Stopping wildfires with trees: How thousands of aspen seedlings could help protect Whitehorse
Crystal To walked through a barren, burnt landscape — over ash, dirt and the soot-black remains of small charred stumps.
She slammed a small shovel into the ground, wiggled it back and forth to create a hole, and placed a small aspen seedling into the blackened earth.
"It's not easy," she said. "But it's kind of relaxing."
To is part of a small crew of tree planters who are slowly filling the Whitehorse South fuel break with aspen. It's her first time doing the job.
The goal of the fuel break is to protect the capital city from wildfires by creating a natural barrier, removing all the highly flammable conifers in an 800-hectare area and replacing them with more fire-resistant aspens.
The Yukon government began work on the fuel break in 2020, near the Mary Lake subdivision. It's one of the first such projects in Canada, and the goal is to have it finished by 2032.
The aspens are being planted by the thousands every summer. This year, 232,000 seedlings will be planted.
For tree-planters like To, each seedling that goes into the ground translates into a paycheque.
"What's interesting about [tree-planting] is that you get paid by the tree, so if you're faster, you get paid more," she said.
The most trees To has planted in an eight-hour shift is 1,620. She says she won't think of herself as a true tree-planter until she tops 2,000 seedlings in one day.
Under her current contract, To is making 16 cents per tree. The pay rate can change, however, depending on how well the trees are planted.
Planters try to plant as many trees as possible, but they also have to pass a quality check — also known as pay plots.
Kate McDonald and Dakota Crawford, fuel management technicians with Yukon Wildland Fire Management, are partly responsible for pay plotting. Wearing high-visibility red vests, they walk through parts of the burnt land that have already been planted.
"We're checking that the density is correct and that the trees have been planted well. We give them a score and then these plots determine how much they're paid — so it's a pretty important part of the plant," said McDonald.
Plots are measured using two-metre cord to trace a circle in the land. All the trees in that circle are then counted and checked for quality.
Crawford threw the plot cord into the air, watching where it landed several metres away from him.
"That's how we pick the plot," he said, chuckling. "Sometimes they'll use mapping software, but this is easier because you don't have to find exact co-ordinates."
McDonald and Crawford traced the plot and counted 19 trees.
"We're aiming for 20 here, they got 19, and 19 to 21 is within the acceptable range. So it looks great," said McDonald.
They check each tree individually, to make sure they're not planted too deep, too shallow or on too much of an angle. They also look for any air pockets in the soil around the seedling — without soil contact, the roots won't be able to grow.
Another common problem is the "j-root," which happens when the soil plug of a seedling is jammed into the ground and it bends to make the roots look like the letter J. Those seedlings won't survive.
Out of the 19 trees in the plot, they found one j-root. McDonald took a photo of it before they moved on to randomly select another plot to check.
"That's the first j-root we've found so far. The checks we've done in this block have been really good," McDonald said.
She inspected another plot of seedlings — plants that may one day help protect Whitehorse from a major wildfire.
"I want them to do well," she said.
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