Despite thousands of kilometers of pipeline rights-of-way (RoW) in the Boreal Forest, little is known about the effectiveness of natural recovery as a method of restoring vegetation cover following clearing, soil removal and replacement. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of natural recovery on the reclamation of a pipeline RoW in a mixedwood area of the boreal forest, compared to vegetation establishment from a commonly used commercial seed mix. Natural recovery can serve as an excellent method of revegetation in the study area as there were few significant differences in vegetation or key soil parameters between the pipeline RoW treatments on both seeded and natural recovery treatments on the mixedwood site. Vegetation cover on the natural recovery and seeded treatments were not significantly different from each other. Species richness and composition of the natural recovery treatment most closely resembled the undisturbed plant community.