The South Slope Fuels Reduction project addresses various ecological zones, with Phase 2 specifically targeting fuel loads along local roadways near the 77 Flat area to create vital fuel breaks. These stands are currently burdened by significant fuel loads from both live and dead trees, a condition worsened by extensive beetle mortality. This high accumulation of hazardous materials creates conditions conducive to highly destructive wildfires. Following the establishment of these fuel breaks, project managers plan to re-enter the area to conduct controlled burns within the units. This proactive landscape-scale approach aims to diminish the intensity of large wildfires, which have been prevalent in Duchesne County recently--notably the 2018 Dollar Ridge Fire and the 2020 East Fork Fire--thereby protecting environments and surrounding communities from future fire activity.

Hazardous Fuel Reduction: Reduce hazardous fuel loading along roadways around the 77 Flat area to mitigate wildfire risk. Strategic Fuel Breaks & Fire Management: Create targeted fuel breaks to protect identified values at risk from naturally occurring wildfires and enable the future use of natural fire as a management tool. Wildlife Habitat Enhancement: Improve habitat for species including Elk, Mule Deer, Northern Goshawk, Western Toad, and Cutthroat Trout. Mastication will prepare the area for treatments like prescribed fire, which benefits local wildlife populations. The wildlife tracker was reviewed and the project area is identified as a mule deer migration route (red-indicating high concentration of gps points, meaning high use, frequent movement, or stopover areas), and crucial elk habitat. Watershed Protection: Improve watershed resiliency through hazardous fuel reduction efforts designed to minimize soil and water impacts typically associated with large-scale wildfires. Grazing Area Improvement: Enhance domestic livestock grazing conditions by reducing fuel accumulation on the forest floor.

Why Here? The project is justified by the moderately to significantly altered species composition and structure of the area, largely driven by a lack of historical logging and extensive beetle mortality. Fire Regime Condition Classes (FRCC) 2 and 3: A 2006 Forest Service analysis indicates that most of the project area falls into these high-risk categories. These classes represent significant deviations (up to 80%) from the natural, historical fire cycles that used to maintain ecosystem health. Missed Fire Intervals: The area has missed one or more regular fire intervals, leading to an unnatural accumulation of hazardous fuels - both living and dead vegetation. Moderately Altered Ecosystem: This situation has resulted in a forest that no longer responds to fire naturally and is primed for catastrophic burns. The Utah Wildfire Risk Explorer was used to look at wildfire hazard conditions within the project area. The area has a category of "HIGH" risk potential. High risk means that fires start easily and spread rapidly. Why Now? The current state of the fuel loading is too dangerous to simply allow fire (prescribed or natural) to occur without prior mitigation. The immediate risk necessitates mechanical treatments (mastication/thinning) to first alter the fuel bed characteristics. Once the fuel break is in place, the area then can safely support the introduction of prescribed fire or managed natural fire, restoring ecological balance and reducing the long-term risk to the vegetation communities.

Presidential Executive Order 13855 12/2018 Sec 2 (ii) The Secretary of Agriculture shall review the Secretary's budget justifications and give all due consideration to establishing the following objectives for 2019, as feasible and appropriate in light of those budget justifications, and consistent with applicable law and available appropriations: (A) Treating 3.5 million acres of Department of Agriculture Forest Service lands to reduce fuel load (B) Treating 2.2 millions acres of USDA FS lands to protect water quality and mitigate sever flooding and erosion risk arising from forest fires. Sec 6: Collaborative Partnerships. To reduce fuel loads, restore watersheds, and improve forest, rangeland, and other Federal land conditions, and to utilize available expertise and efficiently deploy resources, the secretaries shall expand collaboration with States, tribes, communities, non-profit organizations, and private sector. Such expanded collaboration by the secretaries shall at minimum address: (b) Achieving the land management restoration goals set forth in section 2 of this order and reducing fuel loads by pursuing long-term stewardship contracts, including 20-year contracts, with States, tribes, non-profit organizations, communities, and the private sector, consistent with applicable law. Ashley National Forest Forest Plan Amendment 16 (Fire Ecology/Management) (May 2001) Fuels-Reduce Hazardous Fuels. The full range of fuel reduction methods is authorized, consistent with forest and management area emphasis and direction. Agreement for Shared Stewardship between the State of Utah and the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service. *Using all available tools for active management. The States and the Forest Service will use every available authority and tool to do more work on the ground, including timber sales, mechanical treatments, prescribed fire, hazardous fuels reduction, long-term stewardship contracts, innovative wood-product utilization, carefully managing fire, and working with partners. Utah Wildlife Action Plan 2025 Under the plan "Inappropriate Fire Frequency and Intensity" has been listed as a threat to many species. The proposed project falls under the conservation actions to address the threat by reducing fuels and distributing of vegetation classes in susceptible habitats becoming more similar to their natural distribution. Utah Elk Statewide Management Plan Strategies: B. Habitat Management a) Coordinate with land management agencies and private landowners to properly manage and improve elk habitat, especially calving and wintering areas. C. Watershed Restoration Initiative: a) Increase forage production by annually treating a minimum of 40,000 acres of elk habitat. B) Coordinate with land management agencies, conservation organizations, private landowners, and local leaders through the regional WRI working groups to identify and prioritize elk habitats that are in need of enhancement or restoration. ii) Encourage land managers to manage portions of forests in early succession stages through the use of controlled burning or logging. Controlled burning should only be used in areas with minimal invasive weeds and/or safety concerns. iii) Promote let-burn policies in appropriate areas that will benefit elk, and conduct reseeding efforts post wildfire. Elk Herd Unit Management Plan -- Elk Herd Unit #9A Yellowstone -- Objective -- Reinstitute a natural fire interval in the conifer zone to improve elk habitat. Utah Mule Deer Statewide Management Plan Habitat Objective 2: Improve the quality and quantity of vegetation for mule deer on a minimum of 500,000 acres of crucial ranges by 2019. Strategies: b) Work with land management agencies, conservation organizations, private landowners, and local leaders through the regional WRI working groups to identify and prioritize mule deer habitats that are in need of enhancement or restoration. f) Seek opportunities through the WRI to improve aspen communities that provide crucial summer habitat for mule deer. Deer Herd Unit Management Plan-Deer Herd Unit #9 Yellowstone-- Objective -Preserve, protect and/or acquire critical winter range when the opportunity arises, Strategy -- Protect deer winter ranges from wildfire by creating fuel breaks. Utah Moose Statewide Management Plan-Help to improve transient habitat by removing coniferous trees and converting habitat back to early seral stages by using fire. Duchesne County General Plan-- State of Utah Catastrophic Wildfire Reduction Strategy -- Identifying the gaps between the existing conditions and the desired conditions. Addressing the underlying problem of improving forest, range, watershed, and ecosystem health. Ashley's Land and Resource Management Plan: Riparian Objective #1 -- Maintain or improve riparian areas and riparian dependent resource values including wildlife, fish, vegetation, watershed, and recreation in a stable or upward trend. Manage for species diversity. (p. IV-45 and 46) *Maintain natural complexity and high relative productivity of riparian areas. *Riparian areas will be given a high priority for rehabilitation in range improvement, fish and wildlife improvement, watershed restoration, road maintenance, and KV programs. Riparian Objective #1 -- Maintain or improve riparian areas and riparian dependent resource values including wildlife, fish, vegetation, watershed, and recreation in a stable or upward trend. Manage for species diversity. (p. IV-45 and 46) *Maintain natural complexity and high relative productivity of riparian areas. *Riparian areas will be given a high priority for rehabilitation in range improvement, fish and wildlife improvement, watershed restoration, road maintenance, and KV programs. Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Colorado River Cutthroat Trout Conservation Strategy -- Objective 4 -- Secure and enhance watershed conditions, Utah Strategy 4.1: Explore whether restoration techniques are applicable in degraded watersheds that have not experienced fire. CRCT Task Force. 2001. Conservation agreement and strategy for Colorado River cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki pleuriticus) in the States of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Colorado Divison of Wildlife, Fort Collins. 87p.

Reduce Stand-Replacing Wildfire Potential: The goal is to lessen the likelihood of extreme, stand-replacing wildfires that devastate the landscape. Dense Fuel Loading: The project specifically targets areas characterized by excessive fuel accumulation, including dense standing trees and significant dead and down litter on the forest floor. Historical Departures: Analysis of the Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) reveals a critical departure from historical normal fire return intervals. This project aims to bring the area back toward a more natural, resilient fire regime. Protect Values at Risk: A key objective is to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire to considerable values at risk within and around the project area, protecting communities and infrastructure. Management Opportunities: By proactively reducing existing hazardous fuels, the project aims to increase future opportunities for utilizing naturally or prescribed wildfire as a beneficial, safe, and effective land management tool.

Decreased fuel loading in the project area is a critical strategy for enhancing local water resources. By reducing stand densities and the volume of heavy fuels on the forest floor, the project aims to prevent high-severity, stand-replacing wildfires. The intense, prolonged heat from such fires is detrimental to soil quality, often leading to increased debris and sediment flow into waterways. By encouraging faster-moving, cooler burning, the project protects soil integrity and minimizes post-fire impacts. Furthermore, thinning the forest canopy improves water quantity by allowing more precipitation to reach the forest floor, reducing losses from evaporation and sublimation. Ultimately, these hazardous fuel reductions create a more resilient landscape that sustains better water quality and quantity by mitigating the severe environmental impacts commonly associated with large, catastrophic wildfires.

The Ashley National Forest is currently contracting the second phase of archaeological surveys. Site specific analysis was completed through the forest NEPA process and the Environmental Assessment (EA) was signed in 2025. The first phase of mastication was implemented in November of 2025. Currently the Ashley National Forest is engaged in a Forest-wide Prescribed Fire EA. Prescribed fire portions of this project will likely be conducted under that analysis while mechanical treatments will be conducted under a separate analysis.

This proposal will utilize mastication and hand cut/pile of fuels break lines and line preparation for prescribe fire burn units. The fuel breaks will treat up to 300 feet on either side of the road/trail. Trees will be removed within 100 feet of the roadway, leaving less than 8 trees per acre. The next two hundred feet will be a shaded fuel break (thinning).

The Ashley National Forest adheres to a strict monitoring plan for projects conducted on forest lands. Timber stand plots were conducted to establish and prescribe desired stand condition. Post implementation stand assessments will be completed and then monitored every 3-5 years to continue to asses stand vigor and composition. In addition to timber stand monitoring, photo plots are located throughout the project area and are continuously updated on a 1-3 year interval. A UWRI completion report will be done and uploaded to the database upon project completion.

The project is bordered by Uintah and Ouray Tribal lands. In an effort to accomplish cross-jurisdictional management objectives, the Ashley National Forest has engaged the Uintah and Ouray tribe to discuss the project. Initial meetings were held with representation from the Bureau of Indian affairs and the Ashley National Forest. These meetings are on-going with the intent to move treatments across jurisdictional boundaries. Additionally, the Ashley National Forest is committed to working with landowners and private in-holdings within the project area to protect values at risk in the event of a significant wildfire. Much of this coordination will be accomplished through our existing relationship with personnel from the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands, as well as our cooperators from Duchesne County.

The Ashley National Forest is committed to management in this area for the foreseeable future. It is intended that treatments will build upon one another and create a scenario where one management action will lead to another phase of implementation. An example of this would be creating fuels breaks around values at risk in order to create conditions that would allow for prescribed or managed natural fire occurrence in subsequent years. The funding will be used for the second round of implementation (Phase 2). Concurrently, there is also a cultural contract that was awarded and will be completed this summer, 2026. The cultural contract will clear areas for a third round of implementation. There will be no changes to grazing operations for mastication or cut/pile areas.

The forest is committed to utilizing biomass throughout the project area where appropriate. Commercial timber harvesting will be targeted as the initial strategy for proposed actions as it creates a sustainable benefit to local communities in terms of forest production and economic incentive. The Ashley National Forest recognizes that commercial timber harvesting is not always realistic due to economic and logistical concerns that may prohibit the removal of commercial forest products in some locations. In project areas where this is the case, the forest is committed to employing alternative methods in order to expedite biomass removal. As outlined previously in this proposal, and in accordance with associated land management plans and guidance, all methods of fuels reduction work will be considered and employed in the project area. Fuels reduction work also has a benefit to domestic livestock in terms of animal distribution and available forage as a result of woody vegetation removal.