Native Species

This last year was a tough one on the landscape. Wildfires destroyed thousands of acres of land that needs to be restored. Amy Bartow, Soil Conservationist with USDA's NRCS in Oregon says they have a new publication that highlights native species.

BARTOW: We've been doing research and development on native plants since the early 90's just trying to figure out how to do seed production on native plants to be used for restoration

She says this publication is really meant for those farmers who are interested in producing seeds.

BARTOW: There's not a lot of information out there on how to do that because the native plants are needed whenever they do restoration. So they're trying to put back these eco-systems that have been degradated, they need native plants to do that and so where are you going to find large amounts of seed? So they have to be farmed to be available so we've been trying to develop all that information. One of the biggest reason for native seed to be used is in fire restoration especially all over the great basin area.

Everything from grasses and forbs are included on the list which is available online through the NRCS web site. I've included a link on our website at aginfo.net under Washington Ag today. It's an interesting

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_PLANTMATERIALS/publications/orpmcpu12767.pdf