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Pine Valley WCSL GNA with UTDWR, 10 year strategy
Region: Southern
ID: 6805
Project Status: Completed
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Project Details
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Need for Project
Wildfires have been growing in size, duration, and destructivity over the past 20 years. Growing wildfire risk is due to accumulating fuels, a warming climate, and expanding development in the wildland-urban interface. The risk has reached crisis proportions in the West, calling for decisive action to protect people and communities and improve forest health and resilience. The Pine Valley is 1 of the Forest Service 21 Wildfire Crisis Landscapes nationally.
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.
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Objectives
Reduce wildfire risk to St. George and adjacent communities, many in the wildland-urban interface. Reduce wildfire risk to infrastructure, including national travel corridors and energy networks. Reduce risk to watersheds and water quality. A major goal is to reduce risks to communities both during and after wildfires by restoring and maintaining healthy, fire-adapted landscapes.
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.
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Project Location/Timing Justification (Why Here? Why Now?)
Wildfires have been growing in size, duration, and destructivity over the past 20 years. Growing wildfire risk is due to accumulating fuels, a warming climate, and expanding development in the wildland-urban interface.
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.
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Relation to Management Plans
Directly ties to the National Cohesive Wildland Fires Management Strategy, Confronting the Wildfire Crisis 10 year Strategy, Shared Stewardship Investment Strategy, And Dixie National Forest Land Management Resource Plan.
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.
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Fire/Fuels
High-risk firesheds are large forested landscapes and rangelands where there is a high likelihood that an ignition could expose homes, communities, and infrastructure to destructive wildfire. Overgrown forests, a warming climate, and a growing number of homes in the wildland-urban interface, following more than a century of rigorous fire suppression, have all contributed to what is now a full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.
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.
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Water Quality/Quantity
Reduction of large scale uncharacteristic and catastrophic fire through fuels reduction and vegetation restoration activities will reduce risk of unwanted fire effects to water quality and quantity. Reducing live and dead fuels, restoring vegetative conditions toward historic fire regimes and condition classes will reduce unwanted fire risk to water quality and potentially increase water quantity.
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.
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Compliance
Project are or will be through signed decisions. Cultural and wildlife surveys are or will be completed.
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.
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Methods
Prescribed fire mimics nature's fire when professionals apply wildland fire to fire-adapted landscapes under carefully prescribed conditions. Many low-elevation western forests originally had up to 60 large trees per acre, but now each acre typically has hundreds of trees, mostly small and highly flammable in a drought, capable of sending flames into the canopy for a devastating crown fire. The solution is to restore a semblance of the original fire-adapted landscape by (1) mechanically thinning trees to reduce the forest to something approaching the historical number of trees; (2) applying prescribed fire to further reduce hazardous fuels and reintroduce fire effects into the fire-adapted system; and (3) at suitable intervals, using both planned and unplanned ignitions to re-create a fire-adapted landscape.
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.
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Monitoring
Monitoring plans are or will be designed and implemented as identified in the project(s) decision document.
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.
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Partners
Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands; Utah Division of Wildlife Resources; Utah's Watershed Restoration Initiative; Washington County; Iron County; Bureau of Land Management; USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; utility companies.
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.
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Future Management
This is a 10 year project, where each subsequent year, funded projects will be added through an modification to this agreement and funds obligated for activities.
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.
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Sustainable Uses of Natural Resources
Management activities are designed to restore resilience and sustainability to area vegetation, wildlife habitat, communities, municipal watersheds and infrastructure.
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.
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