Hunting and fishing play a significant role in our economy and especially for rural communities in Utah. Hunting and fishing generate approximately 94 billion dollars each year in the U.S. This money not only creates jobs but a lot of money is also put back into conservation. Every year sportsman groups here in Utah put millions of dollars directly into conserving fish and wildlife right back here in Utah, thanks to the generous donations of individual sportsmen and businesses. Funds from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses also help fund the UDWR which is dedicated to the proper management of wildlife and conservation of its wildlife and habitats. In addition, the Pittman-Robertson Act, or Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, which created an excise tax on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment in 1937, and the Dingell-Johnson Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act, which created a similar tax on fishing tackle, boat equipment, and boat fuel in 1950 generated1.5 billion dollars for conservation last year. These funds show how critical hunting, fishing, and our sportsmen are for conservation. In order to ensure that we continue to generate these funds for conservation it is important to have healthy big game, sportfish, and other huntable game species populations. This project is designed to improve the health of several watersheds on the Stansbury Mountains which will maintain high-quality hunting experiences and generate even more hunting and fishing opportunities for the public. I have uploaded images from the Utah Wildlife Migration Initiative data that show high use of our treatment areas by bighorn sheep, mule deer, elk, turkeys, and other species. This project will improve winter and summer habitats for big game species and upland game, such as turkeys and rabbits. It will also increase stream habitat diversity to help increase fishable populations and work towards the reintroduction of native Bonneville Cutthroat trout. By increasing hunting and fishing opportunities we will generate even more funds that will cycle back into improving the environment even more. Benefits of this funding not only will help game species such as bighorn sheep, but it will benefit non-game species as well like golden eagles. Beyond the benefits for wildlife this project will also provide holistic ecosystem benefits to the entire watershed by reducing fire threats to local communities and infrastructure, improving water quality and quantity, increasing livestock forage, and ensuring a whole host of other recreational uses on the landscape are improved.

1. Improve the health of several watersheds on the Stansbury Mountains. 2. Reduce fire risks by thinning out pinyon and juniper density in heavily encroached areas. 3. Restore shrub species to critical big game winter areas and golden eagle hunting grounds. 4. Improve water quality and quantity with BDAs to improve fish, wildlife, and livestock habitat. 5. Increase hunting and fishing opportunities and other sustainable uses of the natural resource.

The invasion of pinyon and juniper trees into areas once dominated by grass, forbs and shrubs increases the risk of losing important understory vegetation that is essential for healthy wildlife habitat and increases the risk of catastrophic wildfires in the project area. Removal of the juniper will reduce the intensities of wildfire by increasing growing space for sagebrush, grass and forbs. The reduced fire intensities and impacts of wildfire to the landscape will improve the soils and the future management of natural ignited fires. If the current forest continues to move toward Phase 3 PJ stands and the remaining understory is lost, the results will be detrimental to the deer and elk herds. It will be more likely that animals will not survive the winter and population numbers will decline. If this happens it will be extremely difficult to restore those populations. We have also invested a lot of money to restore bighorn sheep to this mountain range. Bighorn do not like to inhabit areas of thick junipers because they feel vulnerable to predation. BY removing the juniper we will expand the amount of available habitat for bighorn sheep which will help ensure the success of our reintroduction efforts. The loss of the shrub community on the landscape from wildfire and its replacement with cheatgrass and other non-native competitive grasses has been and will continue to be detrimental to the wildlife populations if nothing is done to restore these species. There has also been extensive human development with the construction of a large solar farm which has removed shrub species. The impacts of losing these shrubs takes time to fully impact wildlife populations, but every year that goes by we risk losing more wildlife and eventually we will cross ecological thresholds that will be extremely costly to fix. This project will help to mitigate for the impacts of the solar farm and rehabilitate the landscape post fire.

This project will address the following objectives and strategies in the following management plans. 1) Wasatch-Cache National Forest Plan - Meets riparian, fuels, wildlife and rangeland management objectives 2) Utah Shared Stewardship Agreement (May 2019) - Meets the Agreement parameters for working across multiple ownerships including State, Private and Federal lands. 3) RANGE-WIDE CONSERVATION AGREEMENT AND STRATEGY FOR BONNEVILLE CUTTHROAT TROUT (Oncorhynchus clarki utah). Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Publication Number 00-19, Salt Lake City, UT. -The West Desert BCT GMU is considered the most imperiled of the 4 BCT GMU's due to limited habitat availability. Any opportunity to expand BCT populations within this eco-region are encouraged. North and South Willow Creek are currently holding populations or brown trout and rainbow trout, respectively, once habitat is improved in these systems and threats are reduced, BCT will be reintroduced. 4) Mule Deer Unit 18 Mgt Plan Objectives/Strategies: a) 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. b) Condition of winter ranges is a long-term problem. c) Fire and encroachment by pinyon and juniper trees results in the loss of forage production, diversity and quality. d) Cooperate with federal land management agencies and private landowners in carrying out habitat improvement projects. e) The primary concern on the studies within the subunit is the abundance of weedy annual grass species (cheatgrass), particularly on the lower elevation sites. This plan addresses the condition of winter range in the project area by dealing with PJ expansion, condition of winter range by planting browse species, reducing fuel loads, coordinating with Federal land management agencies, and mitigating weedy annual grass species. 5) Utah DWR Statewide Management Plan for Mule Deer Objectives/Strategies: a) Programs that provide incentives to private landowners to manage their properties for mule deer and other wildlife are critical to the success of the state's deer management program. b) Conserve, improve, and restore mule deer habitat throughout the state with emphasis on crucial ranges. c) Maintain mule deer habitat throughout the state by protecting and enhancing existing crucial habitats and mitigating for losses due to natural and human impacts. d) Work with local, state and federal land management agencies via land management plans and with private landowners to identify and properly manage crucial mule deer habitats, especially fawning, wintering and migration areas. e) Improve the quality and quantity of vegetation for mule deer on a minimum of 500,000 acres of crucial range by 2019. f) Initiate broad scale vegetative treatment projects to improve mule deer habitat with emphasis on drought or fire damaged sagebrush winter ranges, ranges that have been taken over by invasive annual grass species, and ranges being diminished by encroachment of conifers into sagebrush or aspen habitats, ensuring that seed mixes contain sufficient forbs and browse species. g) Continue to support and provide leadership for the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative, which emphasizes improving sagebrush-steppe, aspen, and riparian habitats throughout Utah. This plan addresses improving and restoring Mule deer habitat, by working in cooperation with partners, mitigating invasive annual species, ensuring that seed mixes contain sufficient forbs, and browse species, and improving sagebrush-steppe. 6) Utah Wildlife Action Plan: a) Mountain Shrub (page 53) project addresses key threats (pg 55) to this habitat; * Continuing the use of appropriate methods for reducing the spread and dominance of invasive weeds and annual grasses, including "early detection -- rapid response" programs. * Continuing the development of new plant materials (especially native forbs) and restoration techniques suited to this habitat. b) We will also be improving the Aquatic Forested habitat types (pg57) Promoting policies that maintain or restore natural water and sediment flow regimes. * Promoting policies that reduce inappropriate grazing by domestic livestock and wildlife. * Promoting policies that reduce inappropriate siting of roads in riparian zones. * Continuing the use of appropriate methods for reducing the spread and dominance of invasive weeds, including "early detection -- rapid response" programs. c) Aquatic Scrub/Shrub (pg59) project addresses key threats to these habitats (pg 58 and 60) Promoting policies that maintain or restore natural water and sediment flow regimes. Promoting policies that reduce inappropriate siting of roads in riparian zones. Continuing the use of appropriate methods for reducing the spread and dominance of invasive weeds, including "early detection -- rapid response" programs.

This project will address the risk of catastrophic fire. This is a primary concern for all partners involved in this project and is one of the primary focuses of the USFS in their participation with this project. The project area is located in high and very high threat level on the fire threat index. The city of Grantsville is located just to the north of our treatments and this project will help reduce the threat to this community as well as protect their valuable waters systems. The encroachment of juniper elevated the fuels loading to a level that will lead to severe fire effects if not addressed. The vegetation treatments in this proposal will lower that risk significantly and help protect critical habitat for big game and ensure intact rangelands for long-term sustainability and productivity for State and Federal livestock permit holders. By doing the shrub restoration work we will maintain healthy stands of shrubs and native plants to prevent annual grasses from establishing that can increase the fuel load and dryness of plants that increase fire risk. We will be planting forbs as well that will serve as strips of greener vegetation that will also help reduce fire spread. The BDA work will help expand the floodplain and areas of greener riparian vegetation. It has been shown in other places that streams with beavers dams have been able to slow or stop the spread of fire and create refuges for wildlife to escape.

The quality and quantity of water within a watershed dominated by juniper can be significantly reduced by this species. Riparian areas and mesic meadows are important habitat features for wildlife and livestock distribution through the watersheds dominated by juniper. Removal of juniper will improve ground water supply and increase soil moisture resulting in improved sustainability and distribution of aquatic and riparian habitats associated with streams, wetlands, springs, seeps, and mesic meadows. BDAs will further support riparian ecosystems by promoting connectivity between Davenport Creek and adjacent mesic soils. By having a healthy diversity of age class shrubs it will prevent a mono-culture of old decadent plants which can die off and result in invasion of weedy plants such as cheatgrass. Cheatgrass will absorb all of the available water and decrease the plant diversity. By doing this project there will be more available water for native understory plants to increase diversity. This will also help prevent cheatgrass from establishing and creating an unnatural fire regime that will result in greater increases in erosion and sedimentation that will reduce water quality. BDAs are important to build in areas like the Stansbury's where water is a limited resource. Because of increasing drought, groundwater wells, diversion pipelines, feral horses, and many other demands for water on this mountain, there has been an artificial or man-caused reduction in the available water that would naturally be located on this mountain. Therefore, it is necessary and reasonable for us to also intervene to install water sources to help offset the artificial or man-caused depletion of water that would have historically occurred here. BDAs are a tool that we can use to increase the availability of water during the driest times of the year. BDAs are essentially man-made beaver dams. Beavers historically would have been located in almost every stream in Utah and would have definitely been located on every stream in the Stansbury Mountains. Once beavers were extirpated from this mountain range and their beaver dams eroded through time, the benefits that their dams would play to the ecosystem would have disappeared and major erosion, flooding, and loss of water would have followed. Beaver dams and their ponds provide miniature reservoirs to store water when it is abundant (winter months) and help to recharge or fill up the underground aquifers and soil. During spring runoff these dams and ponds help to slow the speed that water flows down the mountain and thus reduces the eroding power of high flowing water, which improves the water quality and also protects the soil. By stopping this erosion it reduces channel incisions and allows for more vegetation to grow along the stream banks and provide food for wildlife. Also, by slowing the water down and keeping if from just running down the mountain in the first few weeks of summer, it allows for water to be in the mountains all through the driest months of the year so that livestock and wildlife can access it. By slowing the flow down the mountain it also helps ranchers, farmers, homeowners, and other water users who live down in the valley by extending the time that they have water later into the summer. Without beavers, the water that comes rushing down in the spring hits farmers' and ranchers' land and they either have to use it or lose it. They can only use so much and a lot of water just runs on by and drops down into the ground. To address this problem we humans have spent billions of dollars building massive reservoirs that are a high cost to maintain. These reservoirs also have a much higher surface to depth ratio than beaver ponds and usually don't have any vegetation nearby to shade from the sun, this causes greater evaporation loss on these reservoirs than a small beaver pond. Instead of building more large reservoirs we should take a lesson from nature and restore the natural water storage processes that beavers would play on the landscape. By utilizing man-made beaver dams or restoring beavers we can more effectively store water. By slowing the flow down the mountain it means that water users will have a more steady flow of water later into the summer than they would have otherwise. This can be crucial for both people and wildlife. Until we can restore beavers to the Stansbury mountains we are proposing to build man-made beaver dams (BDAs) to begin to slow that water down as a beaver dam would do. BDAs or beavers don't take water from the watershed they simply extend its availability, improve its quality, and transform its destructive energy into a productive force of creating stream habitat diversity. Water will be more accessible to plants, insects, fish, amphibians, birds, big game, livestock, etc. as well as humans downstream. The BDAs we are proposing will provide great benefits for bighorn sheep, mule deer, elk, and maybe even make it possible to reintroduce moose someday. The BDAs will make it so we can reintroduce Bonneville cutthroat trout to streams that would not be able to sustain fish life without them. We may be also able to reintroduce species of Columbia spotted frog or boreal toads.

Mastication being proposed comply' s with NEPA, including SHPO concurrence that is already done. Shrub planting NEPA has been completed by the BLM. Cultural surveys have already been completed in previous phases of this project for shrub planting and bullhog work. The NEPA to be able to do BDAs on USFS has been completed for all BDAs forest-wide. Water rights concerns for BDAs are being addressed by close collaboration with the Grantsville Irrigation Company.

Juniper Removal: We will first fly seed on the bullhog treatment areas. Then we will use bullhogs to masticate the juniper within the designed treatment areas. These operations will be contracted out through the State and the FS will monitor implementation. Shrub Restoration: We will use a dozer with a harrow on the back that makes a 2' wide scalp to remove grass competition. The bare soil will reduce competition from grasses and allow for naturally seeding to occur. We will also broadcast shrub and forb seed and use dribblers to augment the amount of seed and diversity of species. We will be planting two-year-old shrubs with vexar mesh protectors to help increase survival. These plants will be planted with volunteer help from sportsmen and other groups as well as hired contractors and paid seasonals. BDAs: BDAs will be built with contractors and DWR staff and Sageland Collaborative volunteers. We will pound posts into the stream bed about 2' apart. Then weave natural branch materials between posts.

Pinyon/Juniper Treatments We will take photo points before and after at a few select locations. We will monitor the project for greater than 1% of Phase 1 pinyon/juniper re-establishment in year 3 and 5 post treatment. If re treatment becomes necessary we will pursue retreatment options. We will use photo points before and after project implementation to determine the success of these plantings. geomorphology, fish/ aquatic habitat, riparian vegetation, and terrestrial wildlife habitat. BDAs: We are requesting funds to purchase weir devices to help measure water flows priori to BDA installation and to continue monitor how BDAs improve water flows after installation. We will also take photos before and after at BDA locations and repeat this photography over time to show changes in vegetation and stream dynamics. We will also utilize drone footage to mar the area before and after. Shrub Restoration: This is one of the sites that is incorporated in our shrub restoration study that Scott Jensen with the USDSA shrub lab is helping us with. So there will be intensive survival monitoring of our shrubs through this study and potential reports and publications may be written as a result. We will establish survival plots where we will identify where plants were planted and monitor whether they survive over time.

Nancy Williams with the BLM has been a huge partner on helping to get the NEPA completed to be able to do the shrub restoration work. We have had several meetings with BLM wildlife biologists and plant/range specialists to plan this project and work through the NEPA. The USFS is taking the lead on doing the PJ removal work on their lands. They have identified treatment areas and will help manage contractors. Sageland Collaborative biologists visited the site, mapped locations for BDAs, and will complete necessary stream alteration permits and help us to coordinate work with the irrigation company and to help with monitoring before and after BDA installation. Forestry Fire and State Lands is also a partner with their concerns about reducing fire risks to the neighboring community of Grantsville.

PJ treatments: Maintaining these open areas in future years may be necessary. Cost effective treatment strategy of lop and scatter or managed fire techniques will be utilized. Managed fires may also be utilized and grazing will continue in allotments. The area will be managed according to the Uinta National Forest Land Management Plan and Grazing Allotment Plan which includes a rest rotation grazing system. BDAs: We will continue to do more BDAs and fix the ones we built over several years until desired objectives are achieved. We will work towards reintroducing beavers here so that they can maintain them on their own. Shrub PLanting: We will continue to monitor survival and make adjustments and do additional plantings for many years to come.

Juniper Treatments Projects will result in improved overall rangeland condition resulting in improved herbaceous quality, quantity, and distribution of perennial grasses and forbs that will in turn benefit wildlife and livestock operations. BDAs will help disperse water and increase the amount of available water and vegetation for livestock. It will also benefit fish and big game populations which will increase hunting and fishing opportunities.

11/01/2023

11/21/2024

2025

In November of 2023, the DWR hired Giles Construction to masticate juniper trees that had overgrown and were outcompeting desired vegetation for wildlife on the USFS lands. Before mastication began, we hired a fixed-wing aircraft to aerially seed the entire bullhog project area with desirable native forb, shrubs, and grasses. The seed was flown on in October of 2023, and then the mastication work began shortly thereafter. The mastication took much longer than anticipated because of the steep slopes and icy conditions that soon developed. The contractor continued working through the snow and finished in May of 2024. They treated a total of 1,920 acres on the east side of the Stansbury Mountains. The contract specified that they needed to leave islands of trees within the project for wildlife cover. In November of 2024, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources planted 7,000 Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata wyomingensis) in collaboration with the BLM on the west side of the Stansbury Mountains. The purpose of this planting project was to improve the mule deer and big horn sheep winter range that had been burned. The fire burned most of the shrub component, and non-native aggressive grasses have taken their place. The shrub component is very important as a food source for mule deer in the winter months. Without these species on the landscape, the mule deer will lose their fat reserves much quickly and may not survive the winter. So to try and get this shrub component back on these crucial winter ranges, we first used the shrub planter to till the ground and remove the grass competition. The planter also planted antelope bitterbrush seed and other native forbs and shrub seed by broadcasting the seed over the tracks. We covered an area of approximately 7.5 acres, that is important for mule deer winter range. The DWR then hired a contractor to plant the seedlings with a skidsteer and auger. We planted a total of 7,000 seedlings. The BDA portion of the project was not completed because we began getting concerns about BDAs from downstream water users, and the USFS didn't want to cause any issues. We will need to do more education and outreach with downstream water users to do BDAs in the future.

This project was designed to improve the health of several watersheds on the Stansbury Mountains, which will maintain high-quality hunting experiences and generate even more hunting and fishing opportunities for the public. I have uploaded images from the Utah Wildlife Migration Initiative data that show high use of our treatment areas by bighorn sheep, mule deer, elk, turkeys, and other species. This project will improve winter and summer habitats for big game species and upland game, such as turkeys and rabbits. It will also increase stream habitat diversity to help increase fishable populations and work towards the reintroduction of native Bonneville Cutthroat trout. By increasing hunting and fishing opportunities we will generate even more funds that will cycle back into improving the environment even more. Benefits of this funding will not only help game species such as bighorn sheep, but it will also benefit non-game species as well like golden eagles. Beyond the benefits for wildlife this project also provides holistic ecosystem benefits to the entire watershed by reducing fire threats to local communities and infrastructure, improving water quality and quantity, increasing livestock forage, and ensuring a whole host of other recreational uses on the landscape are improved.

The USFS will continue to monitor what plant species are growing in the bullhog areas and we will do what is necessary to prevent weeds from establishing. The UDWR will continue to monitor the success of the seedling planting areas and do more plantings in the future as are necessary.