Kodiak Island Borough resource manager and officer Maggie Slife was part of a group that went out on a rainy day to inspect the completed replanting of the burn area the Chiniak fire left behind in 2015.
Recently, crews planted 200,000 Sitka spruce seedlings in the area. Slife said things looked good, but it’ll take some time before the burn area fully grows back.
“It’s starting its cycle over again,” she said. “This is how the world goes. In circles, but it looks pretty good for what it is.”
They inspected the planting frequency of the seedling, debris cleanup and general restoration of the landscape. Slife and company also kept their eyes peeled for any sign of rabbits, because the foresters planting the seedlings said they had seen a ton, which could spell danger for the young trees.
“As any gardener will tell you, rabbits are always a threat to small plants so we were looking for signs of rabbit damage to the seedlings, and we didn’t see any.”
Slife thinks they didn’t see any damage because there’s plenty of other things for the rabbits to chow down on.
“Because it’s a burn area it’s all new growth,” she said. “There are just hundreds and thousands of little shoots of all kinds coming up. Salmonberries and ferns and your natural first growth plants in Kodiak are starting to dig back into the landscape. So there are a lot of things for them to eat.”
She says the next inspection of the Chiniak burn area will be in two years.
The goal is to have a 95 percent success rate among the seedlings, according to Slife.
The Kodiak Island Borough is hoping to open the area to the public in the near future.
