Project Details

The imperiled sagebrush biome in western North America provides habitat for > 350 wildlife species (Remington et al. 2021). Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus spp.) and sagebrush-obligate songbirds (e.g., Brewer's Sparrow [Spizella breweri], Sagebrush Sparrow [Artemisiospiza nevadensis], and Sage Thrasher [Oreoscoptes montanus]) are sagebrush reliant and have become species of conservation concern. Ecosystem degradation includes loss and fragmentation of sagebrush through anthropogenic development, altered wildfire regimes, climate change, and conifer encroachment. Pinyon-Juniper mastication has become a successful and commonly used conservation practice to increase the availability of sagebrush (Donnelly et al. 2017). However, recently there has been increased concern for declining populations of Pinyon Jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus), a Pinyon-Juniper obligate, and a petition to list under the Endangered Species Act (1973; Defenders of Wildlife 2022). There is a paucity of science-based information for understanding why Pinyon Jay populations are declining and for supporting conservation measures (Somershoe et al. 2020). This lack of understanding has magnified the challenge of increasing sagebrush availability via conifer reductions and conserving Pinyon Jays.

Wildfire, and associated cheatgrass invasion, has become a significant threat to sagebrush systems and sagebrush-reliant species. Increased understanding of vegetation recovery following wildfire within sagebrush and PJ woodlands is needed, especially the response of wildlife. Along with wildfire, Pinyon-Juniper mastication and sagebrush canopy treatments have been common management practice throughout Utah. However, with conservation concerns increasing for sagebrush obligate species, the frequency of sagebrush treatment projects has declined considerably. Within the Parker Mountain Resource Area, Dahlgren et al. (2006) found that Greater Sage-Grouse (C. urophasianus; hereinafter Sage-Grouse) responded positively, especially to Tebuthiuron (i.e., Spike) treatments in small (< 41 ha) areas within late brood-rearing habitat. To help maintain Sage-Grouse brood rearing habitat, livestock and wildlife forage, partners have been working together to complete a multi-year series of Spike treatments in mountain big sagebrush communities on Parker Mountain. From 2023 to 2027, small acreages (i.e., < 41 ha) of treatments are being implemented in Sage-Grouse late brood-rearing habitat across a large landscape (i.e., ~ 85,000 ha) of intact sagebrush. In the Tri-State Area wildfire has been a common occurrence over that last several decades and multiple burn areas are recovering with varying time-since-fire. Pinyon-Juniper mastication projects have been implemented in both areas at landscape scales for a few decades now. These study areas provide an opportunity to gain further insight into the post-disturbance response of Sage-Grouse, sagebrush-obligate songbirds, and Pinyon-Jay to the recovery of sagebrush and PJ habitat.

Our proposed research herein on Parker Mountain will begin Spring 2025. The work in this area will focus on the response of Sage-Grouse and sagebrush obligate songbirds to Spike treatments that are currently being applied as part of WRI Projects Parker Mountain Spike Treatments Phases I, II, and III (WRI Project #'s 5972, 6595, and 6989). The research in the Tri-State Area began in 2022 as part of Project 5791 and will continue through 2026. This proposed project will continue and finish the research in the Tri-State Area.

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.

Our overarching objective is to provide science-based information needed to support management of Pinyon-Juniper and sagebrush systems for wildlife that rely on these communities. Our specific goals are to; 1) determine the response of sagebrush-obligate songbirds and Sage-Grouse to prescribed sagebrush canopy reduction treatments in mountain big sagebrush communities and post-burn sagebrush recovery areas, 2) evaluate movements and seasonal habitat selection for Sage-Grouse, 3) describe Pinyon Jay habitat selection (i.e., breeding colonies, feeding, and caching) in a landscape with varying habitat availability, including intact old growth Pinyon-Juniper, different phases of conifer encroachment into sagebrush, treated/masticated Pinyon-Juniper, and more open sagebrush areas, and 4) describe Pinyon Jay movements for breeding adults and juvenile dispersal. The information we provide would help guide local and state conservation and management decisions, as well as regional and national policy and planning, within sagebrush and Pinyon-Juniper systems for our target species.

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.

Conservation Plan for Greater Sage-Grouse in Utah
1) protect habitat which provided year-round life-cycle needs of sage-grouse
2) perpetuation of conditions necessary to ensure recruitment of a continuing
population within the aggregate state population
3)enhancement or improvement of sage-grouse habitat that has been impaired or altered
through restoration or rehabilitation activities
4) Objective 3 - Habitat - Enhance an average of 25,000 acres of sage-grouse habitat in SGMAs annually
5) Objective 5 - Distribution - Maintain viable populations of sage-grouse within each SGMA
6) work with Local Area Working Groups to conserve sage-grouse
7) Fire Control - reduce risk of wildfire in sage-grouse habitat
8) Invasive Species - reduce the risk of habitat loss to invasive species, including cheatgrass
9) Vegetation Management - Aggressively remove cheatgreass and other invasive species, and rehabilitate areas to provide additional habitat for greater sage-grouse where possible.

Parker Mountain Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) Local Conservation Plan
1) Fire Management - reduce risk of wildfire by controlling cheatgrass
2) Livestock Grazing - keeping viable well management livestock grazing to preserve the habitat and local community
3) Invasive Plant Species - Reduce risk of cheatgrass invasion and control areas where invasion has occurred

Additional Resource Goals and Objective will include:
#1)Establishment of this project will increase winter range carrying capacity for mule deer and elk and pronghorn in the area, this project also falls within a UDWR Focus area. 
#2)This will be in relation to UDWR mission and goal statement of improving, conserving and protecting wildlife habitat to promote healthy wildlife populations. 
#3)This area is consistent with improving and addressing UDWR goals and objectives in the recent strategic management plan, expanding wildlife populations, protecting existing wildlife habitat, achieve broad-based support for Division programs, and improve communications with wildlife organizations, public officials, private landowners and government agencies to obtain support for Division programs. 
The proposed projects will address the following goals and objectives of the Division of Wildlife Resources most recent strategic management plan:
#4)Resource Goal: expand wildlife populations and conserve sensitive species by protecting and improving wildlife habitat.
Objective 1: protect existing wildlife habitat and improve 500,000 acres of critical habitats and watersheds throughout the state.
Objective 3: conserve sensitive species to prevent them from becoming listed as threatened or endangered.
#5)Constituency Goal: Achieve broad-based support for Division programs and budgets by demonstrating the value of wildlife to all citizens of Utah.
Objective 2: improve communication with wildlife organizations, public officials, private landowners, and government agencies to obtain support for Division programs.
#6)As identified in the Utah Wildlife Action Plan, Utah's shrubsteppe habitat is home to 20 species that require conservation; mule deer, sage thrasher, sage sparrow, and Brewer's sparrow are listed as Tier Three species within the shrubsteppe key habitat type. This project will increase and improve shrubsteppe wildlife habitat within the WMA.
#7)This project also falls within the Parker Mountain WMU where additional projects have been done.
#8)SITLA is also willing to work with the Landowner and the proper Rangeland Improvement form will be filled out through SITLA, which would add to the overall goals and objectives for improving rangeland health and conditions. 
#9)The objectives and goals of the project are consistent with those stated in the BLM Richfield Field Office RMP talking about vegetation management decisions and goals for wildlife, watershed and healthy rangeland conditions (page 78 ).

*Utah has finalized it's Sage Grouse Management plan and enclosed are related goals and objectives from that plan that are associated with SGMA's (Parker Mountain-Emery):
#1) Protection of habitat that provides year round use.
#2) Ensure recruitment of a continuing population.
#3) Enhance or Improve sage grouse habitat
#4) Protect 10,000 acres on SITLA through habitat restoration practices.
#5) Enhance 25,000 acres annually with a SGMA.
#6) Increase 50,000 acres annually through management  actions (prescribed grazing, invasive weed control, pj removal)
#7) Removal of encroaching PJ along with improved water development in wet meadows, ponds and spring sites.

*Richfield Field Office RMP 
- Manage for a mix of vegetative types, structural stages, and provide for native plant, fish, and wildlife (including SSS) habitats.
- Sustain or reestablish the integrity of the sagebrush continuity, and quality of habitat.

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.

To assess the response of sagebrush-obligate songbirds to Spike treatments in mountain big sagebrush and in post-fire recovery areas we will use the Intermountain Bird Conservancy of the Rockies (IMBCR) protocols for surveying for breeding songbirds in May and June (McLaren 2019). We will randomly place a grid of 16 points (i.e., 250 m apart) within treatment and reference polygons in a paired-plot design across Parker Mountain. Reference areas were selected close to and the same size as the treatment area but remain untreated with intact sagebrush canopy. In July and August, to evaluate Sage-Grouse use of treatment/post-fire and reference areas, we will establish rectangular transects to conduct pointing dog surveys and pellet counts. Distance sampling methods will be used (Buckland et al. 2015) to estimate the density of Sage-Grouse and pellets for treatment and reference areas. These two sampling methods have been used effectively in the past for similar purposes (Dahlgren et al. 2006, Dahlgren et al. 2020).

Previously, GPS-radios were too large for Pinyon Jay and could not meet the 5% of body weight required for avian research (Fair et al. 2023). Our lab at Utah State University has been involved in the first studies to capture and radio-mark Pinyon Jay with GPS radios (i.e., Pinyon Jay research project in the Tri-State Area of Utah, Idaho, and Nevada). We have experienced a steep learning curve for capturing Pinyon Jays and determining radio characteristics and type that are best for jays. After trying several manufacturers/models, we are currently putting our resources into 5g solar GPS radios from Druid Technologies with cellular data transmission (i.e., GSM). We plan to use the same GPS radio for this proposed research. We are currently assessing these Druid GPS-GSM radios and, if successfully funded, we will apply our findings to this proposed research.

Annually, we will conduct Pinyon Jay breeding surveys and colony searches from March through May across the study area according to sampling protocols from the Pinyon Jay Range-Wide Working Group. Colonies, cache sites, and other movement and concentration areas will be delineated during these surveys, and we will establish automated seed feeders (e.g., sunflower seeds and peanuts) in these specific locations to attract Pinyon Jays and habituate them to the feeder. We will use motion cameras and Audio Recording Units (ARUs) to assess feeder attendance. Once jays are regularly using a feeder, we will set funnel walk-in traps to capture Pinyon Jays and mark them with individualized leg bands and a GPS radio using a rump-mount harness. Dr. Dahlgren currently has a Federal Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) Permit (#24391) and a State of Utah Certificate of Registration (i.e., COR# 2COLL10876) for capturing and marking Pinyon Jays. The GPS location schedule will be optimized for the highest data resolution that maintains battery charge based on our current research project in the Tri-State Area. Location data will be collected year-round. We plan to capture and mark breeding adults for habitat selection and juveniles (i.e., 100 g) to assess behavior and habitat characteristics that facilitate dispersal.
 
Data Analyses. --We will use Pinyon Jay telemetry locations within Resource Selection Functions (RSF) to assess habitat selection, likely at the 3rd order. An integrated step selection analysis (iSSA; Avgar et al. 2016) will be used to analyze Pinyon Jay movements. For assessing abundance of sagebrush-obligate songbirds from count data, we will estimate the proportion of the population that was missed during sampling (Farnsworth et al. 2002, Royle 2004, Buckland et al. 2015). To estimate factors influencing detection probability, we will primarily follow a combination of methods outlined by Amundson et al. (2014) and Van Lanen et al. (2023). We can then model the underlying abundance of birds at each point Ni. We will compare relevant combinations of covariates in our models using Akaike Information Criterion (Buckland et al. 2015). For pointing dog and pellet surveys, Sage-Grouse density and probability of detection in treated and reference plots will be estimated using the R package Unmarked within distance sampling models (Fiske and Chandler 2011). For all analyses, the Rangeland Analysis Platform (Allred et al. 2021, Jones et al. 2021, Robinson et al. 2019) and Landfire (landfire.gov) datasets will be used to characterize vegetation, topographic, and other landscape characteristics. See Appendix A for literature citations.

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.

Partnerships are the reason this proposal has been developed. The Parker Mountain Adaptive Resource Management (PARM) Local Working Group has asked for and provided direct input into developing this proposed research. PARM is a collaboration of public and private entities interested in and impacted by natural resources within the Parker Mountain Resource Area. PARM partners that have contributed to this proposal include the BLM, USFS, UDWR, UTLA, UDAF GIP, USFWS Utah Partners Program, Utah Department of Natural Resources Watershed Restoration Initiative (WRI), Parker Mountain Grazing Association, Wayne and Piute county commissions, and USU Extension. PARM partners work together to provide coordinated guidance for natural resource management within the resource area. For public lands in Utah, land management agencies work together, primarily through WRI, to implement conservation actions, including the conifer and sagebrush treatments included in Project Description above. Private producers provide input and coordination with livestock grazing plans and partners seek compatibility between livestock and wildlife interests and values on this working landscape. Our research objectives were developed among PARM partners to help meet the information needs of those making conservation decisions on the ground in their resource area. While working with other local working groups throughout the Intermountain West, we have found very similar, if not the same, information needs that are addressed in this proposal.

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.