ASTA supports BLM’s National Seed Strategy

The American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) recently voiced its support for the new Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration through its chair, Risa DeMasi.

"ASTA members want to ensure the seeds that government and private land managers need are available when disaster strikes," DeMasi said. "ASTA supports the National Seed Strategy's focus on continued research in identifying appropriate, regionally-adapted species, and the development of protocols to transform those materials into seeds and plants that can successfully restore the thousands of acres of land impacted by wildfires - like those currently devastating Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California."

Attempting to address the threat of wildfires, the comprehensive, rooted in science approach will help protect the landscapes that define America’s heartlands. Large rangeland fires are a major threat to the economy and strategy overall aims to guide ecological restoration that will mollify their damage.

"The seed industry, in particular the conservation and reclamation seed sector, has a long and successful history of cooperation with the federal government," DeMasi said. "These partnerships have been in place for decades, and we look forward to many more years of close cooperation."

The ASTA expressed their desire to help provide seeds engineered for reclamation and conservation.