Project Details

This project proposes to address watershed-wide ecosystem health across vegetation types over 13,169 acres. The second phase of the project proposes reducing conifer encroachment on 1,804 acres of sagebrush capable landscapes and restoring prescribed fire to 1,000 acres of seral aspen uplands. All of which falls into the Parker Mountain-Emery Sage-Grouse Management Area. The proposed treatment areas have active winter and brood rearing habitat, and possibly nesting habitat for sage grouse and crucial summer and substantial winter mule deer habitat in a below objective population unit.
 
This proposal directly maintains and increases sage-grouse habitat through addressing the threat of conifer expansion, specifically identified as a problem under the Parker Mountain Greater Sage-grouse Local Conservation Plan. It also provides for increased big game forage through prescribed burning of crucial summer habitat. In order to address this concern and maintain persistent large open sagebrush landscapes, encroaching conifers in early phase II will be removed. Persistent woodlands and big game travel corridors will be retained.

The adjacent Mytoge project, funded by WRI, has shown sage-grouse occupation of treated areas. This phase also adds to the lop and scatter on 6,650 acres that occurred in phase I. This was shown through sage-grouse GPS collars data collected in coordination with Dave Dahlgren of Utah State University and the Division of Wildlife Resources over the past two years. A map of the data and treatment locations can be found in the attached monitoring documents.

The prescribed burning treatment occurs in a mix of crucial summer and substantial winter mule deer habitat. Treatment follows the Plateau Mule Deer Habitat Plan in maintaining summer fawning areas through increasing beneficial habitat work in summer and transitional habitat areas. Current mule deer population for the Plateau-Fish Lake unit is 5,100. Significantly lower than the population objective of 10,000. Fawns per 100 does in the unit has been lower the last three years compared to any year dating back to the 2011-12 count.

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.

Project areas were identified comparing georeferenced aerial photos from 1939 with current aerial photos. Where pinyon and juniper expansion within sagebrush or conifer infill within seral aspen stands was shown to occur in current aerial photos, treatment was determined to be necessary to prevent the landscape from crossing ecological thresholds. Without treatment, significant portions of aspen root systems in the area may be lost as mature aspen stems die out and are not replaced under the shade of existing conifer.

This is an area that the Fishlake elk herd utilizes for winter range. In the winter of 2019 the DWR's aerial survey showed approximately1,600 elk worked their way through these acres on their way to Capitol Reef National Park and Cathedral Valley. It is hoped that by treating Thousand Lakes and the Last Chance areas we can slow the movement of these elk by providing some food resources on the Forest Service lands and in this way protect Park Service lands and fragile areas in the Cathedral Valley from winter impacts by elk.

In general upland birds, including forest grouse and turkeys, require open stands of conifer and aspen with an understory of berry producing shrubs, forbs and grasses. A healthy insect component in this matrix is critical for early brood rearing. Healthy mixed forests, early successional forests, and edges of aspen forests provide these kinds of environments. Our current habitat struggles to provide these requirements.

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 or 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 January 11, 2019
     4c. Using WRI, remove conifer as appropriate in areas protected by federal, state and private landowners to ensure that existing functional habitat remain.
     4d. Using WRI, maintain existing sage-grouse habitats by offsetting the impacts due to conifer encroachment by creating additional habitat within or adjacent to occupied habitats at an equal rate each year - or 25,000 acres each year- whichever is greater.
      4e. Increase sage-grouse habitats by using the WRI- and other state, federal and private partnerships- to restore or create 50,000 acres of habitat within or adjacent of occupied habitats each year in addition to 4d.

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.(p.3-4)

9) Greater Plateau Elk Complex Elk Management Plan Unit 23, 24, 25 ABC (2015). Encourage and support projects and management actions that will maintain and restore aspen ecosystems on the unit. (p. 4)

10) Sevier County Resource Management Plan 2017- Water Quality and Hydrology. This action is congruent with Desired Management Practice number 3. Where water resources on public lands have diminished because grasses have succeeded to pinyon-juniper and other woody vegetation, a vigorous program of mechanical treatments should be applied to promptly remove this woody vegetation and biomass, stimulate the return of the grasses to historic levels, and thereby provide a watershed that maximizes water yield and water quality for livestock, wildlife, and human uses.(pg 24)

11) National Cohesive Strategy By means of prescribed fire and mechanical thinning at a landscape scale, the resulting mosaic of early and late successional forests will work toward the goal of restoring and maintaining resilient landscapes, one of the three goals described in the National Cohesive Strategy. 
1. Resilient Landscapes General guidance regarding vegetation and fuels management include* Use and expand fuel treatments involving mechanical, biological, or chemical methods where economically feasible and sustainable, and where they align with landowner objectives. (pg. 58)

12) State of Utah Catastrophic Wildfire Reduction Strategy The Last Chance Project aligns with the mission of the State of Utah's Catastrophic Wildfire Reduction Strategy. The project has developed a comprehensive and systematic approach toward reducing the size, intensity and frequency of catastrophic wildland fires near the Fish Lake basin. The project reduces the risk of a catastrophic wildfire occurrence negatively affecting property, air quality and water systems. The Mission: Develop a collaborative process to protect the health and welfare of Utahns, and our lands by reducing the size and frequency of catastrophic fires. (pg. 4) 
5. Adopt Key Recommendations from the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy. (pg. 15) 
* Encourage federal land management agencies to expedite fuels treatments. (pg. 15) 
* Prioritize landscapes for treatment (irrespective of jurisdictional boundaries). (pg. 15)

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.

Phase II of the Last Chance Habitat Improvement Project project aims to increase watershed health across ecological communities by increasing ground cover in native grasses, forbs, and shrubs within the sagebrush communities and forest resilience in seral aspen stands. The project aims to accomplish this through breaking up of contiguous blocks of conifer into a mixed-severity mosaic with height and age class diversity within the project area. The project, containing a cumulative 13,169 acres of prescribed burning, 6,650 acres of hand cutting, and 1,804 acres of mastication, is expected to increase water quantity through reduced conifer presence. Reducing conifer presence will result in a decrease in consumptive water uptake, leading to an increase in base flows and groundwater charge.

The waterbodies specifically impacted by this phase of the project are within the Solomon Creek and Last Chance Creek watersheds Within the Solomon Creek watershed, there is potential to improve Paradise Valley Lake and Birch Creek. The bulk of the work for this phase occurs within the 303d listed Last Chance Creek drainage with potential to improve conditions in Clear Creek-Meadow Draw Creek drainage.

Several streams within the project watershed are on the 303d impaired waterbody list. These include Ivie Creek, UM Creek, Muddy Creek, and Last Chance Creek. TMDLs are established for the following creeks: Ivie Creek, UM Creek, Muddy Creek, and Fremont River.  The mentioned impaired waterbodies will likely see a benefit as a result of project activities. The increase in baseflows in perennial channels will provide a water temperature benefit as the increase in flows will buffer the variability of stream temperature. Increasing ground cover in sagebrush and forest communities will also lead to increase soil stability, reduced overland flows, and a resulting decrease in sediment delivery to the channel. This decrease in sediment mobility will result in less nutrients being delivered to surface waters and an associated increase in water quality.

The proposed project activities will also reduce the risk of catastrophic, high severity wildfire. This is a direct benefit to water quality and watershed health. Reducing the risk of wildfire is also a benefit to downstream water users and communities who rely on water coming off Boulder Mountain.

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 consisting of macro-plots or transects will occur following treatment and five years after treatment. Vegetation plots will either be established in the project area or re-read for monitoring locations already established within the treatment area.

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 and with seasonal time included as part of the proposal. Weed control will occur as determined necessary by the District Range Conservationist.

Additionally, active sage-grouse leks 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.

Four of six sage grouse radio transmitters were deployed in spring 2019 to document movement of sage grouse within the Tidwell Lek, located north of Loa, Utah on the Tidwell Mountain area, and about two miles south of the project area. The six will complement the previous six sage grouse radio transmitters deployed in the spring of 2017 on the Dog Flat Lek within the first phase of the Mytoge Mountain project, located about 11 miles south of the project area. These collars will be tracked by Utah State University. This monitoring aims to assist UDWR's Migration Initiative Study and the request for radio transmitters is supported by the local PARM Working Group and Dave Dahlgren of USU Extension.

Mule Deer classification routes throughout this project area are conducted annually by UDWR biologists.

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.

The area has 4 miles of motorized trail and 12 miles of road that will be maintained following implementation. Hunting for small and big game will continue to occur and should be improved with greater visibility of game within the project area. Approximately 1,784 acres of the proposed mastication treatment acres are within mule deer critical habitat.

Hand cutting, prescribed fire treatments, and seeding will promote increased grass, forb, and shrub communities.When all phases are complete, the amount of forage available to livestock is expected to increase significantly as a result of this project. With the removal of conifer, the amount of usable grasses and forbs in the aspen and sage-brush understories is also expected to increase significantly. With increased forage, livestock distribution and management is expected to improve. Many areas are currently unproductive due to extensive conifer shading in the prescribed burn and mechanical treatment areas.

Traditional timber sales are occurring on the Fish Lake Plateau west of the project area, where commercial Engelmann spruce stands exist. The Fishlake NF has started NFMA analysis on over 6,000 acres of future timber sales in the adjacent drainage.

District Timber staff have been promoting commercial biomass sales of normally non-merchantable timber such as white fir, sub-alpine fir, pinyon, and juniper to local private companies to be processed into wood chips, Christmas trees, or essential oils.  Some interest is starting to be shown and hopefully a market niche will be developed and more of the biomass produced from the mechanical portions of this project will be able to be utilized.

Fishing (a variety of fish species) is a popular activity in the UM Creek and the Fremont River to which it flows. Aspen restoration will improve transition and summer ranges that will benefit wildlife along with improving water quality and reducing risk to necessary fish habitat and watersheds.  This project will promote sustainability for a variety of sportsmen and sportswomen along with providing more hunting and fishing opportunities for future generations.

Vegetation treatments that encourage aspen regeneration on spring and summer range will continue to provide quality deer fawning and elk calving habitat.  A productive understory combined with some dead and down trees is optimal habitat for big game birthing.

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.