Volunteers Needed for Sagebrush Seed Collection

Sagebrush

IDAHO FISH AND GAME HEADQUARTERS NEWS RELEASE - Boise, ID
Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter and officials from the state departments of Agriculture and Fish and Game are asking for several hundred volunteers to help gather sagebrush seed on four Saturdays - up to 80 volunteers on each day - November 17, and December 1, 8 and 15 in the southwest Idaho region.
The Magic Valley region also will need up to 60 volunteers on each of four Saturdays - November 10 and 17 and December 1 and 8. "More than 2 million acres of private, county, state and federal land burned in Idaho during this year's fire season," Otter said. "Thousands of people were temporarily forced out of their homes, and lives were put at risk. We owe it to the people we serve to act in concert with our neighboring states to reduce this annual threat and restore the lands on which our lifestyle and economy depend."
The Murphy Fire burned more than 650,000 acres of sagebrush steppe in southern Idaho and northern Nevada. Of 75 sage-grouse leks within the fire perimeter, 39 were known to be active in the past five years.
This part of Idaho and Nevada is one of the few remaining places with large areas of unfragmented sagebrush habitat. Seeding sagebrush within the burned area will speed the return of suitable habitat for sage grouse and other wildlife dependant on sagebrush. Officials plan to seed by aerial broadcast a diverse mixture of native and nonnative grasses and forbs on more than 8,000 acres, bitterbrush on more than 1,200 acres and locally collected sagebrush seed on more than 22,000 acres of burned sage-grouse nesting and wintering habitat during fall 2007 and spring 2008.
Seeding key areas can drastically improve the probability of restoring the Jarbidge sagebrush steppe ecosystem.
Volunteers have helped Fish and Game collect locally adapted sagebrush seed every fall since 1992 in the Southwest Region. Sagebrush seeds are tiny - about the size of a pin head - and it takes about 2 million to make a pound of cleaned seeds.
To sign up or for information, contact Fish and Game at 208-327-7095 in the Southwest Region and 208-324-4359 in the Magic Valley Region.

Southern Idaho Places in Picture Form - North Cottonwood Creek, South Hills

About a week ago, my little boy and I took a trip out to the South Hills and ended at North Cottonwood Creek. The South Hills are a kind of sanctuary for me. I was born in Twin Falls and lived in a house "a mile North of Nat Soo Pah" (the way it was explained to others), right down the road from my grandpa's house. We moved away from Idaho when I was just one, but my mom and the two youngest girls - my sister Dana and myself - moved back and lived at my grandpa's house, where my mother grew up, when I was 11 years old. This area is know as the Salmon Tract and it is my ancestors (the Grays and Jones) who settled the area in the late 1800's. I feel connected to the land and know that a part of my history runs in its waters and lies deep in the soil. When I wonder amongst the sagebrush, I feel at peace and am full of reverence for the land.

Southern Idaho is made up of the sagebrush steppe - a wonderful ecosystem full of life and beauty. (Though I didn't think so when I first moved here in 1994.) The area is sometimes referred to as a cold or high desert. Many people see it as a wasteland, but if one looks, one can find vast amounts of beauty and life. Unfortunately, the sagebrush steppe is dwindling in size due to special interest groups. Much of what does remain is badly altered. Luckily, there are people working to preserve this amazing habitat.

A Sagebrush Community

A Lone Sagebrush

Here is the riparian zone of North Cottonwood Creek - the creek's dry of course. Sadly, the cottonwoods are now far and few between.


This is opposite of the creek - quite a starling difference in flora and color schemes.

Glowing willows with the blue hills and sky as the canvas.

Looking to the right...

and looking to the left - quite the contrast!

Willows with their seeds surrounded in cottony down, ready to float in the wind and begin new life.

A closer view.

This road leads to self-discovery, bliss, peace, happiness, or whatever it is you need. Care to travel along?


Which way, which way?

Looking Upstream...

and looking downstream.

I was very disappointed to find LOTS of trash - beer bottles, shotgun shells, plastic bags, pop bottles and cans, and the usual-out-in-the-boonies junk that seems to plague most isolated places. I can never understand how people can go out and enjoy these beautiful places and then leave their litter spread about. So careless and disrespectful they are!

Willows in a Sea of Sagebrush

Sun Shining Through the Cottonwood Tree

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