'Aspen spies' hunt seeds for Whitehorse fuel break restoration project

Matthew Evans, a restoration ecologist with Yukon Seed & Restoration, gently shook a mason jar half-filled with tiny aspen seeds.

"Guess how many seeds are in this jar?" Evans asked.

According to him, there were 400,000.

Those seeds will eventually become the aspen seedlings that are planted in Whitehorse's south fuel break. The project aims to create a natural barrier against wildfires by removing all the highly flammable conifers in an 800-hectare, or eight-square-kilometre, area and replacing them with more fire-resistant aspens. 

Before those trees can be planted, their seeds have to be collected, sorted and stored — and that's where Yukon Seed & Restoration Inc. comes in.

"We're trying to steward the environment in a positive way that will help both wildlife and people, and hopefully protect us from a fire in the future," Evans said.

This summer, Yukon Seed & Restoration has been scouting out areas all across the territory, looking for aspens that are producing large amounts of catkins — the fruiting body of an aspen that contains all the fluffy seeds.

"People are driving up and down the Yukon highways for a month, just checking to see where there might be populations to pick from," said Kristina Gardner, the general manager of Yukon Seed & Restoration.

Evans calls these scouts "aspen spies."

"We're literally spying on them with binoculars, it's like we're stalking the aspen," he joked.

Collecting seeds from aspens already growing in the Yukon gives the aspen growing in the fuel break a better chance at survival than if the seeds came from aspens in the southern parts of the country. So far the company has traveled to Mayo, Minto, Pelly Crossing, and Lake Laberge for collecting.

Once a patch has been identified, the team will spend the day using six-metre pole pruners to cut catkin-carrying branches from the trunk. After that, they delicately remove all the catkins from the branch and store them in a bucket to be transported back to Whitehorse for processing.

On hot and windy days, the sorting process can be incredibly hectic.

"The fluffs just blow right out of the catkins and you can't collect them," Gardner said. "We were joking that we should get a net and catch them like butterflies."

A large part of preparing the seeds for storage and growth involves removing that fluff from the seed itself.

The first stage is allowing the catkins to expand and release all the fluff inside by letting them dry out on makeshift wooden trays with screens underneath to allow airflow. Each tray contains roughly 40,000 seeds.

After the catkins have expanded, the seeds are removed from the fluff through the use of multiple soil sieves, and a vacuum cleaner.

The suction from the vacuum pulls the fluff away from the seed and allows the seed to pass through a fine mesh and be collected at the bottom. They're then stored in various glass mason jars and placed in a fridge to keep them viable.

"Aspen seed collecting seems like this mystical world, but it's a really low-tech operation," Evans said.

The goal for Yukon Seed & Restoration is to collect six kilograms of aspen seeds. That's millions of potential trees. 

The Yukon currently doesn't have the resources to grow the aspen seedlings, so these seeds are sent to a nursery outside of the territory to grow. The seedlings are then sent back to the Yukon to be planted in the fuel break.