Project Details

For many of Utah's endemic plant taxa, critical data gaps remain regarding distribution ranges, threats, taxonomic status, population trends and life history traits. Utah currently has 26 listed species under the ESA, more than any other species group in the state. In 2016, an influential NGO placed 1,300 Utah taxa on its rare plant tracking list with associated conservation priorities. As this publication has a wide distribution, these species' profiles may be elevated to increase their conservation status, even to potential listing under the ESA given the aforementioned data gaps. In order to address these data gaps as comprehensively as needed to reduce the state's vulnerabilities for potential listings under the ESA, the program needs knowledgeable, educated and experienced botanists to carry out this critical goal of the program.

To address Utah's high rate of plant endemism and to both work toward delisting and avoid potential listings, the Utah Species Recovery Office (part of UDWR), in cooperation with Utah State University, has assumed responsibility as the premier provider of rare plant species distribution and abundance through its highly functional observation database.  As a strategic long-term goal to reduce the financial burden of rare plants on the sate, the Species Recovery office hopes to be able to permanently employ one full-time cooperatively funded position among partners.

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.

The overarching goal of the Utah Rare Plant Program is to encourage partner participation in the prioritization and the formulation of recovery actions for plants currently listed under the ESA and conservation actions on plants most at risk of becoming listed under the ESA. Several objectives stem from this goal: 1) Assure decisions are being made on the most current and comprehensive information possible; 2) Assure that all funding for potentially rare plant taxa is spent toward effective and efficient work and 3) Increase partner participation and funding for the state rare plant program to create a sense of ownership in rare plant work across agencies.
Relationship and trust building is an integral piece of increasing partner participation and funding for the program. This takes a concerted effort by the entire rare plant team to: a) communicate regularly and clearly; b) assure the program as a whole follows through with all obligations; c) initiate and prioritize work needed to accomplish goals; and d) answer data requests and questions in a timely fashion and in compliance with the state's GRAMA laws.

Task 1- Field effort- Field Data collection on prioritized species.  Summer 2021 and Spring 2022. 
The majority of the prioritized species listed below have been put forward by consensus between the BLM, USFWS, USFS and the Utah Rare Plant Program. Some field work effort will be funded by our partners such as the BLM, USFS and the Utah Reclamation Commission, thus less financial burden on the state. It is hoped with adequate support from ESMF and partners that one additional field technician (including an additional truck) can be hired for the field season to enable more coverage of the state. It should be noted that sometimes priorities change depending upon the season's precipitation and temperature that can change the  phenology of the target plants enough to render them difficult to impossible to correctly identify.  Additional funding from other partners is always pursued throughout the fiscal year.  Requests from USFWS for specific work including mandated post delisting monitoring for Deseret milkvetch and surveys for Ute Ladies' Tresses in the Silver Creek area continue, but no funding for this work from the USFWS is expected. Target taxa for survey and monitoring FY2022 include:

Scientific Name	Land Ownership	Reason(s) for data needs

Astragalus desereticus	UDWR, Private	USFWS De-listing monitoring data needed
Oreoxis bakeri, Erigeron melanocephalus, Saxifraga cernua, Saxifraga flagellaris ssp crandallii, Synthrys alpina	USFS	MLSNF Forest Planning, USFS 'sensitive' species, needed monitoring
Eriogonum smithii	BLM, SITLA	BLM sensitive, little data available
Euphorbia nephradenia	BLM, SITLA	BLM sensitive, little data available
Astragalus anserinus	BLM	Conservation Agreement species, continuation of monitoring study
Astragalus sabulosus, A. vehiculus, A. iselyi	BLM, SITLA, UDOT	Potential Conservation Agreement species, USFWS listing workplan species
Loan Peak endemic species (11 to 12 species)	USFS	Baseline data needed prior to potential Mtn Goat release
Astragalus loanus	BLM	BLM sensitive, little data available
Spiranthes diluvialis	URMCC	Listed threatened, Diamond Fork monitoring and USFWS and EPA Superfund Site outside Park City needs a survey for mitigation purposes
Allium geyeri var chatterleyi, Penstemon navajoa, Erigeron Abajoensis	USFS	MLSNF forest planning/ 'sensitive' species -- Abajo range
Penstemon tidestromii, Cryptantha creutzfeltdii, Hedysarum occidentale var canone, Aquilegia rubicunda	USFS, BLM	MLSNF forest planning/ 'sensitive' species -- foothills of Wasatch Plateau
Penstemon grahamii, Penstemon albifluvis	BLM, SITLA	Participation in the Penstemon Conservation Team for range-wide monitoring 
Centarium namophilum 	BLM	Listed species in CA and NV, reported near Deep Creeks, need to revisit

Task 2 - Winter office work 
 Due to the large amounts of data the crew and other botanists generate over the field season and the interest in these data from our partners, time is needed to perform various office tasks such as organize, ingest and analyze data, generate reports, work on our common field guide, continue conservation priority rankings, outreach to partners and the public, support program goals, update AGOL applications used by our team and partners, and develop species distribution models. The participation of the rare plant team is also valuable for fulfilling duties for the Penstemon Conservation Team, updating and refining our Collector app, and presenting our work at various meetings.

Task 3 - URMCC Spiranthes work 
The Utah Reclamation and Mitigation COnservation Commission has contracted with the Utah Rare Plant Team to survey for and map Ute Ladies' Tresses and its habitat in FY22 during peak flowering - usually in early August.

Task 4 - Data collected over the last 5 years for Astragalus anserinus (under Conservation Agreement) will be analyzed in detail and final report will be generated.

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.

For the tasks stated above, the associated methods are proposed. Each of these protocols is applicable to each task:
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'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.

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.