RESTORATION BENEFITS

•  Restoring grasslands and open forests brings benefits to plants, animals and people.

•  Restoration allows grasses, shrubs and other native plants to flourish. These plants provide forage and browse for domestic cattle, elk, deer and bighorn sheep.

•  Restoration of grasslands and open forests contributes to the region's rich biodiversity by providing habitat for a wealth of wildlife species, many of which are at risk because habitat has been lost or degraded.

•  Restoration improves forest health by spacing trees and it reduces the potential severity of wildfires by removing forest fuels.

•  Restoration benefits ranching, forestry, hunting, guide-outfitting, tourism, recreation and communities.

•  The ER Program is a significant factor in helping to sustain the East Kootenay's traditional way of life.

 RESTORATION HOW-TO

•  Ecosystem restoration in the Trench involves a combination of industrial logging, machine thinning and hand slashing to remove excess trees from grassland and open forest sites.

•  Project sites are logged, machine thinned or hand slashed depending on the size, density and current commerical value of trees on site.

•  Trees can be sold as sawlogs, chipped for pulpwood, ground as hog fuel, piled and burned, or left scattered on the ground.

•  Tree removal is followed by prescribed burning to maintain grassland and open forest sites.  

•  Prescribed burning controls tree regeneration and rejuvenates native grasses, shrubs and forbs.

•  Prescribed burns - sometimes called broadcast burns - mimic the frequent low-intensity fires that once burned in the Trench.

•  Grasslands and open forests are fire dependent - they are classified as fire-maintained ecosystems.

•  Restoration project sites on Crown land are planned by range unit and pasture within the Rocky Mountain Forest District. There are 48 range units containing a total of 300 pastures within the District. For a map, see Ecosystem restoration overview: range units & pastures Download PDF