BLM's Campbell Tract replanting job is open only to women-owned firms

Only women-owned businesses can bid to grow the plants that will heal a retired trail on Anchorage's Campbell Tract.

The Bureau of Land Management's greenhouse contract — 1,710 native plants to revegetate a decommissioned trail segment — is a federal set-aside, restricted to certified women-owned small firms under a Small Business Administration program that steers contracts toward them in fields where they're underrepresented. The restriction turns on who owns the company, not who it hires; the winning greenhouse can employ anyone.

The order itself is exacting. The winner would deliver 1,440 forb plugs in August 2027 and 270 shrubs the following August, every one grown from Alaska genetic stock so the new growth matches what already lives on the tract. BLM supplies the seed. The plants have to arrive clean — zero noxious weeds — and anything that shows up diseased or dead gets rejected and replaced.

The replanting is routine land-healing for Campbell Tract, the most-visited BLM recreation site in Alaska. The 730-acre spread in the heart of Anchorage draws more than 500,000 visits a year from people walking, running, biking, skiing, and mushing its trails, which tie into Far North Bicentennial Park. Under its long-term recreation plan, BLM retires and reroutes trails periodically — and when a route closes, the ground it cut through has to be put back.

Quotes are due by 5 p.m. July 24.