlings planted by hand last October. As spring comes into full bloom, these seedlings are starting to green up along with the rest of the native sagebrush on the desert at and around INL.
For DOE, the conservation measure is nothing new.
The department has been collaborating with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game for more than a decade on habitat conservation. The grouse initiative is actually just one of 13 measures to help build high-quality sagebrush-dominated habitat ravaged by 20 years of wildland fires.
These fires impact not only sage-grouse at the Site, but many other species as well. Native grasses and wildflowers recover quickly, but it can take up to a century for sagebrush to return.
That's where planting sagebrush seedlings come in. INL started the program in the fall of 2014 by collecting seed heads and sending them to a greenhouse nursery operated by the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes. Eight to nine months later, the seeds were ready for planting.