The healing process goes on for Nevada rangelands

Friday, Dec. 29, 2000 | 8:31 a.m.

The Bureau of Land Management, which manages the vast majority of the nearly 700,000 acres burned in 2000, is well under way with efforts to rehabilitate fire areas across the state.

More than $24 million already has been budgeted for work, which is expected to cost more than $30 million.

"It's going very well," said Pat Murphy, the BLM's emergency fire rehabilitation coordinator. "We're way ahead of where we were last year."

That was when a record 1.6 million acres of land burned in Nevada during a punishing wildfire season. BLM rehabilitated a little more than a half-million acres after the 1999 fire season, an effort that cost more than $43 million. Some 5.3 million pounds of seed were used at a cost of $17.4 million.

While this year's season wasn't as severe, it was still a tough one and has afforded Murphy and colleagues little respite. Rehabilitation work began before the smoke cleared and will continue through the winter.

BLM is about 60 percent finished with drill-seeding more than 54,000 acres targeted for that process, which involves dragging a seed-distributing trailer behind a tractor. Aerial reseeding of more than 244,000 acres by helicopter is just beginning.

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