Were you among those last Wednesday and Thanksgiving Day morning who saw a yellow crop duster plane over Pitkin and Garvin Mesas? The Uncompahgre Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) received a number of inquiries about what was happening.

Many wondered if toxic material was being sprayed on the mesas.

The answer is no. It was all seed being dropped from the plane and no liquid. As part of the Paonia fuels reduction project, BLM was seeding the area. Planning for the fuels reduction project goes back to 2006 when Ron Rowell was Paonia fire chief.

Ken Holsinger, BLM natural resource specialist, explained on Monday that native seed species were "applied on BLM lands west of the Farmers Mine Road and west of the subdivision at the top of Fire Mountain Road on Wednesday, Nov. 23, and finished up on Nov. 24 at 9 a.m.

"The reason for doing so is to establish native herbaceous vegetation in the areas where BLM has thinned or will be thinning the juniper woodlands to reduce the potential for wildland fire spread onto or off of BLM managed public lands. The seed mix has been designed to compete with invasive cheatgrass that has or may become established within the thinned areas."

The native seed applied included western wheatgrass, bottlebrush squirreltail Indian ricegrass, sand dropseed, slender wheatgrass, sandburg bluegrass, annual sunflower, Rocky Mountain penstemon, northern (Utah) sweetvetch Lewis flax, four wing saltbush and Wyoming big sage.

"I didn't realize it would garner as much interest as it did. I did call all the people who are neighbors of the BLM up there to let them know what was going on. I guess more folks than just that were interested," Holsinger said.

No more seeding treatments will be done this year, but more acres are planned for next year as a part of the same fuels reduction project. So, about this time next year, different areas nearby will be seeded.

"Potentially we will be doing some herbicide next year as well," Holsinger said. "That's not a foregone conclusion. We have to see how this stuff responds to our treatments and the seeding. If we have a need, we'll do it, but it's not for certain."

BLM will contact the public several weeks in advance of any herbicide treatment.