About 25 miles down an unpaved road outside of Jeffrey City, Michaela Owens pulled off the bumpy gravel path to meet with contractors for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) at an abandoned mine site. They were set to plant two acres of seeds that Owens has been studying for several years as a part of continued reclamation in the area.
Owens is the Wyoming native plant scientist at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The organization has been collecting, testing and growing native plant species through TNC’s seed lab in Lander for years.
Early last week, that research culminated in one of their first large-scale planting projects. Owens said the research is an important element in restoring critical natural habitat.
“[DEQ] wants to see more sagebrush established in this area and kind of bring the quality of the ecosystem and the habitat up to match what is surrounding it, so that it's a larger, intact piece of habitat for sage grouse,” Owens said while looking out at the old mine site.
Restoring that landscape includes reintroducing other native plants besides just sagebrush. Outside of Jeffrey City, Owens brought a bag full of tansy aster seeds, grown in TNC’s seed lab, for contractors to plant.
“Pronghorn eat my plants all of the time, and I'm always happy about it,” Owens said. “Through this work we're doing, we're hoping that we can improve the quality and provide that missing piece to restoration and reclamation projects.”
Sagebrush habitat is critical for pronghorn, prairie dogs, mule deer, sage grouse and Brewer's sparrows, among other wildlife. According to Wyoming DEQ Abandoned Mine Land (AML), this habitat has been in significant decline.
Owens coordinates the Wyoming Seed Partnership, a collaborative effort to bring new species into larger scale production to be used in restoration and reclamation settings. The partnership includes TNC, Wyoming DEQ, The Institute for Applied Ecology and the Bureau of Land Management.
“We're trying to find either species that themselves aren't available for people to buy for these restoration projects, or more locally sourced populations that we think will perform better,” Owens said.
She said TNC’s element of the partnership focuses on where to collect native seeds, identifying optimal growing conditions, testing seeds in different restoration settings and evaluating which species are best for growing on a large scale.
Owens said that seeds used for reclamation in Wyoming are often species that originate from regions with different conditions than are present in the state. These different growing conditions can be challenging for non-native seeds to establish and grow, according to Owens. She said TNC’s seed research will hopefully not only improve landscape recovery, but also benefit the DEQ and private companies that need to complete reclamation.
However, that research takes time.
“A lot of seeds, especially from wild species, have seed dormancy. So [we’re] waiting for a specific set of conditions or requirements to be met before they'll germinate,” Owens said. “It increases their chances of survival and establishment in the long run.”
Other factors, like the warm winter temperatures seen last season, introduce new variables and challenges to collecting and monitoring native seeds. Owens said this past season, the organization struggled to collect seeds due to erratic germination times, with many native seeds not germinating at all. She said dry conditions and lack of germinating seeds resulted in staggering results to some of her experiments.
“Every year I do these small-scale field trials where we're testing species just in little plots to see which ones do well at these sites,” Owens said. “This year was the first time at one of my sites I didn't have a single seedling that I observed, and that has never happened before.”
As for the mine site outside of Jeffrey City, Owens said it is one of three larger planting projects that TNC was involved in this season. She said researchers will monitor the site to see the results of their tansy aster in the coming months.
