Earth Day heroes: Pat Burke of Bitterroot Restoration is Restoring the Globe

From a humble, one-greenhouse beginning, Pat Burke has grown Bitterroot Restoration Inc. into a business that tackles reclamation projects throughout the world and employs a full-time staff of 125.

Bitterroot businessman has made a commitment to use science to help ecosystems heal themselves

By RAMEY CORN for the Missoulian

CORVALLIS – From restored wetlands in Lake Tahoe to a reclamation project in Romania’s coal mines, Pat Burke’s ecosystem recovery projects span the globe.

Burke’s commitment to restoring and sustaining industrial sites, rather than simply re-vegetating, put Bitterroot Restoration Inc. on the map over the past 16 years.

"I really think he’s a pioneer in that approach," said Len Ballek, vice president of the company and Burke’s partner since Bitterroot Restoration’s earliest days.

"We really look at what the natural process is at a site and understand that, and understand what the limits are," Ballek said. "The methods of ‘just vegetation’ don’t take into account ecology and a long-term sustainable community."

Burke started Bitterroot Restoration in Corvallis in 1987. His goal: to use science to create the conditions by which ecosystems heal themselves.

Bitterroot Restoration integrates the entire ecosystem, including soil, microbes, vegetation and hydrology, Burke said. Employees study the native ecosystem of the designated site and create a model of the adjacent natural systems. Then they re-create the ecological process, which eventually allows the site to re-establish itself and return to a naturally functioning system.

The approach has made Bitterroot Restoration one of the leaders in the comprehensive restoration of large, disturbed areas of land. Generally, the projects are conducted on mine lands, in national parks, and on rivers, streams and lakes all over the western United States.

"Restoration is more than just re-vegetation," Burke said. "A lot of times people equate the two, but it can involve everything from restoring pre-existing landforms to putting a steam channel back together. It can involve remediation, contamination problems on the site, and abandoned mines … in addition to restoring the native plant community, which is sort of a basis for plants and animals."

Burke, who was born in Chinook, moved to the San Francisco Bay area as a boy. He attended the University of California at San Diego, where he received a degree in philosophy. After moving back to his home state to attend the University of Montana, he planned on receiving a master’s degree in philosophy. But Burke’s plans changed, and instead he pursued a master’s in forest ecology after becoming interested in reclamation projects his peers were working on at Colstrip.

The students were trying to restore mined-over land without paying attention to the appropriate native species, or to even planting the right genotype of the species. Within a species, there are many genotypes (the genetic makeup of an organism) and phenotypes, and it is crucial that not only the correct native species be put back, but that it is the right genotype of the species, Burke said.

"A ponderosa pine from Colstrip is a completely different thing than a ponderosa pine from Flagstaff, Arizona" he said.

After observing the students’ work, Burke became aware of the importance of restoring native plants and the appropriate genotypes. And in 1986, he attended the first "Restoring the Earth Conference" at the University of California at Berkeley.

"That was the first conference where people came together from around the world to talk about the need for forest ecological restoration, the pervasive impacts by humans on the environment, and the need to not only preserve what isn’t impacted, but to restore the sites that have been severely impacted," Burke said. "So that was kind of the inspiration to becoming more interested in ecological restoration."

After Burke returned from the conference, he began to think of a way to make a living, yet put into practice what he had learned.

"I kinda put two and two together and thought that it might be a viable business opportunity," he said.

Burke began talking to Western Energy, which at that time operated the mines at Colstrip. The company put a deposit down on future work and that, Burke said, helped capitalize his venture. Combined with help from his family and his credit card, Bitterroot Restoration was born.

Now 16 years later, what was a two-man operation run by Burke and Ballek and headquartered in a single greenhouse has grown to a full-time staff of 125, which seasonally employs 100 additional field workers.

And the single greenhouse is in the company of six others, including one that takes up a full acre and will soon be operated by computer to control temperature, sunlight, water and fertilization. Each greenhouse in Corvallis holds one million seedlings or native plants, Ballek said.

Bitterroot Restoration also has grown to four businesses in the western United States. Along with the office and native plant nursery in Corvallis, there is another business in Sacramento, Calif., an office in San Diego and a sales office that has just opened in Seattle.

And more than 70 Bitterroot Restoration crew members and scientists are at work salvaging and replanting 70,000 cactus and other desert shrubs on a pipeline project near Las Vegas, Ballek said.

Employees of the company have various degrees, including specialists in native plant production, ecology, riparian and upland management. There is a wildlife biologist, geologist, foresters and a horticulturist on the staff as well.

The group’s diversity is one of the reasons Ballek thinks Bitterroot Restoration operates so well.

"We have people from different races, religions, politics," Ballek said. "We have miners, geologists, avid environmentalists who all work side by side, and who all work for what is best for the land."

Ballek said he does not believe the company would be as strong if every employee’s philosophy of the environment were the same.

"If we were all environmentalists or all industry people, we’d never have the strength we do now, due to our diversity," Ballek said.

Ramey Corn is a senior in print journalism at the University of Montana.

http://missoulian.com/articles/2003/04/24/outdoors/od06.txt