HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Planting plugs of wild seed are, from left, Ramona Gardner from the Tucson Plant Materials Center, Angie Laura of the BLM, and Stephanie Beadle, aide for Sen. Harry Reid. D-Nev. Jace Householder is driving. HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Mary Hershdorfer of the Natural Resources Conservation Center office in Tucson, Ariz., displays some of the plugs that were planted at Sunrise Acres. Advertisement

A Pahrump couple will be doing its part this year to help rehabilitate acreage burned during Nevada wildfires.

Al and Mary Balloqui, owners of Sunrise Acres, agreed to plant an acre of seeds for wild grasses that will be transplanted in September to fire-damaged areas.

A variety of environmental agencies were on hand Wednesday during the planting ceremony.

The Bureau of Land Management has had to purchase seeds to transplant grasses on burned acreage from as far away as Idaho and Utah, BLM Botanist Gayle Marrs-Smith said. In Nevada alone 1.9 million acres were burned by wild fires last summer.

"For the fires, we required a half-million pounds of naive seed and we were only able to get about 6 percent of that, which is about 40,000 pounds," Marrs-Smith said. "If they sold us everything they had we would not have enough."

Al Balloqui, who recently began farming melons and other fruits on 10 acres he acquired on Silver Street, said he learned about the program when he went to the University of Nevada, Reno, Cooperative Extension Service and met Teri Knight, from the High Desert Resources and Conservation Development Council in Las Vegas.

Knight said they will plant 1,800 to 2,000 plugs of the wild grass seeds at Sunrise Acres and another 6,500 plugs at Moapa Valley High School. The plugs were shipped to Pahrump from the Tucson (Ariz.) Plant Materials Center, one of a network of plant materials centers throughout the U.S. operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

"We've grown probably 20,000 plugs for this project overall," said Ramona Gardner from the materials center. "We did a little better this year than we did last year.

"People can fill that niche where you can grow locally adapted stuff," she said. "We can turn the big seed growers onto you guys."

Marrs-Smith said the first harvest at Sunrise Acres might yield 50 to 100 pounds of seed. The specific grass is the Las Vegas alkali sacaton, she said, a variety that's not fire-prone and once planted, tends to crowd out other species.

Al Balloqui said the federal agencies gave him $800 to plant the seeds, then will reimburse him another $800 if the project succeeds. Then the seed sells for $15 per pound, he said.

Marrs-Smith said a field will last five to six years, though it takes two years to get a good crop. Property owners can achieve two crops per year. She said the plugs are planted two to three inches deep in the ground and by fall they'll grow to be over three feet tall.

Some established farmers may be hesitant to plant seed for the project, since it's not yet a sure thing and it takes a year to get a crop, Marrs-Smith said. But she said it uses a tenth of the amount of water necessary for alfalfa.

"We're hoping local farmers can grow crops that will contribute to healthy lands and they can make a profit," Marrs-Smith said. She called the concept, "market based conservation."

BLM information on the project states materials grown from locally-collected native seed help preserve the unique genetic signature of the acreage and may afford greater success in plant establishment after a wild fire.

The planting period after wildfires is very brief. Emergency stabilization and rehabilitation measures must be taken quickly before additional damage occurs to the burned area or undesirable, non-native vegetation becomes established.

"If you don't replant you'll get cheat grass and red brome and you'll get another fire cycle," Marrs-Smith said. "We should be able to use these grasses anywhere in Southern Nevada and they'll do well."