This is a watershed level project that crosses multiple landownership and jurisdictions to treat the entire watershed as a whole. It is also a partnership between several agencies and private landowners that are bringing additional funds (NRCS) to the proposal. The project area is located in the watershed southeast of Goshen, UT. The watershed encompasses Mona Reservoir and eventually flows into Utah Lake. The project area on the north has thick juniper that is encroaching on sagebrush habitats and reducing the quality of forage for livestock and wildlife. The PJ is mostly in late phase II juniper. The understory is being depleted and the canopy is closed. This is leading to a loss in vegetation that is critical for big game to survive the winter and forage availability for grazing. This project will protect the remaining vegetation and grow additional species that will provide food for wildlife to survive the winter. This project falls within crucial winter range area and potentially a crucial mule deer corridor. The town of Goshen and other residential areas are directly adjacent to the project area. The current status of the PJ vegetation around the human life and property are at great risk to a crown fire through the PJ canopy. This project will provide fire protection for the town as well as improve the watershed and wildlife habitat. As well as increased forage quantity and quality for livestock use. The project area has very little grazing value currently and has not been fully utilized because of vegetation and water limitations. Treatments will increase forage quality and quantity for grazing animals and increase the amount of acres that can be grazed. Current Creek is the only perennial water source for several surrounding miles and is heavily utilized by wildlife and livestock, as well as irrigation and culinary purposes. The riparian area is severely degraded and therefore it's value to sustain wildlife use and habitat will continue to decline. We will use BDAs to restore the health of the creek. There are also threats from bullfrogs and mosquito fish to native amphibian and fish populations. We will work to begin removing these non-natives as part of this project. The connecting feature between the Juniper treatment and riparian area improvements is a band of planned cheatgrass treatment and reseeding. This treatment will take place on an long band of southern exposure slopes to reduce the amount of Cheatgrass and increase the amount of desirable species better suited for the ecological site. By treating this cheatgrass we will increase forage quality and wildlife habitat that has been lost. We will also reduce the risk of future fires.

1. Reduce PJ canopy cover and increase perennial herbaceous vegetation and shrubs 2. Protect and improve the winter range for big game wildlife. 3. Reduce the wildfire threat from the high or extreme range to moderate or low. 4. Increase the forage quality and quantity for grazing animals 5. Improve the resistance and resilience of the rangeland health and the ecological site 6. Benefit WAP species that depend on healthy sagebrush habitats. 7. Increase available water 8. Reduce ideal growing conditions for noxious and invasive plants 9. Improve hydrologic function along Current Creek

There are many risks that are associated with not completing this project in the near future. One of the biggest is the risk of fire to the city of Santaquin and Goshen. Also in relation to fires, if a fire does burn through this area there is the risk of only getting a dominant cheatgrass community back in the area. If we can establish perennial fire wise species growing on the site we can hopefully create a more resilient landscape that is resistant to major threats The other main risk at this time is the risk of crossing biotic and abiotic thresholds. The perennial understory is decreasing throughout the project area and missing in many areas. It is important to remove the PJ and increase the vegetative understory before crossing these thresholds. To get this vegetation back after these thresholds have been crossed will be extremely expensive and take many years to accomplish. The creek will continue to degrade and water quality will remain poor if we do not do the BDAs. BDAs will help restore needed vegetation and by not doing this project we allow for non native species like phragmites to more easily establish. The columbian spotted frog is being threatened by loss of habitat and introduction of bullfrogs. This project will work to improve their habitat and remove the bullfrogs.

1. WILDLIFE ACTION PLAN a. Identifies lowland and mountain sagebrush habitats as critical habitats that need protection. b. It identifies several threats to these habitat types including innapropriate fire frequency and problematic native plant species (i.e. Pinyon and Juniper) 3. This project will help to benefit WAP species like golden eagles and columbia spotted frogs. 2. SANTAQUIN COMMUNITY FIRE PLAN 1. Enhance levels of fire resistance and protection to the community. 2. Decrease fuels to reduce wildfire intensity and impact in and around the community. 3. Work with State and County officials toward creating defensible space. 3. Utah Pronghorn Statewide Management Plan 1. Maintain or enhance the quantity and quality of pronghorn habitat to allow populations to increase. By opening up this area through chaining, the quantity of crucial year long habitat would be expanded. 2. Under the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative, design, implement, and monitor the effectiveness of habitat improvement projects to benefit pronghorn. 4. The Utah Smoke Management Plan (1999, 2006 revision). 1. By using mechanical mastication this plan will accomplish Goal #5, Use of alternative methods to burning for disposing of or reducing the amount of wildland fuels. 5. State of Utah Hazard Mitigation Plan (March 2011) this plan accomplishes statewide goals including 1. Protection of natural resources and the environment, when considering mitigation measures 2. Minimize the risk of wildfire (p12). 6. UDWR Resource goal: 1. Expand wildlife populations and conserve sensitive species by protecting and improving wildlife habitat. 2. Protect existing wildlife habitat and improve 500,000 acres of critical habitats and watersheds throughout the state. 7. Utah County Resource Assessment (May 2013) the assessment identifies in the plan the following; lack of adequate water supplies, declining plant health and production, lack of adequate food, water, and cover for wildlife, and loss of agricultural lands as issues that need immediate attention. 8. THE UTAH STRATEGIC PLAN FOR MANAGING NOXIOUS AND INVASIVE WEEDS prevention, early detection, and rapid response 4. Encourage development of weed invasion risk analysis in federal and statewide planning effort, influence project and land planning teams to include an analysis of what potential new invaders are likely to occur and identify where, based on ecological conditions, the most susceptible areas for future invaders are. 9. NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE -- Conservation Programs Manual Locally led conservation is based on the principle that community stakeholders are best suited to identify and resolve local natural resource problems. Thus, community stakeholders are keys to successfully managing and protecting their natural resources. It challenges neighbors, both urban and rural, to work together and take responsibility for addressing local resource needs. The word "local" can mean a county, a portion of a county, a watershed, a multicounty region, or whatever geographic area is best suited to address the resource conservation needs identified. Local may also include specific sectors of a county, watershed, region, or community with common resource concerns. This may include but is not limited to groups based on operational type (organic, specialty crop, etc.), groups based on operator type (limited-resource, family-owned farms, retirees, etc.), or groups based on other mutual resource concerns. (1) It is important to keep in mind that locally led conservation must be driven by natural resource conservation needs rather than by programs. Its primary focus should be to identify natural resource concerns, along with related economic and social concerns. Once the natural resource concerns are identified, appropriate Federal, State, local, and nongovernmental program tools can be used, both individually and in combination, to address these resource concerns and attempt to meet the established goals of the community stakeholders. 10. DEER HERD UNIT MANAGEMENT PLAN Deer Herd Unit 1. Maintain and protect existing critical deer ranges sufficient to support the population objectives. 2. Seek cooperative projects to improve the quality and quantity of deer habitat. 3. Promote enhancement of habitat security and escapement areas for deer. The project will directly enhance the quality of deer habitat. 4. Future Pinyon Juniper work should be concentrated on the following areas. 5. 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.

According to the risk assessment for this area there are some obvious problems related to fire and the threat of fire. The most notable issues in this area include the risk of a fire damaging homes or infrastructure. In this case the area is considered to be a moderate to moderately-high risk. The actual threat of a fire happening in this area is moderate-high to extreme. The most notable of all is when you look at the difficulty of suppression it falls under the most difficult. One of the main By going into this area and grinding down the pinyon and juniper trees, the continuous canopy will be broken up and the flame lengths will be greatly reduced there by decreasing the suppression difficulty and increasing the safety to fire fighters should a fire occur in the area. This will also allow the fire fighters to suppress the fire more quickly thereby protecting the community, water supply, and wildlife habitat. This area will be seeded with a seed mix consisting of perennial grasses and forbs which will effectively compete with cheatgrass thereby reducing the fire risk on chaining polygons. The perennial vegetation will also decrease fuel loading and increase the long term resilience on the plant community should a fire occur. The proposed treatment will also facilitate livestock grazing in an area that is not grazed and can't be currently. This management change will also facilitate in the reduction of fuels and stop fire movement. Lastly, by building the BDAs and expanding the riparian zone it will create a green strip to reduce the spread of fire.

The communities in this area rely heavily on spring and well water as the source of water for their homes, businesses and livestock usage. By doing work to improve the health of the streams through BDAs we will be capturing sediments that would otherwise flow downstream and reduce water quality. Also, it has been shown that BDAs help store more water in the watershed longer and will increase the quantity of water throughout the year. Removing the pinyon and juniper at this point would be beneficial in several ways. First of all some of the vegetation is still intact so we have not completely crossed that threshold where we have already lost a lot of topsoil and have had large amounts of erosion. This project will not only preserve existing vegetation, but help to establish additional vegetation that will stabilize the soil and help to reduce the amount of sediment that will enter streams and washes. This will help to improve and protect the water quality of the watershed. Also, currently precipitation moves off the soil surface more quickly and water quantity capture is lost. This project will help establish vegetation that will hold more moisture in the system and allow for it to soak in moving through the soil profile and enter under ground water storage instead of running off and risking erosion. The project promotes the natural hydrology to continue to increase and control water movement. Another negative impact on the watershed from PJ encroachment is soil erosion (Farmer 1995). By removing PJ it will allow for the current grasses and forbs to return and stabilize the soil and decrease the speed of water-flow and the size of soil particles that can be moved downstream and therefore reduce erosion. This project will help to protect erosion events from happening in the future and save the ecosystem from irreversible losses to soil. Cut trees will also be placed in washes to slow the flow of water promoting pooling and sediment capture and reducing active erosion and future potential. In water-limited systems, an added benefit to PJ removal can be the potential to increase water-savings. PJ have been shown to intercept about 10-20 percent of precipitation (Skau 1964). Also, where PJ encroachment has resulted in large bare ground areas it has been shown that these systems can have greater precipitation runoff (Farmer 1995). Results of the Great Basin Landscape Conservation Cooperative study in Nevada (Desatoya Mt.) found that by removing (lop and scatter) P/J (130 trees/acre) there is the potential to increase water recharge yields 4% on wet years. On wet years this will increase recharge, but does not increase stream flow. Wet meadows and upland plants benefit by utilizing the increase soil moisture, providing for better resiliency during drought years. This provides an increase in water quantity for herbaceous plants on sites where PJ is removed. By removing PJ on this project we will be preventing the increased future loss of water from occurring. There are several wells that have been drilled that were once artisian but are no longer that may be due in part to PJ expansion in this area. Water rights for an intermittent stream near the project area are recorded but no known surface water has moved through the canyon for many years. Proposed treatments will facilitate water to move through the ecosystem as previously intended. This will increase the quantity of water in the entire watershed.

The project is on private and SITLA land. No NEPA is required as it is not on Federal land. An NRCS CPA 52 is complete for the private land. Cultural surveys will be completed before the project begins. Stream Alteration permits will be aquired before BDA construction begins.

Juniper treatment : The seed mix will be aerially applied inside the planned treatment areas and then as much as possible of the Juniper will be masticated with bullhogs to a consistent amount of mulched litter. We will leave pinyon trees for pinyon jays and to provide some cover. BDA Construction: We will construct the BDAs with sharpened lodgepole fence posts, approximately 3-4" diameter. They will be driven into the stream bed with a gas post pounder or hydraulic post pounder. The posts will extend about 1 m above the channel bed. The posts will be spaced approximately 0.5 - 0.8 m apart, and driven to a depth of approximately 1 m into the streambed. We will then weave willow branches or other tree branches that are available onsite between the posts to create a structure that will look like a beaver dam. The willows will help to slow the water but will also allow fish to pass through. We will then reinforce the posts with stream bed material at the base of the posts. The idea is that the dams will last until sediment is piled up at the dam and vegetation begins to grow and the stream channel rises and floods. We will place dams about 30 m apart, depending on where they need to go. After a year we will assess the health of the stream again and determine what progress has been made and where future BDAs need to be placed. Once sediment has built up behind the dam we will plant the wetland sod mats to speed up recovery and have the roots hold that built up sediment in place Cheatgrass treatment: We will apply granular plateau in the fall of 2020 and this will help to prevent the germination of cheatgrass.

Rangeland health data will be gathered pre and post Juniper treatment. Permanent photo points will also be established by the private landowner. Livestock forage will also be monitored and managed by the private landowner with technical assistance provided by NRCS. Photos and stream surveys will be done before BDAs are built to monitor pre and post.

Chelcey Larsen, from Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is leading the charge on this project by signing up private landowner with the Farm Bill program to fund bullhog work. They have been awarded funding and are bringing nearly $60,000 of funding to the project. The Division of Wildlife Resources is collaborating with other landowners and agencies to do a landscape scale restoration project. We have worked with Ethan Hallows from SITLA to include the adjacent State Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) lands in the project. There are multiple local private landowners involved in the project as well to be able to treat the entire watershed.

Bullhogged areas will be rested for a period of 2 years to allow for new plants to adequately establish. Cheatgrass treatment will be monitpored for effectiveness and follow up treatments will be applied as necessary. We will work . BDAs will conintue to be monitored and repairs made as necessary. WE will need to do several years of BDAs to get desired outcomes.

Domestic livestock will greatly benefit from this project. There will be much more available forage. This will greatly benefit the private land owners who plan to graze this property and desire to increase the amount of forage. It will also potentially increase the amount of water available for livestock. The BDA treatment will slow water movement and hold it higher in the watershed for a longer period of time, This may extend the irrigation season and increase the amount for a drinking stream throughout the season that wildlife and livestock need.