Emergency Fire Rehabilitation at WFO,

At the Winnemucca Field Office (WFO) Emergency Fire Rehabilitation (EFR) begins as soon as the smoke clears. Fire rehabilitation plays a vital role in the survival of native plant species and native wildlife. Fire rehabilitation requires lots of time and effort to ensure a successful program. Certain procedures must be followed in order to rehabilitate properly and successfully. An Environmental Assessment (EA) must be drafted, edited and approved by the field manager. If the EA proposes a rehabilitation project costing $100,000 or less it can be approved by the BLM’s Nevada State Office in Reno, but projects requiring funding greater than $100,000 must be approved by the BLM’s Washington, DC office.

The EA determines the kinds of treatments that should be used to best rehabilitate the specific project area. Depending on site locations treatments can vary among rangeland drilling, aerial seeding, green stripping, fence construction or repair, placement of erosion control structures, road maintenance, and horse gathers. The EA also determines seed mixtures and quantities. Each rehabilitated site may require a different seed mixture and some sites may need to be seeded with a special mix. Seed mixes are determined based on grazing needs, wildlife needs, and local growing conditions.

Once funding is approved the seed can be ordered, mixed, treated, and delivered to the appropriate site for application. Before application can begin the site must be flagged according to treatment type. Flagging separates the areas to be drill seeded from those to be aerial seeded, and also marks fence lines to be constructed or repaired. Flags are painted to indicate seed mixture and treatment type. All white represents green strip, red squiggly represents drill, blue squiggly represents special drill, red half represents aerial, green half represents special aerial, and so forth. Section survey markers and quarter section markers are flagged with bright red and yellow flags so that the drillers will not drill over them.

Once everything is flagged and approved solicitation for contracts begin; These include contracts for drill seeding, aerial seeding or fencing. Site tours are conducted for potential contractors and once the bids are received and reviewed the winning bidder, usually the lowest bidder, is awarded the contract. A pre-work conference is conducted with the BLM Contracting Officer (CO), and Project Inspector (PI), and with the private contractor. When all questions are answered and all is accepted and agreed to, the contract is signed by all required parties and a notice to proceed is issued to the contractor so that s/he may begin work.

Rangeland drill contractors, must be careful not to drill in archaeological sites. Staff archaeologists and sometimes contracted archaeologist survey the proposed drill sites and flag the areas they determine to be culturally significant sites. A drill contractor can be fined if s/he drill seeds in such a site.

In order for a contractor to begin work all equipment needed to be transported to the sites by BLM are done so by our transport team. After a contractor begins work, whether for fencing, aerial seeding or drill seeding, a PI will make frequent inspections of the work site to assure the contractor is fully complying with contract specifications.

When a project is complete the PI will inspect the overall job and if everything meets contract specifications certify that final payment can be made. Fence lines are measured by hop chaining and payment is based on the number of feet completed. Drill and aerial project areas are measured by GPS units and payment is based on the number of acres completed for rangeland drill, and shape files produced for aerial seeding.

Rehabilitation does not end here. Monitoring sites are selected by rangeland management specialists and ground truthed by monitoring technicians and rangeland specialists. Plots to be monitored are established and are monitored by BLM technicians. Success rates and percent of growth of plant species are determined. Noxious weeds are inventoried and treated, and determinations are made on land closures. Currently the BLM Recommends closure for 2 years.

The goal of EFR is to help nature stabilize the ground surface and reestablish native vegetation in areas damaged by fire as rapidly and efficiently as possible. This is an ongoing process. After the recover period, lessons learned from every rehabilitation project are applied to future projects to continually improve the practices and products BLM uses to rehabilitate areas adversely impacted by wildfires.