Completion Form

2022

For the overarching goals of the program stated above, concomitant methods are proposed.
Each of these protocols/ methods is applicable to all tasks:
1) The state rare plant conservation coordinator will engage with partners and the state
rare plant committee regularly to discuss rare plant priorities as well as needs for surveys,
monitoring, research and ranking.
2) Three to four part-time qualified botanists will have access to data and equipment of
the Rare Plant Team through their term of employment. They will be trained on the new State
database to QA/QC incoming data, query data, and ingest new data sets into the new database.
This database has become essential for the state and our partners to make informed decisions
on upcoming priorities for rare plant work.
3) Three to four part-time qualified botanists will be employed over the state&#39;s fiscal year
to carry out carefully focused and directed field surveys and/or monitoring or other types of
field work as agreed upon by the Utah Rare Plant partnership.
4) Reports from the Utah Rare Plant Program will be submitted to the appropriate partners
on an agreed upon format and a contractually mandated date that meets the needs of the
partners and the State. All Rare Plant team members take part in producing reports.

5) As consideration of the inclusion of plants into the State Wildlife Action Plan (WAP) moves
forward, the rare plant team intends to follow the UDWR protocol for analysis of species that
may be considered for inclusion in the WAP.

The field data collection effort resulted in 964 recorded rare plant observations from the Rare Plant Team, approximately 14,000 acres surveyed and thousands of other observations ingested into our database as associated species. 
In Spring of 2022, notable findings included several new populations/ sub-populations of Jones
Cycladenia (Cycladenia humilis var. jonesii) -- a federally listed species -- in the Desolation
Canyon Area. Two of the crew joined a river trip, while 3 others accessed the canyon from the
top (Range Creek area). Access to these populations was difficult as it tends to call very steep
rocky outcrops home. Additionally, an additional population of Shivwits milkvetch (Astragalus
ampullarioides) was located in Washington County on BLM lands. The species is very close to
Astragalus eremiticus, so a specimen was collected, however, it would be good to grab another
specimen when the plants are in full flower and another in fruit.
The rare plant team established a first monitoring plot for one of the milkvetchs covered in a
new Conservation agreement (signed by BLM, USFS, USFWS, UDOT and UDWR in May of 2022).
This monitoring plot for stage station milkvetch (Astragalus vehiculus) was placed near the
Courthouse Wash campground.
Summer and Fall of 2021, the team spent some time up on Logan District looking for the
endemics of Logan Canyon and found additional populations of Mt Naomi musineon and Frank Smith's violet -- 2 species of interest to both the UDWR and the USFS in an area of a potential mountain goat augmentation.
October of 2021 the Rare Plant team visited the San Raphael desert and found 2 new small
populations of Flattop Buckwheat (E. smithii), extended existing known populations, and
attempted to validate previous observations. The new populations were found 2 miles west and
4 miles southwest of The Flat Tops -- these populations suggest the potential for a larger
distribution of Flat Top Buckwheat. Additionally, a large population was confirmed and
recorded on the southern slopes of The Flat Tops. The Sweetwater Reef population was greatly extended eastward. Existing observations made near Dell Seep Road and 6.5 miles north of The Flat Tops were revisited but the plants were not relocated. These plants may no longer be present in those areas, possibly due to dune shifting.

Winter Office Work
Since the Utah Plant Rare Team is mostly funded on a project by project basis, the ESMF monies
allow the team to complete the work to convert the valuable survey work into usable data.
These usable data include such as new distribution maps, add to our web-based field guide for
partners and project proponents, conservation rankings, and sharing our findings with partners
in meetings and reports.
Additionally, the ESMF allows the 25% match for Section 6 monies from the USFWS.
Added a total of 10,126 records to database since July 1, 2021, 5,193 of which are SGCN or
PSGCN.
Added a total of 35 species to our common field guide (not sure if Jen has the dates finished in
her excel spreadsheet on google drive -- I would say she finished maybe half of the listed
species and anything on top of that...
A total of 60 conservation rankings using the NatureServe calculator (October 2021 to April of
2022)
A final report for 5 years of Goosecreek milkvetch (Astragalus anserinus) monitoring was
generated for the BLM. This report has been submitted has been filed. The combination of the
1/10 th acre count plots, 30 1-meter square demography plots, seed viability tests from seeds
buried in the field has been helpful in evaluating the long term viability of the species in its
current habitat.
Data ingested into the rare plant database varies in form and source. However, data generated
by the rare plant field maps app and data from SEINET constitute a large number of records
created, as well as a significant time investment. As such, two tools were created for Esri ArcPro
to facilitate quality assurance and ingestion of data into the rare plant database.
The first tool created takes point data, in the form of a FGDB, created by the Esri field maps app
and reformats it to fit the rare plant database schema. During the 'crosswalk' data from a field
in the FGDB file is placed in the corresponding place in the ingestion file. Additionally, any rote
calculations or substitutions are performed. This has resulted in dramatically decreased time
invested in record reformatting and quality assurance.
As the rare plant Field Maps app is continuously improved to better meet the needs of the field
crews and partners a more generalized version of this tool is needed. The second iteration of
the tool will be able to dynamically handle differences between Field Maps' data between
years.
The second tool takes data exported from SEINet and reformats and performs rote calculations
on that data. Data from SEINet is exported as a csv in a format that is incompatible with the
Rare Plant database. This tool takes the csv data, extracts needed data from the notes field,
performs calculations, reformats the data, and displays the data in ArcPro to be visually
checked against existing records.

Mindy Wheeler

09/14/2022 15:42:23