Not enough seedlings, other priorities prevent replanting after wildfires

Recent fires in Pacific Northwest account for “more than twice the impact to our company as the Mount St. Helens eruption,” says Weyerhaeuser

Growth industry: The U.S. Forest Service’s Placerville Nursery in California provides 4 million seedlings for reforestation on lands burned in wildfires or damaged by insects. It’s not enough. Photo: The Register-Guard

By Adam Duvernay, The (Eugene) Register-Guard. February 22, 2022. An expected inability to replant seedlings after the 2020 wildfires is turning out to be not just about supply. It’s also about landowners’ readiness to begin reforesting.

Woodlands and fire recovery experts last year noted a shortage of seedlings in the wake of the wildfires that ripped across Oregon in 2020.

While that shortage was expected to stall efforts to replace scorched forests, 17 months after the fires, many areas still aren’t ready to replant, seeds or not.

“We’re not distributing nearly as many as trees as I thought we could have,” Oregon State University Extension Service Forrester Glenn Ahrens said. “The fires were such a devastating event and [people] have a lot of things to deal with, starting with their homes and their livelihoods, and reforestation of the trees are a bit lower on the list of priorities.”

Replanting a million acres

About a year ago, the Oregon Department of Forestry estimated between 80 million to 140 million seedlings would be needed for post-wildfire replanting, two to three times the usual annual need.

The 2020 wildfires burned more than 1 million acres in Oregon, with private forestland accounting for more than 400,000 of those acres.

Though large timberland owners often have big seedlings orders on reserve, small woodland owners often lack the same luxury.

But an immediate demand for seedlings from small landowners did not materialize quite the way some expected it would.

Bad look: Holiday Farm Fire in Willamette National Forest, September 2020. Photo: ODF

The situation is now more complex than just a dearth of seedlings.

“It seems like the seedlings are available and some of the other bottlenecks are starting to play out … that we didn’t think about right away,” said Lauren Grand, a forester with OSU Extension Service in Lane County.

Many who prioritized rebuilding their homes and livelihoods over immediate reforestation found the woodlands quickly grew over with weeds and other vegetation.

Young timber trees might not survive that kind of competition, meaning many landowners aren’t ready for seedlings.

“There’s still a pending reforestation need on a given property, but now you have a bunch of competition vegetation that needs to be addressed,” Agalzoff said. “If you say, ‘I have trees for you next week,’ they say they can’t get a planting contractor on short notice or they still have a lot of work left to do to get a new canvas for their planation.”

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Ahrens said many landowners haven’t yet conducted salvage harvesting because loggers are busy statewide, and replanting efforts can’t begin until burned trees are cleared.

Though resources are available, Ahrens said not all landowners know about them. 

“Right now, somewhat ironically, we have surplus seedlings from this effort that Oregon Department of Forestry and partners have undertaken. They ordered almost 400,000 seedlings in a hurry right after the fire,” Ahrens said. “We’re not able to get rid of all our trees this season because the landowners are not ready or haven’t connected with us.”

Weyerhaeuser’s reaction

Kathy LeCompte, owner of Brooks Tree Farm north of Salem, said business is strong.

“I’m still getting calls everyday. That leads me to believe a lot of people out there are hunting for trees,” she said. “We are still ramped up for large production for next year.”

LeCompte said her nursery over the past year shifted some production from Christmas trees in favor of timber trees because of their more immediate need in replanting efforts.

“The Douglas fir for this year, we were prepared to sell a lot more and we booked those orders. Our crop came in surplus with extra trees and we’re selling those,” she said.

Burn victim: Forest Service firefighting crew works to save large Ponderosa pine. Photo: Jurgen Hess

Timber giant Weyerhaeuser grows its own seedlings for replanting after logging, but the 2020 wildfires left significant impacts on its timberlands, requiring seedlings be planted.

“You look at the fire itself, both in terms of acreage and seedling demand, it was more than twice the impact to our company as the Mount St. Helens eruption [in 1980]. We’re looking at 125,000 acres to reforest and somewhere between 35-40 million trees to do that,” said Jeff Mehlschau, Weyerhaeuser’s western regeneration team leader. 

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Weyerhaeuser nurseries in Oregon and Washington send out about 20 million seedlings each year to customers outside the company, from small landowners to other timber companies. The nurseries supply a nearly equal amount for the company’s replanting.

Mehlschau said the company wants to have its lands reforested by spring 2024.

“We had to increase our internal production,” Mehlschau said. “Roughly half of our production that goes outside of Weyerhaeuser … we did not stop growing for somebody to grow more for Weyerhaeuser. We kept their space in our system available to them.”

Reporter Adam Duvernay wrote this story for the (Eugene) Register-Guard. Follow on Twitter @DuvernayOR.