BLM Rawlins Field Office Offering Grant for Wyoming Wildlife Corridor and Aquatic Habitat Enhancement

Project Objective: Improve passage for big game between summer and winter ranges on intermingled public and private lands; eliminate fish passage impediments while executing identified fish habitat improvements; provide maintenance on exclosures built to protect source springs which charge water tables and supple water to tanks for both livestock and wildlife.

Statement of Joint Objectives/Project Management Plan: The conversion of sheep wire fences to wildlife friendly, 4 wire allows antelope to safely crawl under fences and mule deer and elk to safely clear the top of wire fences. This in turn helps moderate, to some extent, the passage of big game between their summer and winter ranges. Removal of barriers and the development of appropriately sized low-tech habitat improvement structures will improve the ability of sensitive warm water fish species to move more freely through the system and ideally enable population increases. Retrofitting spring developments that have outgrown their original design or have been neglected, for one reason or another, has proven effective for keeping grazing pressure off the riparian areas whether from livestock or big game.

As the project area is a special management area where the BLM and Wyoming Game and Fish Department cooperatively managing a BLM allotment, the recipient will be learning about how this arrangement was forged, from a policy and land management stand point; about species ecology of warm water fish, the synecology of the Muddy Creek watershed, the Endangered Species Act, and administrative execution of the guiding principles of that act; and through the use of rock masonry techniques the students will learn how ancient cultures in semi-arid and arid landscaped optimize water harvesting and minimized erosion impacts using low-tech masonry methods; project area also has a unique history of coordinated resource management activity – the overall package is quite educational.

Period of Project: June 2009 through September 2009

Scope.
10 days 8 People: 8 hands on work days, 1 day for travel either end of tour at least 8 hours of straight academic participation/education:1st Project Day will have a 2 hour orientation, each different task will be accompanied by a 1 hour briefing session, last day of tour will be included a wrap up lastly at least 1 hour.