Innovation Anthology #535:

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Collecting seeds to bank with the Oil Sands Vegetation Cooperative for future reclamation is not an easy task.

Ann Smreciu of Wild Rose Consulting has been developing the program and to date, has collected seeds from 24 of a potential 500 native species, including red osier dogwood.

ANN SMIERCIEU: The first thing to do is to find the areas where you can actually harvest the seed, so to know what you are looking for. So we have actually put together what we call harvest sheets. And we have information on how to harvest them, when to harvest them, when the seed is ripe, that sort of thing. Most of it is hand harvested although for some of the tree species, we have to actually fell trees and harvest them that way. But it is complicated in that you have to be there at the right time, and you have to know where there’s sufficient numbers of plants. And you also have to be careful that you’re not harvesting everything. Because you need to make sure that especially with the berry species, that you are leaving enough there for the bears, for the wildlife as well. And also that natural areas renew themselves.

As Ann Smreciu presented at the recent CONRAD Symposium on oil sands reclamation, each batch of seeds is cleaned, stored and tracked right through to replanting.

Thanks today to Syncrude.

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

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Syncrude

Program Date: 2013-02-19