The Watershed Restoration Initiative has also identified and mapped additional restoration-focus areas across Utah's sagebrush habitat ranges. The mapping effort identifies where restoration work can prevent further declines in rangeland health.

You can review all of the proposed, current and completed habitat-restoration projects in the Watershed Restoration Initiative's online project database.

Range trend data is assessed and organized by wildlife management units, and each region is resurveyed every five years. There are multiple survey sites within each unit, and photos provide visual evidence of changes in the vegetation. (For example, here are photos of the Grapevine Spring area in the Pine Valley wildlife management unit.)

DWR biologists and other land managers use range-trend data when proposing habitat-improvement projects to Utah's Watershed Restoration Initiative. Range-trend data is also one of several resources used in revising deer and elk management plans.

Learn more about the methods biologists use to study range trends.

Restoration-project parameters

How do the regional teams decide which projects to pursue? They measure the proposed action against three main parameters:

• Is the land considered a conservation focus area?
• Are partners and stakeholders willing to consider new management methods?
• Will the land and its stakeholders support a long-term, cooperative and measurable effort that involves multiple species and uses?

By definition, all conservation focus areas face threats to watershed health. These threats must be minimized or eliminated — at a reasonable cost — so the area can sustain diverse species over the long term.

Regional team efforts

When it comes to restoration projects, the regional teams are very familiar with the lands and stakeholders in question. They measure proposals against parameters and decide whether to support various projects. The teams also:

• Coordinate and share participants' conservation concerns and priorities
• Itemize and implement long-term, objective-driven plans to protect and restore land health
• Identify conservation focus areas and make them a top priority
• Strive for consistency between the initiative's efforts and existing land-use plans
• Review proposed restoration projects for adequacy, technical merit and consistency with regional priorities

Above all, the regional teams foster an atmosphere where cooperation is the rule — not the exception — for conservation and restoration activities.

Over the years, the center has developed a very valuable seed acquisition, storage, mixing and distribution program. As part of this program, the DWR built and recently expanded a seed warehouse, located at the research center. The warehouse ensures that the appropriate seed is available when needed for habitat-restoration projects.

The DWR's seed warehouse plays a key role in Utah's Watershed Restoration Initiative. Seed from the warehouse is planted in areas after wildfires, prescribed burns and mechanical treatments. For more information on the seed warehouse and its recent expansion, see the fact sheet — (PDF format).

Fire-rehabilitation projects

These projects involve artificial seeding after a wildfire or after an intentional burn to help a particular area. (These are called prescribed burns.) After the burn, a number of steps occur:

In rugged terrain, the seed is usually dropped from an airplane or helicopter.

When possible, after the seed is dropped, two tractors drag an anchor chain over the burned area to cover the seed with soil.

On flat terrain, rangeland drills are often used to place seed into furrows (much like a grain drill is used on a farm). The furrows concentrate the moisture in the soil and increase the chance the seed will establish itself and grow.

Mechanical-treatment projects

These types of projects usually involve attaching an implement to a tractor and dragging it through dense stands of old sagebrush — or through pinyon-juniper woodlands that have spread into sagebrush sites. Sometimes, the work crews use a brush hog (a type of rotary mower) to mulch the uprooted vegetation. After the older plants have been removed, the area is reseeded.

Pinyon-juniper treatments typically require crews to remove individual young trees that have spread into productive sagebrush sites. Sometimes, the crews use an anchor chain to open up larger areas within a partially closed stand where patches of sagebrush are still present.

Although restoration efforts will not immediately return Utah's rangelands to pristine condition, there is optimism among all partners in the Watershed Restoration Initiative. There has been significant progress in improving rangeland health in focus areas statewide.

This approach helps the partners easily share information and resources, which is important because many of the projects receive funding from several different organizations. The database is also open to the public, providing an in-depth look at the collaborative funding and work that goes into habitat restoration in Utah.

The online database contains more than just project proposals. It also includes maps, dates, project specifications, funding sources, expenses, acreage, affected species and other critical information.