Completion Form

2020

The Colorado River Restoration 3.0 project coordinators successfully implemented work across property boundaries and amongst agencies. Coordination took many forms including planning meetings, as well as site visits with contract crews, interagency work, and final assessments of sites.

On the ground methods were primarily:
*	Hand removal and herbicide treatment to clear tamarisk from important native plants including willow and cottonwood.
*	Spraying knapweed and other high priority exotics along the river corridor focusing first at high traffic sites that can be a vector for seed transportation.
*	Mapping and removing Ravenna grass, a newly emerging invasive exotic that has shown explosive growth in this area lately.
*	Manual removal of goatheads at high-use sites along the river corridor.
*	Monitoring legacy tamarisk removal sites along the Colorado River to assess if further removal work is needed. 
*	Revegetation with longstem plantings, containerized plantings, and seeding at tamarisk removal sites. 
*	Frill cut treatment of Russian olive and elm along the river corridor.

RRR: 
Coordination
Rim to Rim Restoration successfully facilitated and supervised many projects this season working across property boundaries and between different agencies. There has also been continued progress on creating and communicating project procedures to contract crews on the ground, especially when there is limited contact with those crews.

Site Evaluations 
Last year's site assessments were used to plan and highlight areas that needed retreatment this grant cycle.  The site assessment form developed last year was developed by the BLM into a tool through Survey 123 that can be used in the field on either tablets or smartphones for gathering site data, updating projects after performing work or for future planning. The development of this tool in association with a GIS database is ongoing.

FFSL: 
As part of its contribution to the Colorado River Cross-Watershed Phase III collaboration; FFSL worked with Grand County Noxious Weeds to identify and treat secondary herbaceous weeds through spot applications of herbicide within tamarisk removal sites previously established through work done in Phase I. Each polygon was visited periodically throughout the year. Spot applications were completed at a much higher rate than if workers had been dependent on backpacks alone. FFSL staff also helped in post hitch data collection and management for several UCC projects.
TNC/DWR Matheson Preserve: 
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) contracted the services of Smoking Goose Consulting LLC, to prepare a burn plan to be used in the implementation of the Matheson Wetland RX Burn.  
The burn plan was prepared in coordination with the state officials and the completed burn plan including maps of the burn unit, was provided to the southeastern area FMO in early June 2020.

Plateau Restoration Inc. Jackson Bottom:
The focus of this phase of the Jackson Bottom restoration project was to start rehabilitation of the access road that runs through the NE half of the property, in addition to overall maintenance, including monitoring for invasive species.  The original plan was to spray the roadside for annual weeds prior to ripping the road and subsequent revegetation.  However, due to high water last year, the site was inaccessible by vehicle as the kochia was setting seed.  Instead, we planted saltgrass at intervals along the road to encourage gradual revegetation.  To ensure survival, a gravity-fed drip irrigation system was proposed.

Project work involved 33 site visits, starting in Fall, 2019 and continuing beyond the end of the fiscal year. Manual clearing dead annual weeds and wildflower stalks was done in fall and spring, 2020 to maintain access for monitoring and to clear planting areas.  Covering a total of 1.5 acres, these dead stalks were smashed as mulching material to inhibit future weeds.  In addition to areas dedicated for planting, main areas for removal were established routes to the river on the SW end and in the upper 2/3 of the site, where Russian Knapweed and Perennial Pepperweed have been observed.  Some seeding was also done over winter in areas where chain saw crew cut tamarisk last spring.

460 tublings of saltgrass and 4-wing salt bush were purchased in anticipation of our Alternative Spring Break college volunteers scheduled for March.  The COVID-19 stay home orders prevented students from coming and, without the labor, we planted 147 plants, including tublings and 1-gal to 5-gal pots of rabbitbrush, 4-wing saltbush, saltgrass and alkali sacaton.  The remaining 360 tublings had to be re-potted and staged for planting this fall.  Due to drought conditions, delaying this planting should have a better outcome.  Several suaeda and greasewood seedlings from within the site were also transplanted into planting holes.

Planting was done in late March to mid-May along both ends of the road, with irrigation supplying water only in the NE end.  Shrubs and grasses were also planted on this end on the slope east of the road.  These are now being watered by hand since the irrigation system struggled to supply adequate water uphill.

23 saltgrass tublings were planted at about 15 ft intervals along about 300 ft on both sides of the road on the S end near the cable gate, also being hand-watered weekly.  Plants were placed in amended soil and protected from the sun using slash.  Crushed weeds were also placed on the ground around plants to reduce reflective heat.

The irrigation system supplies water to 500 feet of the roadway.  The system is fed by two 50-gallon barrels placed about 10 feet above the road, with a battery operated timer set to run for 90 minutes every 4 days.  A loop of about 1000 feet of line delivers water to 40 planting holes.
A native seed mix consisting of 11 species of shrubs, grasses and wildflowers seed was refined and ordered.  A portion of this was hand broadcast in all areas where weeds were smashed down in the upper half of the site, and a distance of approximately 15 feet around these areas, in addition to along the roadway.

BLM:
Canyon Country Fire and Fuels staff thinned and burned an area near Jaycee Park, using a new biochar kiln on-site and a BLM owned bullhog. The BLM also converted the site assessment form developed by RRR into a site assessment tool that can be loaded onto a phone or tablet through Survey 123.

Grand County Weed Dept (GCWD):
Grand County Noxious Weeds worked with to identify and treat secondary herbaceous weeds through spot applications of herbicide within tamarisk removal sites previously established through work done in Phase I, including areas in campgrounds. Each polygon was visited periodically throughout the year. The GCWD also scouted several large areas for Ravenna grass.

The total proposed area for this project was 580 acres. 3 projects were not executed, totaling 284 acres, leaving 296 acres. Due to mapping issues of  overlapping treatments, and shapes being mapped by multiple agencies the acreage mapped as terrestrial treatments underestimates our work along the River this year.  Please see the attached kmz files for treatments by type as executed.  Mapping methods will be changed in FY 2021 to remedy this situation.

The planned prescribed burn could not be completed due to a high water year resulting in extremely damp conditions n the Matheson Wetland. 
The grand county weed department also performed extensive scouting for Ravenna grass, totaling 780 acres of scouted terrain. Adding in the ravenna scouting, the total area comes to 1074 acres.  In order to classify the polygon data for the projects to fit into the WRI categories for upload, some projects were marked as affected area. The uploaded polygons will not reflect those changes.

COVID-19 impacted the capacity for large numbers of people to work on projects together, and also made scheduling a challenge as the overall safety situation evolved.

RRR:
Coordination
Coordination has been fine-tuned over the course of Colorado River Restoration 1 (WRI 4009) and Colorado River Restoration 2 (WRI 4374) and this project. Expanding upon and improving these WRI projects years after year has greatly improved coordination between agencies and other partners including Rim to Rim. Other coordination improvements being implemented in Colorado River 3.0 include more active oversight and overall project orientation and training by RRR with youth corps crews at the start of the project, and tighter and faster post-project reporting.

UCC: 
Below is a list of lessons learned/important project considerations moving forward from UCC crew leaders.

General
Making a large overall polygon for each worksite and then using FFSL and DNR mapping data to create smaller target polygons allowed UCC crews using phones with Google earth to easily check their locations while working, and make sure they were hitting all specified areas at a site while staying within project boundaries. They also focused on remapping each work area after treatment resulting in more accurate but slightly smaller estimates of treated area.

Colorado 3.0 BLM goathead treatment:
Due to COVID-19, UCC crews were available in the summer months, which was earlier than past years. Having the crews available earlier meant that it was an excellent time to manually remove goatheads, which have normally seeded by the start of the fall work season. As a result of this earlier availability, crews were able to treat large amounts of goatheads, which has been a goal for invasive treatment for several years but has never been fully implemented. If it is possible to include manual summer goathead treatments in the future, it would help keep this plant under control.

FFSL:
Secondary herbaceous weeds are a consistent and predictable complication of tamarisk removal efforts along the Colorado River. Following an initial entry within the project focus area, it should be expected that Russian knapweed, Canada thistle, and Perennial pepperweed will become established unless follow-up treatments are completed. To that end, FFSL and Grand County and UCC consistently treat previously cut sites to decrease competition from exotics.

TNC/DWR:
Coordination with Utah State University went smoothly and UCC did a great job with the execution of the work, especially in light of the COVID-related scheduling and safety challenges.  Nicole Croke, project manager for UCC, ensured the terms of the contract were satisfactorily met.

The prescribed burn was not implemented in 2019 due to dry conditions. As conditions allow the prescribed burn will be implemented in 2021 or 2022.

Plateau Restoration Inc.:
Tamarisk removal and restoration have been conducted on 67 acres at Jackson Bottom since 2010 by PRI and Grand County, Utah DNR, and USFWS partners.  PRI has used college students as volunteers for much of the labor.  This private land near the Potash mine has been set aside as valuable wildlife habitat and is ideal for experimentation and training of future resource managers in SW riparian restoration.  During the last decade the site has been flooded twice, in 2011 and 2019.  Most other years have seen abnormally low water, with 2020 starting off as the driest April on record with above average temperatures and the lowest water levels since 2013, peaking near 14,000 cfs in June.  Monitoring vegetation trends over this period of time has given us a lot of insights into rehabilitation of this site.

With this project we attempt to expand native plant diversity in areas that are being slow to recover, especially on the east side of the service road at both ends.  Both areas see abundant wildlife use and have good water access.  Ensuring that native species are now on both sides of the road achieves our goal of biodiversity throughout the site.

Several differences were noted this spring.  Native western sea purslane (Sesuvium verrucosum) had expanded across the access road towards the east for the first time in the northern end of the site, and hundreds of suaeda seedlings had emerged.  Flooding is suspected of causing 4-wing saltbush and alkali sacaton to die off in low areas, although some of the alkali sacaton that appeared dead has since started to sprout.

A relatively cool spring extended plantings until mid-May.  Gnat hatches around the plantings in early June (the only moisture available) caused very rapid decline of the 4-wing saltbush seedlings with leaves becoming blotchy and drying out. Most of the 4-wing saltbush seedlings eventually died, although at least 10 out of the 60 or so planted remained relatively strong at the end of June.

Saltgrass has shown remarkable resilience, often rerouting after complete drying out.  Many of the saltgrass plugs have grown to extend over 10 inches within 6-8 weeks of planting.  Very significant expansion has occurred with the saltgrass on drip irrigation, although even those hand-watered by the gate have expanded to over a foot in diameter.  The suaeda transplants are also growing particularly well.

Russian Knapweed and Perennial Pepperweed continue to emerge as isolated shoots in new scattered spots and these will be monitored.  The site continues to be actively used by wildlife with a herd of 7 bighorn sheep and a herd of 8 deer seen regularly.

BLM:
Canyon Country Fire and Fuels staff conducted Jaycee Park work with a BLM owned bullhog. There was an incredible amount of biomass at this location and several methods for reduction were used including, cutting, piling, fuelwood removal, biochar, pile RX and bullhog. A strong focus for the area was protecting native vegetation with minimal damage while clearing tamarisk. Rim to Rim Restoration staff located native plants to avoid and Grand County applied herbicide to cut stumps. The fuelwood was transported to a corral located next to Jaycee Park campground with a rented Bobcat. The public can obtain a firewood permit from the Moab Field Office for collection and visitors are allowed to burn the fuelwood at the Jaycee campground.

GCWD:
GCWD spot treated herbaceous weeds at five sites for a total of 7.5 acres. They also scouted more than 700 acres for Ravenna grass.

The work on Colorado River 1.0, 2.0 and  3.0 has built strong collaborative relations between land managers at the local BLM Field Office, NPS office, the local FFSL Sovereign Lands office, the County and nonprofit land managers.  With the many administrative boundaries in our area the continued communication through the SE Utah Riparian Partnership is creating continuity across these boundaries and across intra agency boundaries as well.

RRR:
Coordination:
RRR coordination efforts will continue through Colorado River Restoration 4.0 as well as through the SE Utah Riparian Partnership.  Colorado River 4.0 projects begining at multiple sites and the legacy site assessments will help refine future planning efforts.

Site Evaluations:
Site evaluations along Mill and Pack Creek have begun and will be completed over the next few months. Sites may be added along river corridor as well as more tamarisk and olive removal happen.

FFSL: 
Through continued monitoring of restoration sites, FFSL will be able to determine areas where the need for active revegetation is greatest. Such sites will be candidates for seeding or planting depending on specific site conditions. In areas where native species are rebounding and naturally recruiting, emphasis will remain on reducing exotic competition.

Matheson: 
The TNC and DNR plan to continue active management of the preserve to improve fisheries habitat, and bird habitat. As conditions allow the area will be burn as prescribed in the burn plan that was developed under this project.

Plateau Restoration Inc.:
PRI has an agreement with landowner, Intrepid Potash to work on this site through 2021.  Noxious weed control will be managed by Grand County Weed Department and Utah FFSL.  The land owner has pledged to leave the property undeveloped and has offered to rip the road in the center of the property when it is no longer needed for the project.  Since the property is prone to decade scale flooding, its value other than open range (or recreation) is limited.

BLM:
The BLM will continue to provide vital project support, and will help coordinate the progression of the Survey 123 tool.

GCWD:	
Via a new herbaceous weed management plan the GCWD will be able to coordinate more efficiently with grant partners, improve communication and more easily track work areas. This plan will be an important tool in future planning, laying out the vision and plan for tackling herbaceous weeds as successfully as past projects in tamarisk and Russian olive.

Kara Dohrenwend

08/31/2020 11:00:29