Nurseries Face Challenges in the Race for Reforestation

In the U.S., millions of acres of forest need to be restored. For example, there are over 3.6 million acres of national forests in need of restoration. If we don’t replant these areas fast, we might permanently lose the forests and their benefits for climate, water and more.

Nurseries around the country produce seedlings for this reforestation work. They ship millions of tree seedlings to planting sites every year. This one, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is run by the U.S. Forest Service.

The amount of land in need of reforestation is growing as climate change fuels wildfires, droughts, diseases and pest outbreaks. One such disease is blister rust, which infects white pine. Here, a worker at the Coeur d'Alene nursery studies its effects on seedlings.

But it isn’t enough. To meet the pace and scale of this need for reforestation, we need to grow more seedlings than nurseries are currently producing.

Many nurseries are already producing as many seedlings as they can, while others have problems with shortages of labor, funding and seeds.

At the L.A. Moran Reforestation Center in Davis, Calif., seasonal workers help with cultivation, which horticulturalist Kuldeep Singh says makes for a lot of training and retraining as new workers cycle in and out.

Nurseries often must collect seeds from the wild, which is hot, slow work. Private landowners help by allowing seed cultivation on their lands. Betty Perez, for example, helps a team from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pick seeds on her ranch in La Joya, Texas.   

“Cone collectors” climb high into trees like lodgepole pines, giant sequoias and Douglas-firs to harvest their cones. They drive hundreds of miles from forest to forest. These seeds at L.A. Moran Reforestation Center are from California native conifers.

The Seed Archive at the U.S. Forest Service Nursery in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, keeps a decade’s worth of seeds frozen in barrels.

In areas that experience high-severity fire and other climate impacts, seedlings can struggle to survive once planted. Nurseries are working hard to create conditions while growing seedlings that will help them become better adapted to future conditions.

Some researchers are experimenting with different ways of feeding and watering that might help trees better stand up to these stressors.

Funding is always a concern for nurseries. A mix of public investment, philanthropy and climate mitigation initiatives is needed. The REPLANT Act was passed in 2021, and is helping to remove barriers to reforestation, such as those faced by nurseries.

“Many Forest Service nurseries don’t have enough space to grow the seedlings needed," says Brian Kittler, American Forests' chief program officer for Resilient Forests. "We’re using REPLANT Act funding for an innovative partnership with private nurseries to help fill this gap."