More Beavers, More Water. Utah Southern Forest Progress

Kirsten and I spent the first week in October up on the Fish Lake Plateau with Mary O'Brien, the Utah Forest Program Director for the Grand Canyon Trust.  Mary is out dogging the Forest Service to live up to their own guidelines and regulations.  It's a never ending battle for her and not always successful.  The Forest Service managers seem to not have much to gain by enforcing the regs and perhaps their job to lose if they do.  It's one of the reasons for Torrey House Press, to help make the public more aware of what she is fighting and get them to care enough that the public employees who are the range managers will be accountable to do their jobs.

Mary just sent out an encouraging email to the volunteers outlining progress for the year.  See her letter here after the jump . . .

 

Dear all,

As Thanksgiving approaches, I did want to THANK YOU for volunteering this summer with Grand Canyon Trust’s Utah Forests Program. (And thanks to, ahem, our keys to success: Andrew Mount and Joshua Porter). Four of your trips assessed 21 beaver sites in the Escalante River headwaters; and the fifth, last, trip measured stubble height of sedges and browse of willow and aspen, mapped a beaver complex, and counted cows that were, unbeknownst to the cows, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A small bit of follow-up for you all:

• Bryan Bird and John Horning of WildEarth Guardians and I recently met in DC with Forest Service staff ( the Deputy Chief of the Forest Service who is in charge of the national forest system; the chief wildlife biologist, and the chief watershed/restoration person) to bring a DRAFT petition (under the Administrative Procedures Act) to develop a rule that national forests in the West would include restoration of beaver in their forest plans and in a subwatershed as a climate change adaptation tool.  Their response was GREAT – e.g., “Why limit it to national forests in the West?” and “Maybe we can do this more simply as a Forest Service Manual requirement.”  Stay tuned, but the response was uniformly positive. “Well, beaver IS a keystone species,” Wildlife Biologist Anne Zimmerman stated during the meeting.

• It looks as if Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) may hire TWO field people to focus on beaver in 2011. Again, stay tuned, because the state legislature is trying to make all agencies reduce, reduce, reduce. 

• Legendary livetrapper Sherri Tippie is being brought by UDWR to southern Utah in June 2011 to lead a two-day livetrapping workshop for UDWR and some non-agency people who would like to eventually be certified by UDWR for assisting with livetrapping and translocation

• A near-final draft of the first-ever economic valuation of beaver ecosystem services, focusing on the Escalante River headwaters where we worked is now going to be run by several folks in order to issue a final final. Again, stay tuned.

• Boulder Community Alliance is hoping to bring Skip Lisle from Vermont to southern Utah in Spring or Summer 2011 to run a two-day workshop at which two flow control devices, a Beaver Deceiver and Castor Master, would be built near one culvert and at one beaver pond whose size needs to be kept stable.

• I’ve begun some conversations with UDWR and Hogle Zoo (Liz Larson, Beaver Trip #1) about the possibility of a  two-day Beaver Days celebration in 2012 in southern Utah – you know,  maybe a parade, costumes, posters, youth art contest, photography contest, storytelling about beaver, field trips to beaver dams,  - the whole enchilada. Fun, yes?

• While beaver site reports haven’t been written yet (on Mary’s list), the reports on UM Creek browse and stubble height (the last volunteer trip, in October) have been written by Mindy Wheeler and Wayne Hoskisson. Let me know if you’re interested in reading them and I’ll send you a link via YouSendIt. Soon they’ll get posted on the Trust website.

So...!  Our first trip, in June 2010, was cut short one day by snow; and the last trip, in October, was cut short one day by unending rain.  So we were all out as long as we could be, and I thank you all for being so good to each other, to Grand Canyon Trust’s Utah Forests Progam, and to beaver and our national forests. Sometime early in 2011 we’ll post Utah  trips for 2011 – in case you’re interested in being a friend of wildlife , willow, and water on your national forests in southern Utah!

AND....those of you who were on Trip #1 and #4 with Ken Burbidge will be happy to know that he was recently honored as Grand Canyon Trust’s Volunteer of the Year!!!  He DID seem pretty helpful, you know?

Thanks  again to you all, and Ashley Driver (Beaver Trip #4), don’t forget to write us when you’re in the Peace Corps! Happy holidays!

Mary

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Mary O'Brien
Utah Forests Program Manager
Grand Canyon Trust
maryobrien10@gmail.com
HC 64 Box 2604
Castle Valley UT 84532
(435) 259-6205