In order to successfully revegetate and maintain training areas occurring within the South Puget Sound prairie landscape, Land Rehabilitation and Maintenance (LRAM) has initiated a Plant Propagation Project to repair maneuver and excavation damaged areas with locally collected and grown naitve plant plugs and seed.  This project is set up to supply LRAM with a dependable supply of native forbs and grasses to be used in Fort Lewis LRAM revegetation projects.

In the past, the LRAM program has purchased plants and seeds for rehabilitation projects through outside nurseries and found that these plant materials can be costly, often unavailable, and sometimes of questionable quality control.  By starting our own plant propagation program, we are minimizing the costs associated with maneuver damage repair by producing our own plant materials to be used in revegetation projects.  This gives LRAM the ability to use a more diverse palette of plant species - which is important for maintaining species richness within the South Puget Sound prairie landscape. 

These efforts also allow us to better control the genetic integrity of species to be used in repairng our training lands.  We are operating a genetic closed loop, which shields us from problems with quality control experienced by others.  The end goal is to reverse the degradation of our native praireis to ensure that training priorities are not diminished.