BLM Wyoming Grant for Sagebrush Habitat Restoration and Wildfire Risk Reduction

The Lander BLM Field Office and Wyoming Game and Fish Department have been actively working together to reduce hazardous fuels and improve wildlife habitat for years.
The project area contains important habitat for mule deer, antelope and sage grouse which is a BLM sensitive species. Based on past successes both agencies would like to continue the project.

B. Project Objective:

The objective of the project is to maintain and enhance sagebrush habitat and reduce the threat of large stand replacing wildland fires.

Sage grouse are dependent on healthy sagebrush stands to survive. Sagebrush provides winter forage, hiding and thermal cover for both antelope and mule deer. Throughout the project area juniper is encroaching into sagebrush stands. Eventually juniper could out-compete sagebrush for water and nutrients and the area would no longer provide habitat for sagebrush dependent wildlife species. Juniper also increases the overall fuel load in sagebrush stands, making wildfires more difficult to control. Areas occupied by juniper also tend to experience hotter and more severe fires which cause the reestablishment of vegetation to take longer following wildfire. These areas are also more susceptible to cheatgrass invasion.

Many sagebrush stands in the project area is large and continuous. If a large hot season wildfire occurred thousands of acres of sagebrush habitat would be lost for about 30 to 100 years depending on the rate of sagebrush reestablishment.

To address these issues the BLM and Wyoming Game and Fish department will mechanically remove juniper encroachment and use a mower create a mosaic of different age and size class sagebrush stands. Removing juniper and creating patches by mowing will al