Restoration Initiatives

Prioritizing and implementing landscape-scale adaptive restoration

The Kane and Two Mile ranches landscape comprises a wide diversity of ecosystems, ecological conditions, and conservation challenges. Thus, our strategy for conservation and restoration must be based on a strong scientific foundation that is relevant to habitats at multiple spatial scales, ranging from specific degraded areas to entire landscapes across which wide ranging species move and ecological processes, such as fire, flooding, and the dispersal of plants and animals unfold. In building a strong scientific foundation for restoring this landscape, we have integrated several approaches, including rigorous assessment of ecological conditions, monitoring, research, and on-the-ground restoration work.

Using information collected in a rigorous baseline assessment of ecological conditions across the ranches, which was conducted in 2005, we have developed a comprehensive restoration plan that evaluates current and historical conditions and outlines research, restoration, and monitoring needs for specific ecosystem types across the ranches. Developing this plan has enabled us to identify high-priority restoration needs ranging from site-specific to landscape scales. Our restoration work addresses issues relevant to forests and woodlands, shrublands and grasslands, and riparian habitat types, as well as overarching conservation and land management issues relevant to multiple ecosystem types, such as the spread and establishment of invasive species, habitat management for wide-ranging species, and appropriate management of fuels and fire.

To date, we have initiated 12 specific research and on-the-ground restoration projects that range from site-specific riparian habitat restoration efforts to post-fire habitat rehabilitation efforts, to landscape-scale forest restoration assessments. These efforts are carefully designed to guide the Grand Canyon Trust’s on-the-ground efforts, while providing important new insights to all our partners, including our federal and state partners who hold primary responsibility for the conservation and management of public lands and natural resources.