Aug. 29, 2005 - 20:28 MDT

REAL CONSERVATION ?

Sunday papers often hold out hope in one form or another. There seems to be enough room for the Scare Headlines and some decent news along with it. There is an interesting article by Kim McGuire a Denver Post Staff Writer in this Sunday's paper. In full:

BLM PROGRAM PUTS AWAY NATIVE SEEDS FOR A RAINY DAY

More than 100 colorado landscape species are to be preserved at a collection facility in England.

"Jess Wilkerson and Jessica Shade had hiked for more than an hour, pelted by rain in the marshy backcountry near Crested Butte, when they spotted a perfect specimen of the Sierra fumewort."

"Carefully, the two women pried the seeds of the knee-high flowering plant -- just as they had been trained by a federal government botanist."

"It just spit them out at us when we touched it," Shade said. "It was the coolest plant we had seen all summer."

"The seeds will ultimately travel more than 4,800 miles to West Sussex, England, where they will be cleaned, tested and stored at subzero temperatures in an international seed bank."

"Then someday -- maybe in hundreds or thousands of years -- the native seeds can be used to restore Colorado mountains and prairies."

"The seeds that Wilkerson and Shade gathered are among more than 105 native species of non-threatened plants collected in Colorado since 2002 as part of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's "Seeds of Success" program."

"The BLM's goal is to collect 2,000 plant species -- everything from sagebrush to needlegrass -- to help restore public lands damaged by fire, drought, overgrazing, energy development and a surge in outdoor recreation."

"The seed-collection criteria are simple -- no threatened or endangered species , no crops and especially no non-native species."

"Much of the collection work is done by volunteers with the Sudent Conservation Association, which places students in natural-resource work around the country and gives them room, board and a small stipend."

"Shade, 23, a recent graduate of the University of California-Santa Cruz, and Wilkerson, 21, a senior at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., worked for the program in Colorado this summer."

"It's been great," Wilkerson said. "We've learned a ton, everything from how to identify plants to how to keep a field notebook."

"Once collected, the seeds are sent overnight to the Millennium Seed Bank in West Sussex, England. The Royal Botanic Gardens oversees the bank and hopes to be able to collect more than 24,000 plant species world-wide to protect them from extinction."

"The seed bank's current conservation efforts are focused on the world's plains and savannas, which support more than a billion people and include some of the world's poorest countries."

"At the seed bank in England, the seeds are dried, cleaned and stored at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit -- conditions that researchers say could help seeds survive for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years, depending on the species."

"About half of each seed sample will be sent back to the United States for possible storage at a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Pullman, Wash., or at another facility at Colorado State University in Fort Collins."

"Carol Dawson, a botanist with BLM's Colorado office, acknowledged that the collection work is tough because many of the plant species that need to be gathered grow in hard-to-reach areas on BLM property."

"Still, the work is crucial, she said, if BLM is to build up an adequate supply of native plant seeds for future landscape rehabilitation projects."

"No one wants to see a sea of noxious weeds," she said. "But it underscores the importance of this program. We have to be able to find native plant material for situations like this."

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I think it is encouraging to see work like this going on in our country making one feel that our land could be pretty well restored to it's native state if need be.

I get the idea that there is a bunch of inspired, dedicated people who for scanty room and board and a SMALL STIPEND will spend summers in the prairies and savannas of the world, roasting and shedding rain, trying to shelter from the wind and rain. Small stipend means to me possible beer and eat out money and maybe tobacco of one form or another. However tobacco ? Hmmm, I used to roll my own with canned Kite tobacco until the little rollers and papers were seen as drug paraphernalia, then I would buy generics by the carton at $8.50 per each. Noticing prices lately, cartons are well above $20.00 a carton. Heh, forget tobacco maybe.

Seems to me that somewhere I have read of seeds found in glacial areas that had been frozen for centries when planted had sprouted and grown, also I seem to remember that grain from the tombs of Egypt flourished when planted. I would like to see more of our country's tax dollars spent on efforts like this rather than on some destructive actions. At least this can benefit people the world over sometime in the future.

So, maybe an arm of our government is engaged in acts of REAL CONSERVATION ? . . . . . . . . .

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