earth day, 2012

a brief history: In 1988, the Brewer Fire—a 58,000 acre wildfire—occurred in the Long Pines Land Unit on the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer National Forest* in Montana.

While 57% of the Brewer Fire—about 33,000 acres—experienced a high intensity wildfire, just 4500 acres were reforested where adequate seed sources were lacking.

In 2002, the Kraft Springs Fire occurred on the same land—with 70% of its 65,551 acres being a reburn of the 1988 fire. Unfortunately the area has seen an increase in wildfires, due in part to a trend of warmer and dryer conditions which also contributed to their previously uncharacteristic severity.

all photos courtesy of: American Forests**

recovery efforts: As a result of these wildfires, forested habitat had been reduced by 7900 acres so reforesting was necessary to increase habitat and food supply for elk, mule deer, whitetail deer, goshawk, forestland cover, watershed health, fire rehabilitation, and carbon sequestration.

With the help of American Forests, to date approximately 6099 acres in this area have been manually planted with saplings. In 2011, the MT Kraft Project planted about 711,000 2-year old bare root Ponderosa pine seedlings across 1275 acres—including 2500 saplings on behalf of CB2’s customer purchases on Earth Day 2011.

2012 and beyond: We’re continuing our partnership with American Forests so every in-store or online purchase transacted on
Earth Day 2012—Sunday, April 22—is a commitment to a planting in one of their many nationwide projects. We hope you’ll join us—let’s go for a forest.

photo by: Eva Berriman

* to see a satellite view of the area, enter the GPS coordinates: 45.350215,-109.805603 here.
** photos are representative of American Forests’ work nationwide, not specifically of the MT Kraft Project.