Volunteers Collect Seeds for the Future
New Sustainable Forest Stewardship Volunteer Opportunities
We all love Bogus Basin, not just for skiing and biking (which is superb), but also for the opportunity to connect with nature in an awe-inspiring environment. Without a healthy landscape full of diverse flora and fauna, Bogus just wouldn’t be the same. This is why our Stewardship team has committed significant resources to maintain and improve the health of our mountain while engaging the community in these activities.
New this year, we implemented a series of volunteer native seed collection events where community members contributed towards the stewardship of our recreation area. People of all ages and abilities accompanied our Stewardship staff out on the trail where they spent time learning about the diverse plant life in our area while collecting native plant seeds. Everything from the eye-catching Wilcox penstemon and Fireweed to more subtle plants like Western yarrow and Rubber rabbitbrush were collected. By the end of our last seed collection event, we had collected over 2,400 grams of seeds (that’s millions of seeds!). In partnership with the Boise National Forest’s Lucky Peak Nursery, these seeds will be cleaned, sorted, and germinated with the goal of using these seedlings in future volunteer planting events. Keep an eye out next year for opportunities to get your hands dirty and put plants in the ground!
If you’re feeling a little FOMO about missing the seed collection events, don’t worry! We have loads of opportunities for our community members to get involved in our sustainability, stewardship, and environmental education initiatives. Learn more and sign up to volunteer here
Native Plants Provide
Operating a year-round mountain recreation area inherently creates disturbances on our landscape. Lift maintenance, building trails, and brush cutting can impact the vegetation opening the opportunity for erosion and invasive plants. Responsible recreation management means we must be proactive in revegetating as much of our disturbed landscapes as possible.
Around the mountain, we are using broadcast seeding and targeted plantings of native plants on all our disturbed areas. While we could use any old plant, we choose to use only flora native to our mountain. These plants are well suited for thriving in a harsh mountain environment and provide habitat and forage for pollinators and wildlife like the Columbian ground squirrel that have co-evolved for thousands of years. In the age of climate change, native plants provide much better resiliency against drought and disease while helping to capture carbon from the atmosphere.
Next time you visit the mountain during summer and fall months, take our Wildflower Guide with you and see just how many different species of flowers, grasses, shrubs, and trees are on the mountain. You might be surprised at how many there are!
Using native plants goes beyond our mountain and extends to our own neighborhoods. As a bit of inspiration, we built a Native Plant Garden in front of Simplot Lodge to educate and encourage our guests to incorporate native plants into their own garden or yard, reducing their own water usage while providing positive benefits to the ecosystem.
Come see for yourself the efforts we have made to make our mountain a better place to recreate!
About Bogus Basin
Opened in 1942, Bogus Basin winter operations offer 2,600 acres of daytime skiable terrain and 200+ acres for night skiing; eleven lifts – including four high-speed quads – and three people-mover surface lifts; an 800-foot tubing hill. The Nordic Center offers 37 kilometers of groomed trails. Environmental education and community outreach programs serve over 20,000 individuals annually, primarily youth. Bogus Basin is located 16.5 miles north of Boise, Idaho, and operates under a special use permit with the Boise National Forest.
Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area is one of the largest non-profit recreation areas in the country. It is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to engaging the community to provide accessible, affordable, and fun year-round mountain recreation and education. Bogus Basin summer activities include a challenge course, mountain coaster, summer tubing, climbing wall, bungee trampoline, gem panning station, The Basin Gravity Park, cross-country mountain biking and hiking, free community events and educational programs, chairlift service to access hiking and biking trails, and guided nature hikes.
