After a fire devastated more than 1,800 acres of a Utah forest, land management officials were seeking a means to restore the devastated, scarred landscape in the best way possible.

A Green Bay company, ENCAP LLC, had the answer in a product called PAM-12, which is a combination of seed and a waste-paper component to prevent erosion. PAM-12 utilizes a patented technology ENCAP developed and patented called Advanced Soil Technology (AST).

The Red Bull fire burned through the Uinta National Forest in the Spanish Fork Canyon near Provo, Utah. The 1,836 acre fire burned for six days before being put out on August 3, 2004.

The ability to grow new vegetation after a forest fire is difficult. Steep slopes, scarred soils, and water resistant soils all create erosion control and seed establishment issues for land management officials as they work to re-establish life and protect the surrounding areas.

To demonstrate the capabilities of ENCAP's PAM-12 and the Advanced Soil Technology, soil-scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management set up multiple sites to compare it to conventional erosion control methods like straw. A helicopter was used to apply the products.

Scientists reported that after nine months of field observation, PAM-12 outperformed straw in all three target areas: erosion control, seed establishment, and improved soil hydrophobisity (tendency of the soil to repel water).

PAM-12's Advanced Soil Technology combines the science of a polymer that farms have used for more than 20 years to help grow crops with the technology of a paper granule delivery system that carriers the polymer to the soil in an easy to use fashion.

Michael Krysiak, ENCAP president, said the company was founded in 1999 "to make seeds and (to also make) lifer easier for our customers."

ENCAP utilizes waste paper as the primary component of the paper granule. The company successfully applied to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for a three-year grant to study ways to turn waste paper into a usable product.

That led to the development of a business plan that launched ENCAP into the forest fire restoration market, national retail market, and professional landscape/golf market.

Krysiak said there is a growing interest among federal land management officials in further use of the ENCAP product. "We are continuing our effort to demonstrate the effectiveness and capabilities of our Advanced Soil Technology in these markets that have continuing challenges with erosion control and seed establishment," Krysiak said. "We want to help them achieve their goals and objectives for less."

The potential is great, Last year, there were 66,552 forest fires which destroyed 8,686,750 acres of land.