Dec. 7, 2000: Fish and Wildlife seizes 1,500 pounds of sagebrush taken from Hanford Reach

Fish and Wildlife seizes 1,500 pounds of sagebrush taken from Hanford Reach

This story was published Dec. 7, 2000

By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has seized 1,500 pounds of seed-laden sagebrush poached on national monument land to cash in on the booming seed market.

"I see this as a potentially huge problem in the West," said Greg Hughes, project manager for Fish and Wildlife in Richland.

Fish and Wildlife officers recently discovered a crew of people on the Wahluke Slope of the Hanford Reach National Monument clipping off sage branches with seeds that were nearing ripeness, Hughes said. The officers seized the 40 bags of clippings.

They traced the harvest to a Mid-Columbia contractor and seed company, Hughes said. Because the investigation is continuing and no arrests have been made, he declined to name those involved.

He put the value of the unprocessed seed at about $1,000.

Removing sage seeds from public land is illegal, just as taking game or archaeological artifacts would be, said Fish and Wildlife officials. It's punishable by fines of up to $5,000 and six months in jail, Hughes said.

Fish and Wildlife agents are following leads about illegal harvests on public and private land in the Mid-Columbia, Hughes said.

Sage seeds also may have been harvested at the Mid-Columbia Wildlife Refuge, and Fish and Wildlife has heard from a landowner concerned that his land might be targeted by sage seed hunters, Hughes said.

"Native seed is a hot commodity in the marketplace right now," said Heidi Brunkal, a biologist for Fish and Wildlife.

The large fires that raged across the West over the summer - and land still not restored from previous fires - has increased demand for the seed as federal agencies replant.

"(Sage-covered land) is an imperiled habitat, not just here, but through the West," Hughes said. In May, the Clinton administration named 200,000 acres as the Hanford Reach National Monument, in part to preserve increasingly rare undisturbed shrub-steppe habitats.

Harvesting the seed can be tricky, and biologists are not sure the seeds seized in the sage bust are viable.

Fish and Wildlife officials harvest small amounts of seeds from small areas of public land this time of year but are careful to get seeds at the peak of maturity.

"That determines how well they germinate when we try to grow it," Hughes said.

The seized seed will be dried, cleaned and separated for replanting on the national monument.

Brunkal also is concerned about the natural seed bank in the area where the seeds were harvested.

"They depleted the whole area of this year's seed rain," she said. "Sage seed is very small and does not germinate easily."

About 2 million seeds weigh 1 pound, she said, and they're fairly perishable. Very few seeds will germinate three years after they've been harvested.