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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • FEBRUARY 2020


Reseeding part of range restoration The early benefits have long-term impacts, say range managers


by TOM WALKER KAMLOOPS – The range branch of the


BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development estimates that 39,978 hectares (98,788 acres) of range grassland was lost in the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons. Current policy is to allow undisturbed


grasslands to grow back naturally. But where fire guards and staging disturbed the soil, the branch reclaimed the site though reseeding or replacing topsoil that was removed. A total of 685 km (66 hectares) of


fireguards have been reseeded with ATV- mounted seed-spreaders over the past two years. The objective is to establish a cover of short-lived vegetation to enable native vegetation to take root and prevent invasive plants from becoming established. “Control of invasive plants and establishing forage are the two main goals of reseeding,” says Mike Dedels, wildfire invasive plant management


coordinator with the Thompson Nicola Regional District. A Red Cross grant of nearly $1 million has funded 850 hectares (2,100 acres) of reseeding on private lands burned in the Elephant Hill fire of 2017. TNRD used a helicopter to reseed the


area, which Dedels says was effective and cost-efficient.


“I was surprised; the helicopter time was not much more than the cost of the seed itself,” he says. Dedels’ team has concentrated on


severely burned areas, identified through mapping and site visits. “Where the fire moved quickly through


the grasslands around Elephant Hill itself, the roots of the perennial grasses were unharmed and that grass has come back quickly,” he explains. Reseeding promises to save the


regional district money in the long-term. “If you can keep new patches of weeds


from starting rather than spend that money later on doing weed control, then you have saved some money,” says Dedels. “The best bang for your buck is to


stop weed infestation in the first place. That’s your first line of defence, then go in and do a top-up control, by pulling or spraying.” There’s also science being put behind the rationale for reseeding burned tracts. Eleanor Bassett, a rangelands research


ecologist with FLNRORD, is part of a 15- year study comparing helicopter-seeded plots and unseeded land near Kamloops that was severely burned in 2003. “Seeding is one tool to provide short


term forage and competition against invasive plants,” says Bassett. Speaking to the Canadian Weed Science Society’s annual meeting in Kelowna last November, Bassett said there was no significant difference in plant biomass between the study plots. The seeded area had less wind-borne weeds early on and less cheat grass, but there are now only trace amounts of invasives in either. However, she noted that the plots were not in a weed-prone area. “This is just part of the story and it’s not


over yet. We need further investigation,” she says.


CALF nfrom pg 27


that makes it less likely to do well, the second study found,” she says. “It was the pulled calves that had less vigour that had problems.” Calves that failed the vigour assessments were slow to stand, less likely to be doing so to nurse within four hours of birth and were much more likely to fail passive transfer of their immunity, even if they were tube-fed colostrum within four hours. To improve calf health,


improve vigour, Perry says. Boosting body condition of the mothers is one of the biggest contributors to calf vigour. “Cows that are losing


weight just don’t have the energy to give a good strong calf,” says Perry. “And they calve slower as they don’t have the strength for muscular contractions.” Plan ahead if you need to


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support your cows, says Perry. The time to improve their condition is during the late range period, or coming off the range. “You can’t just feed them


hard in late gestation,” Perry says. “At that time, all you are going to be doing is increasing the ... birth weight of the calf.” Cow micronutrition also


makes a difference. Calves that don’t have enough in-utero exposure to micronutrients like selenium and Vitamin A could be stressed births, says Perry. “Even if we do everything


perfect, we are still going to have some of these distressed births, so how do we support them?” she asks. “That first 24 hours is a key make or break point for those calves.” Get on them right away,


says Perry. “Don’t count on them to


take care of themselves; they will be too beat up to stand up and nurse,” she says. “I wouldn’t wait the four hours to see if they will nurse on their own.” Perry’s top priority is to


keep these calves warm, as they’re really susceptible to temperature stress. Getting the calves warm is an even higher priority than getting food into them, she adds. “Until they are at a fairly normal body temperature, they won’t be able to absorb the immunity or the nutrition from the colostrum,” Perry says. “If you can get them warm soon enough, they will still hold on to that brown fat reserve which can be useful later on.”


While the study did not


show a more positive outcome for calves that were administered the anti- inflammatory drug meloxicam, Perry says she would still administer it.


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