Reseeding to occur for over Pine Ridge

Last summer's Pine Ridge fire left nearly 14,000 acres on the Western Slope dead and scorched but efforts are being made to help bring it back to its original state and re-open it to the public.

When a lightning strike sparked the Pine Ridge fire last summer just outside of Grand Junction, the dry vegetation quickly went up in flames. Now, the BLM is trying to bring it back to life.

While some fires burn quickly and don't reach the soils surface, the Pine Ridge fire burned intensely and scorched vegetation all the way to the ground. These conditions have made the area prime for high erosion, habitat loss, and weed infestation but the BLM is working to stop that from happening and making it available again to the public.

“We do appreciate peoples concern about this. We want to get this area stable. We want to be able to get it back open” said Christopher Joyner, Public Affairs Specialist for the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM says now is the best time for reseeding and it’s dropping the seeds from planes. The seeds fall onto the snow and provide them with plenty of water to grow and the thawing of the winter ground will leave cracks in the soil for the seeds as well.

The reseeding process will drop a mixture of seeds and grasses and these will help to hold the soil together before the monsoon rains later this year.

The first round of reseeding was done late last summer and the BLM will begin a second round next week where it'll drop billions of seeds and spend nearly one million dollars.