Utah Issues
What Can You Do?
Volunteer with the Grand Canyon Trust and help us extend our reach and positive influence on the ground. We need your help with gathering browse data and measuring stubble height of riparian plants in the late fall on key allotments.
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The Tushar Allotments Collaboratio
The Trust continues to follow up on implementation of a 2009 agreement that was reached via an intensive, two-year collaboration on two cattle allotments that have numerous resource problems. The Tushar Allotments Collaboration originated in 2007 when the Trust and six other conservation groups proposed it in lieu of litigating a decision regarding eight cattle term-grazing permits on the Fishlake National Forest.
The Collaboration, which is cosponsored by the Utah Farm Bureau and the Trust, includes 21 participants — permittees, conservation groups, Fishlake National Forest, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, a County commissioner — who jointly examined the two allotments during two seasons to develop recommendations in the April 2009 Tushar Grazing Allotments Final Report. The Collaboration met again in February 2011 to review progress and accomplishments per the April 2009 commitments and plan priorities for 2011.
Documenting issues on the two Tushar allotments
During summer 2010, the Trust continued to intensively monitor riparian and other sites in the two allotments that we have tracked since 2008. We documented the results of changed management, including the reduction of cattle numbers, the reduction of the intensity of allowed cattle forage utilization, and fencing of two large spring wetlands. We are tracking seven permanent range cages built in 2009; already, ground cover, aspen, and mountain mahogany are recovering.
We are noting problems that must still be addressed:
- One pasture appears to have nearly no forage available, and shows extreme overuse even at the more reasonable 30 percent utilization (down from 60 percent that was earlier permitted).
- One major creek, Pine Creek, continues to be degraded by the combination of ORV, elk, camping, and cattle use.
- One pasture whose small riparian areas were already heavily used has now been partly burned in the large Twitchell Fire of 2010.
Click here to access the 18 reports on Trust monitoring in the two allotments during 2010.
Click here to access all reports (Fishlake NF as well as Grand Canyon Trust) reports prepared for the 2011 Collaboration meeting.
Significance to other livestock allotments in southern Utah
Two nearby allotments are experiencing similar overuse that these two allotments have experienced, and we are urging that livestock management needs to change in those as well. The Fishlake NF has agreed to survey conditions in these two allotments (Circleville and South Beaver) in 2011, and the Trust will do so as well. Indeed, the lessons learned from reducing allowable utilization and cattle numbers are applicable in many allotments in southern Utah national forests.
Your donations and membership dues make our research, monitoring, and restoration work in Utah possible.
