Nebraska’s foresters could reconsider what the state and national forests will look like in the wake of a historic wildfire season.
Huge fires across the Sandhills over the past five years have complicated replanting plans in the area, leading some foresters to question the viability of repopulating those acres with trees.
Justin Evertson, green infrastructure coordinator with the Nebraska Forest Service, said the damage done to the forests might be too much to simply replant.
“My hunch is there won’t be a lot of replanting done.”
Fires have torn across the Sandhills almost every other year since 2020, spurred by dry conditions that have turned much of Nebraska’s planted forests into a leafy matchbox.
Evertson said if those conditions persist into the future, those forests might not be worth reestablishing; north central Nebraska’s natural environment simply won’t support it.
“At Halsey, for example, those were sandhills. Void of trees," he said.
That doesn’t mean that the state’s forests will be completely abandoned. Foresters’ focus will most likely shift to conserving what remains in the wake of the blazes.
“Nobody wants those trees to disappear overnight, of course. We want to hold onto as many as we can, but we’re not going to try to recreate it as it once was.”
Not all the trees that have burned over the past few months are losses for the state’s biome, though. Evertson said the fires helped clear some invasive species that could easily overrun the region’s natural trees.
“The cedars that burned in those fires? Good riddance. Happy to get rid of them.”
Evertson added that replanting efforts for the western part of the state are low priority in comparison, except as needed by the state’s ag producers.
“The fire damage out west is a secondary concern,” he said, “except working trees like windbreaks for farms and shelterbelts. We’ll probably try to replant those trees that are for cattle protection.”
Evertson said that the state’s native tree species will be a priority for the state’s foresters in the near future.
“In our native forests, we’ll be very active in replanting Ponderosa pine seedlings in areas that had native trees burn up.”
As for the Nebraska National Forest, first planted around Halsey in 1902, Mother Nature may be taking charge in the years to come.
“My understanding is we’ll just let her take her course a little bit,” Evertson said. “There’ll be pockets of trees out there for a long, long time still, but they’ll probably continue to fade from fires and drought as we go forward. That’d be my guess.”