Project Details

At 15,644 acres, Gordon Creek Wildlife Management Area is the Southeastern Region's largest WMA. Its high wildlife habitat values and close proximity to Price make it a favorite hunting spot for residents of southeastern Utah. It is home to 5,000 wintering mule deer and 300-400 elk. This proposal would lease the Summerhouse property grazing rights for wildlife within the WMA boundary.

Since 1996, the DWR has leased 840 acres on the Summerhouse parcel for spring and fall elk forage and wintering mule deer. Due to a few springs and ponds, the majority of the elk in the GCWMA area use the Summerhouse parcel heavily. This lease has always been important for management of the WMA due to DWR's neighboring property. DWR's 2009
acquisition of an additional 2,589 acres at Gordon Creek that neighbors the Summerhouse property, make this lease even more crucial for overall WMA management. The Summerhouse property is unfenced and, with the recent acquisition, is completely surrounded by the Gordon Creek WMA. The landowners of the Summerhouse property needs to make money on their property and have been pursued by livestock operators who would like to lease the property for cattle and sheep grazing. Carbon County is a "fence-out" county which means that DWR has the burden of building/maintaining a fence and/or keeping trespass livestock off the WMA from neighboring lands. If this property was leased by a livestock operator, livestock would move throughout WMA and DWR's ability to manage the property for wildlife would be impaired. The Summerhouse property owners appreciate wildlife and habitat and therefore have accepted DWR's offer to lease the property for wildlife. This lease reduces heavy cattle and sheep grazing and leaves forage for deer and elk winter and spring use. Also, by leasing the property, livestock grazing trespass issues are lessened on the WMA.

Provide evidence about the nature of the problem and the need to address it. Identify the significance of the problem using a variety of data sources. For example, if a habitat restoration project is being proposed to benefit greater sage-grouse, describe the existing plant community characteristics that limit habitat value for greater sage-grouse and identify the changes needed for habitat improvement.

Provide an overall goal for the project and then provide clear, specific and measurable objectives (outcomes) to be accomplished by the proposed actions. If possible, tie to one or more of the public benefits UWRI is providing.

LOCATION: Justify the proposed location of this project over other areas, include publicly scrutinized planning/recovery documents that list this area as a priority, remote sensing modeling that show this area is a good candidate for restoration, wildlife migration information and other data that help justify this project's location.

TIMING: Justify why this project should be implemented at this time. For example, Is the project area at risk of crossing an ecological or other threshold wherein future restoration would become more difficult, cost prohibitive, or even impossible.

List management plans where this project will address an objective or strategy in the plan. Describe how the project area overlaps the objective or strategy in the plan and the relevance of the project to the successful implementation of those plans. It is best to provide this information in a list format with the description immediately following the plan objective or strategy.

If applicable, detail how the proposed project will significantly reduce the risk of fuel loading and/or continuity of hazardous fuels including the use of fire-wise species in re-seeding operations. Describe the value of any features being protected by reducing the risk of fire. Values may include; communities at risk, permanent infrastructure, municipal watersheds, campgrounds, critical wildlife habitat, etc. Include the size of the area where fuels are being reduced and the distance from the feature(s) at risk.

Describe how the project has the potential to improve water quality and/or increase water quantity, both over the short and long term. Address run-off, erosion, soil infiltration, and flooding, if applicable.

Description of efforts, both completed and planned, to bring the proposed action into compliance with any and all cultural resource, NEPA, ESA, etc. requirements. If compliance is not required enter "not applicable" and explain why not it is not required.

Describe the actions, activities, tasks to be implemented as part of the proposed project; how these activities will be carried out, equipment to be used, when, and by whom.

Describe plans to monitor for project success and achievement of stated objectives. Include details on type of monitoring (vegetation, wildlife, etc.), schedule, assignments and how the results of these monitoring efforts will be reported and/or uploaded to this project page. If needed, upload detailed plans in the "attachments" section.

List any and all partners (agencies, organizations, NGO's, private landowners) that support the proposal and/or have been contacted and included in the planning and design of the proposed project. Describe efforts to gather input and include these agencies, landowners, permitees, sportsman groups, researchers, etc. that may be interested/affected by the proposed project. Partners do not have to provide funding or in-kind services to a project to be listed.

Detail future methods or techniques (including administrative actions) that will be implemented to help in accomplishing the stated objectives and to insure the long term success/stability of the proposed project. This may include: post-treatment grazing rest and/or management plans/changes, wildlife herd/species management plan changes, ranch plans, conservation easements or other permanent protection plans, resource management plans, forest plans, etc.

Potential for the proposed action to improve quality or quantity of sustainable uses such as grazing, timber harvest, biomass utilization, recreation, etc. Grazing improvements may include actions to improve forage availability and/or distribution of livestock.