Strawberry Fire Burned Area Rehabilitation Plan Complete, Great Basin National Park

First published in The Midden*, Great Basin National Park's newsletter, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2019. By Meg Horner, biologist.*

Park staff target invasive plants. NPS photo by Julie Long.

In August 2016 the lightning-caused Strawberry Fire burned 2,790 acres of Great Basin National Park, affecting sagebrush steppe, pinyon-juniper, aspen, mountain mahogany and streamside plant communities.

The plan

The park then wrote a three-year Burned Area Rehabilitation (BAR) plan to deal with problems the fire created or made worse. Its goals:

• restore native plant communities;
• manage invasive plants;
• replace minor infrastructure the fire destroyed.

What was done

The plan's restoration work is now complete.

• Seeding. Three aerial seedings, arranged with the Nevada Department of Wildlife and the Bureau of Land Management's Regional Seed Warehouse, spread a native seed mix over more than 3,000 acres.
• Weeds. Invasive-plant surveys covered 1,230 acres over the three years. Treatment focused on cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and five target forbs; new infestations of Canada thistle (Cirsium canadensis), houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale) and hoary cress (Cardaria draba) were found after the fire and treated.
• Repairs. The Strawberry Creek Road was repaired; the vehicle bridge, restroom and footbridges were reinstalled; and signs and trail work were completed.

Three years on

Strawberry Creek is still recovering, but native vegetation — especially streamside and aspen communities — keeps improving, and arrowleaf balsamroot is flourishing. Work on invasive forbs and annual grasses will continue, as will monitoring to judge how well revegetation has worked. A Round 17 SNPLMA project has been funded to improve streamside habitat and stream condition, manage invasive plants and continue revegetation.

Strawberry Creek reopened for day use in May 2019. It will stay day-use only while the park looks for funding to replace campground facilities, rehabilitate trails and improve access.

Sources

• National Park Service, Great Basin National Park, "Strawberry Fire Burned Area Rehabilitation Plan Complete," The Midden, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2019. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/strawberry-fire-burned-area-rehabilitation-plan-complete.htm
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.