Project Details

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.

Conifer encroachment has been identified as one of the primary threats to sage-grouse populations in Utah by the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the State of Utah. Reducing conifer encroachment addresses, either directly or indirectly, all four of the key sage-grouse threats identified by the Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) Conservation Objectives Final Report (February 2013) for the Greater Parker Mountain sage-grouse population. For convenience, these threats are listed below:
1) Loss or degradation of habitat (primarily due to vegetation succession)
2) Conversion of habitat (sagebrush to pinyon-juniper or cheatgrass at the lower elevations)
3) Increased risk of predation because of expansion of, or changes in, the native predator community in response to anthropogenic factors, and
4) Habitat fragmentation from loss or degradation of habitat that results in a loss of sage-grouse habitat connectivity.
This project will address conifer encroachment while in early phases, decreasing the risk of sage-grouse nest and brood mortality and lowering the need for seeding the area post-treatment.

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.

1) Fishlake Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) also referred to as the "forest plan" IV-3. Integrate vegetation management with resource management to maintain productivity and provide for diversity of plant and animal communities. LRMP, IV-3. Coordinate wildlife and fish habitat management with State and other Federal and local agencies. LRMP, IV-4. Identify and improve habitat for sensitive, threatened and endangered species including participation in recovery efforts for both plants and animals.

2) US Forest Service Greater Sage-grouse Utah Amendment, September 2015. Objective: Every 10 years for the next 50 years, improve greater sage-grouse (GRSG) habitat by removing invading conifers. Desired Conditions: In GRSG seasonal habitat, capable of producing sagebrush, has less than 10% conifer canopy cover. Vegetation treatment projects should be conducted if they maintain, restore ore enhance desired conditions for sage-grouse.

3)Parker Mountain Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) Local Conservation Plan, October 1, 2006. 
2. Strategy: by 2011, make an assessment of non-desirable/invasive vegetation in sage-grouse habitats.
2.5. Action: Treat areas where undesirable vegetation has become, or is at risk of becoming a factor in sage-grouse habitat loss or fragmentation.

4) Conservation Plan for Greater Sage-grouse in Utah, February 14, 2013. 
Sage-grouse Management Goal: Protect, maintain, improve and enhance sage-grouse populations and habitats within the established Sage-grouse Management Areas.  2.0.3 Objective 3 - Habitat: Enhance an average of 25,000 acres of sage-grouse habitat in Sage-grouse Management Areas annually. 2.0.4 Objective 4 - Habitat: Increase the total amount of sage-grouse habitat acreage within Sage-grouse Management Areas by an average of 50,000 acres per year, through management actions targeting Opportunity Areas. 5.4.1 Aggressively remove encroaching conifers and other plant species to expand greater sage-grouse habitat where possible.

5)U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) Conservation Objectives: Final Report. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Denver, CO. February 2013. 
General Conservation Objectives: 1. Stop population declines and habitat loss. 2. Implement targeted habitat management and restoration.  Specific Conservation Objectives: 1. Retain sage-grouse habitats within PAC's. 3. Restore and rehabilitate degraded sage-grouse habitats in PAC's. Conservation Objective: Maintain and restore healthy native sagebrush plant communities within the range of sage-grouse 
Conservation Objective: Remove pinyon/juniper from areas of sagebrush that are most likely to support sage-grouse (post-removal) at a rate that is at least equal to the rate of pinyon/juniper incursion.
-Prioritize the use of mechanical treatments.
-Reduce juniper cover in sage-grouse habitats to less than 5% but preferably eliminate entirely.
-Employ all necessary management actions to maintain the benefit of juniper removal for sage-grouse habitats.

6) Utah Wildlife Action Plan, 2015 Publication Number 15-14, State of Utah, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife Resources, Effective 2015-2025 -- Promoting and funding restoration that reduces the uncharacteristic and surpluses of older age class, including: Dixie/chain harrow, brush mowing or other treatments that reduce the older age class and stimulate the younger/mid age classes; herbicide or mechanical treatment of non-native invasive species such smooth brome; single tree mulching/cutting of invading conifer (p.51).

7) Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Statewide Management Plan for Mule deer. Section IV Statewide management goals and objectives. This plan will address Habitat Objective 2: Improve the quality and quantity of vegetation for mule deer on a minimum of 500,000 acres of crucial range by 2013 (p11-12). Strategy C. Initiate broad scale vegetative treatment projects to improve mule deer habitat with emphasis on drought or fire damaged sagebrush winter ranges, ranges that are being taken over by invasive annual grass species, and ranges being diminished by encroachment of conifers into sagebrush or aspen habitats. Strategy f. Encourage land managers to manage portions of pinion-juniper woodlands and aspen/conifer forests in early successional stages.

8) Plateau Deer Herd Management Plan Unit #25 (2015) - Habitat Management Objectives -- Encourage vegetation manipulation projects and seeding to increase the availability, abundance, and nutritional content of browse, grass, and forb species. Strategies: Habitat Protection, Improvement and Maintenance - Reduce expansion of Pinyon-Juniper woodlands into sagebrush habitats and improve habitats dominated by Pinyon-Juniper woodlands by completing habitat restoration projects like lop & scatter, bullhog and chaining projects; maintain summer fawning areas by increasing beneficial habitat work in summer and transitional habitat areas.(p3-4)

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.

Because juniper are prolific water users; they readily out-compete understory species which eventually die off.  Removing juniper, pinyon, and other encroaching conifers is critical for restoring sagebrush habitat and ecosystem resilience because of the water available to other species once they are gone. This is especially the case when reducing junipers at a landscape scale.

Waterbodies that will benefit from project activities and occur within the project area include UM Creek, the Fremont River, Forsyth Reservoir, Lower UM Creek, and Mill Meadow Reservoir. These waterbodies receive flow/runoff from the project areas and are covered by the Fremont River Watershed Water Quality Management Plan (Fremont WQMP). These waterbodies also have requirements associated Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). The Fremont WQMP was created due to concerns (or impairment) of water sources in the upper Fremont River basin, in part due to phosphorus loading which can be increased by sediment that enters the water. Total phosphorus (TP) is a pollutant of concern, and low Dissolved Oxygen (DO) is a parameter of concern in Forsyth Reservoir. TP is a pollutant of concern for Mill Meadow Reservoir. Low DO in Lower UM Creek is also listed as a parameter of concern (Fremont WQMP 2002, attached in images/documents). Project activities would regenerate improved understory conditions, grass, forbs, and shrubs which should improve water quality by leading to less generation of sediment during overland flow events and thereby delivering less sediment to riparian areas, rivers, and subsequent reservoirs. Reducing sediment can decrease pollutants in these impaired waterbodies by reducing phosphorus loading associated with sediment mobilization during such flow events. Additionally, vegetation treatments would be designed to reduce the risk of severe wildfire and all of the associated undesirable water quality effects.

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.

Repeat photo points and range site survey locations consisting of nested frequency sites recording vegetation and percent cover already exist within the proposed project area. Vegetation surveys will occur following treatment and five years after treatment.

These tools for assessing potential for conifer encroachment and invasive plant establishment, as well as a qualitative site condition assessment, will be completed in accordance with existing monitoring protocols.

Additionally, active sage-grouse leks within or adjacent to the project area will continue to be monitored annually in the spring by the UDWR with the help of Parker Mountain Adaptive Resource (PARM) local working group, to determine population trends and possible relationship to project implementation. 
This will include using five sage grouse radio collars to document movement of sage grouse within the Dog Flat Lek, located north of Loa, Utah on the Mytoge Mountain area. These five compliment the previous six sage grouse collared installed last spring within the first phase of the Mytoge Mountain project. These collars would be tracked by DWR's Jim Lamb and Utah State University. This monitoring aims to assist UDWR's Migration Initiative Study and the request for radio collars is supported by the local PARM Working Group and Dave Dahlgren of USU Extension.

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.

The USFS proposes this project with the support and coordination of the Parker Mountain Adaptive Resource Management Local Working Group. Group members include representatives from Utah State University, Bureau of Land Management, Natural Resource Conservation Service, State of Utah Division of Forestry, Fire & State Lands, Division of Wildlife Resources, and USU extension. The Mytoge-Tidwell Sage Grouse Habitat Improvement Project received supportive letters in the scoping process from DWR, Sevier County Commission, Utah Farm Bureau Federation, and Fremont River Conservation district. USFS hosted a tour of the focus area and proposed treatment location on July 27, 2016. Although the proposed project is on USFS, BLM is interested in pursuing similar treatments adjacent to the project area. Adjacent private land is steeply sloped, contains minimal pinyon and juniper invasion, and is largely near reservoirs. The project is bordered by SITLA and BLM land in the southwest portion of the project area.

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.