Susan Filkins accepts the award from FHBC Chairman Ladd Edmo for her work September 10.
By DANA HERNANDEZ
Sho-Ban News
FORT HALL — The greenhouse nursery native plant program, which is located at the Sho-Ban Jr./Sr. High school had a media day on Tuesday, September 10 where local Fish and Wildlife employees, Zachary Wadsworth, Hunter Osborne, and Tiana Walker were in attendance, as well as Tribal Chairman Ladd Edmo.
Language and Culture department staff were present as well as the various individuals that helped make the greenhouse nursery a success.
Zachary Wadsworth, who is the Fish and Wildlife wetlands and nursery manager, said he has been working with the Fish and Wildlife greenhouse nursery project for the past two years. He said, “the plants within the greenhouse nursery were planted on August 1 and it was accomplished with the help of our technicians and three summer youth employees.”
In regards to what was planted in the greenhouse, Zachary said, “we recently seeded the sage brush here and the Wyoming big sage brush, we also have mountain sage brush, along with various grasses and flowers.” Zachary said he was speaking with the cultural department and they wanted to get some cultural plants that are useful. He said, “Susan Filkins was able to get us some seed for the great basin wild rye and we got some choke cherry clippings, once they are grown we will be handing them over to the cultural department.”
Susan Filkins who is a native plants program botanist for the BLM, said, “We have more in the works, we plan to go and collect more seeds with others from the BLM office.” Susan spoke about the great basin wild rye, which she states is “culturally significant because it is used for mats and that the roots were used to make hairbrushes.”
She said they plan to develop camas and other plants that are not only native, but are culturally significant. She believes it ties into bringing in the high school students to help educate and reestablish that connection. Susan said, “Growing plants in a greenhouse is a lot faster, but it is not easier.”
Wild sagebrush.
Hunter Osborne who is Fish and Wildlife Resident Fisheries director, “Not only are we working with the school, but we are working with the culture department, they have been advising us what are culturally significant plants and we would like to help enhance that because it’s a struggle to protect these sensitive plants.”
“I would like to thank the cultural department and their staff in helping us expand this operation and I would like to thank our tribal council for coming, our tribal chairman Ladd Edmo because really this wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t have the support of our council, they helped us approve our grants, contracts, and our agreements.”
Tribal elder Merceline Bel Boyer then asked Hunter if he knew how the plants were doing behind the extension office. Bell said at one time there was camas, bitterroot, chokecherry trees, and other wild grasses that were planted when the late Kurt Cates was there, and she questioned what was there now or if anybody knew. Hunter said he wasn’t sure.
Culture Resources Director Louise Dixey, said she began speaking with Zachary because she noticed there was a lot of erosion to the Ross Fork Creek near the Tribal Museum and she wanted to develop a native plant section where the community could become involved. She asked Zach to get some native plants going.
She said, “A lot of our plants are being wiped off the face of our ground here in Fort Hall, so it is good to see the bitter brush growing here and it is really significant because it has medicinal uses. Our purpose has always been to teach the young people and to get our community involved in taking care of the plants and the traditional foods. We appreciate working with everyone and we hope to continue that.”
Hunter offered some background about the native nursery plant program. He said around 1996 the Tribes entered an agreement with the DOR. With the small amount of funding from the DOR, they hired a couple of technicians to go out and collect seeds. Around 1999 they were able to expand with the help from the DOR. “We began our native plant nursery program and it was originally intended for growing plants for marketing, to help keep it self-sustaining, as a small revenue for the Tribes.”
He added there was a Bo-Ad class at Sho-Ban and the student’s back then helped them build boxes and plant plants. “Since then we helped plant stuff for our streamside projects for the Bottoms,” Hunter continued. “In 2004 we started working with the BLM and Sheryl Zwang was the one who helped us with cooperative agreements with the BLM. We then reached out to Jason from Idaho Falls to planting them to BLM lands.”
Since then, the way the cooperative agreement works, Osborne said, is they provide them with some infrastructure and they provide Fish and Wildlife with some plants. “We expanded to a couple more nurseries. We never had enough to keep them fully going. They were small agreements. We didn’t have the funding to get them going, therefore we couldn’t grow the plants.”
Hunter said they were operating opportunistically and would go after any agreement and piece the operation of the green house. “One year we would have enough for tables and one year we would have enough for containers and so on.” He said once Sheryl left, they started working with Susan Filkins and entered into the last agreement when they really loaded up on the renovation and in getting the existing nurseries up and going.
“We worked with Steven Paulsen from Living Earth in Twin Falls and he was able to get the greenhouse fixed up and going,” Osborne said.
Steven Paulsen from Living Earth, said, “This particular building has the most sensitive control in regards to humidity, temperature, and water. At full capacity, it can do roughly three million plant units a year. It’s a stunning volume of plants that can be produced here. That requires a lot of attention with a full time staff, but this has square footage and footage is what it is all about. One of the unique things about this is that it can grow bi-paritan wetland all the way to arid, high, and dry cold dessert material. Not every facility has that type of capability. It’s a very functioning facility for a Native plant.”
FHBC Chairman Ladd Edmo handed out some awards to the staff who made the greenhouse a reality: Steven Paulsen who is the Living Earth contractor, the Idaho Falls district BLM, and Susan Filkins from the Idaho state office of the BLM.
Ladd then thanked everyone for being present. He said, “We always rely on our tribal staff. Our tribal council always says they are the bloodline to our operations here in the Sho-Ban Tribes and thank you for doing the work that you do Hunter and Zach — it is really important. The culture department provides information and knowledge that is almost lost in today’s world, we rely on these departments and their staff because it is important for us to preserve.”
FHBC Chairman Ladd Edmo talks to the Greenhouse Native Plant Program staff.
Zachary Wadsworth and Fish and Wildlife would like to recognize and thank the individuals who helped with the greenhouse nursery: technician Tiana Walker, the director Chad Colter, Aaron Colter who is a aquaculturalist.
Zach then went on to comment about future plans, “We want to work with the cultural department and the BLM. We also want to figure out how to get more community members out and to show or educate them about what we do and how to help us.”