Authors: Allison Jones, Jim Catlin, Kirk Robinson, Erik Molvar, and Jeff Kessler
www.WildUtahProject.org

Introduction

The recently completed Heart of the West (HOW) Conservation Plan adds to a growing continental web of wildlands network plans. The vast Heart of the West region spans the continental divide of the middle Rockies and encompasses the tri-state area of southwest Wyoming, northeast Utah, and northwest Colorado. HOW Coalition member groups, including the Wild Utah Project, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Center for Native Ecosystems, and Western Wildlife Conservancy are now beginning to implement this ambitious state-of-the-art conservation plan.

A tremendous challenge confronts HOW Coalition member groups. Famous for including some of the last remnants of the wild West, the Heart of the West region is important habitat for many native species of plant and animal. Sadly, this wild country has become ground zero for the nation's largest energy boom, with many thousands of oil and gas wells already drilled and tens of thousands more proposed. The cumulative impact of this sprawling development, combined with off-road vehicle use, logging, and excessive livestock grazing, have already degraded and fragmented much of this spacious country, but it will only get worse without intelligent land use guidance.

Fortunately, the HOW Conservation Plan identifies those lands where the ecological needs of wildlife should be given top priority, at the same time identifying those where development might be better suited, thereby providing a useful framework for guiding land use planning in the region. Typical of wildlands network plans, the HOW plan delineates a number of core conservation areas and linkages among cores necessary to maintain the health of the land and its biotic communities. By default, surrounding lands are "compatible use" areas, where varying combinations of multiple yet compatible land use would be appropriate. This article focuses specifically on one component of the HOW plan, namely landscape linkages in the lower elevation areas of the Heart of the West, and how to maintain their functional integrity so as to provide landscape permeability for wildlife.

The Problem

The coal, oil and gas industries have been nibbling away at the Heart of the West for a long time, but the pace and scale of activity under the Bush Administration has become ravenous, threatening to permanently impair the health of the land and extirpate species. Livestock grazing, as historically practiced, combined with other imprudent land uses, has degraded much of the sagebrush steppe in the region, causing populations of many sagebrush-dependent species to decline. In spite of this, the Heart of the West still serves as a refuge for bighorn sheep, goshawk, gray wolf, sage grouse, white-tailed prairie dog, and numerous other "focal" species. The goal is to protect and restore vital habitat for these and myriad other native species.

Our Solution: A Wildlands Network

We began by analyzing the habitat needs for a number of focal species, including those just mentioned, the presence of which will indicate conditions of ecological health. The results of this analysis guided the process of identifying wildlands network elements (cores and linkages) central to the conservation plan and which will guide activists, land managers, and others in implementing the plan.
As work began on the HOW conservation plan, a sophisticated new computer modeling program, the SITES model, was gaining acceptance in wildlands network design. SITES allows regional-wide data to be analyzed in new ways and augments the process of expert analysis of landscape-scale data and hand-drawn maps. Application of the SITES model divided the Heart of the West into 15,000 planning units and assigned an array of focal species and special element data to each unit. Using wildlife habitat targets, SITES identified planning units containing imperiled plants and animals, roadless lands, high quality sage grouse habitat, and so on. An iterative analysis process then clustered planning units in such a way as to satisfy wildlife habitat targets in a least-total-area configuration. The results set the stage for a subsequent analysis to finalize core areas and linkages.

The tricky thing about SITES is that, while it is great at delineating draft core areas for protection based on conservation targets, it does not capture all the factors that should be considered in the design of a wildlands network, particularly with respect to linkages among cores. Accordingly, we also consulted a wide array of wildlife data, expert knowledge, and relevant scientific studies to help us identify suitable linkages, and in general to refine the network design. For example, we took account of natural ungulate migration routes, stream watercourses, and public land with few roads. When streams or rivers were used as the basis for linkages, a half-kilometer buffer was added on either side of the watercourse.

Implementation of the Conservation Plan

The most scientifically rigorous wildlands network design will come to naught unless it is implemented on the ground. When designing and implementing a wildlands network, the team needs to think about and plan for connectivity at various scales: viable connections among cores, and viable connections with other wildlands networks. The HOW Conservation Plan provides a framework that will define appropriate land use and management decisions, giving priority to the management of core areas and linkages to restore and maintain viable focal species populations.

Many tools exist in the implementer's toolbox, ranging from conservation easements to new wilderness areas to campaigns to affect federal land management of cores and linkages. Sometimes established by legislation or in a land use plans, special land use designation designations such as Areas of Critical Concern (Bureau of Land Management lands), Natural Areas (Forest Service), or designated wilderness (Congressional legislation) can provide conservation oriented management for linkages and core areas. It's easy to see how certain actions, such as purchase of parcels by The Nature Conservancy or designation of new state parks or National Conservation Areas can mark a concrete implementation victory for certain key core areas. But what about protection and better management of linkages? These parcels of land can often be the trickiest to protect, and unfortunately sometimes receive less attention than the cores, especially if they are smaller and more obscure, or have less wilderness or scenic values.

The Heart of the West coalition has been utilizing some novel techniques regarding implementation, which lend themselves well to the protection and better management of core areas and linkages. To implement the proper management we envision for these critical places, habitat function necessary for focal species is defined through measures that identify suitable and unsuitable kinds of land use. These measures take the form of habitat monitoring and land use prescriptions assigned to the cores and linkages. Government land managers can assign these same prescriptions to zones in their land use plans as overlaid on the HOW Conservation Plan.

The kinds of zones that government land managers use, and the management stipulations prescribed for them, are often determined by institutional practices that many outside the agency do not understand. To make matters more complex, habitat management prescriptions vary widely among different land uses and land management agencies. For example, oil and gas development prescriptions are very different from those used to manage off-road vehicles, grazing, wild burros, a listed endangered species, and archeological sites.

The HOW Conservation Plan provides a framework for comparing and critiquing different federal management proposals with the prescriptions in our conservation plan. To implement the plan, we compare current management of core areas and linkages against the ecological needs of the land and the myriad of species it supports. Where current land management agrees with our conservation plan, we praise and support that decision. Where current management is in conflict with the plan, we develop corrective prescription and then advocate appropriate changes.

Here is an example. The BLM is currently revising the Vernal Resource Management Plan (RMP) in Utah's part of the Heart of the West. This revised plan will zone oil and gas development into four categories. Category 1, the least restrictive, allows for almost no ecological considerations. Category 2 typically applies seasonal activity and buffer zone limitations around key wildlife habitats. Category 3 limits surface occupancy for wells, roads, and pipelines. Category 4, the most protective, does not allow mineral leasing. (The current oil and gas categories are displayed in Figure 2.) Using computer mapping, we can identify those lands where management follows the Conservation Plan and where oil and gas category zones are currently in conflict with the plan. (Figure 3).
To implement the Conservation Plan, core areas should be managed either in Category 4 or 3, allowing no new surface occupancy. Linkages should be managed in category 3. These HOW management stipulations will allow for better movement of focal species between cores. In areas outside of cores and linkages, new wells outside of existing oil fields should be required to use existing producing well pads and directional drilling, and to have strict seasons for drilling that avoid periods critical for wildlife. This will allow for some landscape permeability for wildlife, and even for some viable populations of focal species, within compatible use areas.

The Book Cliffs Core and its linkages, which lie within the Vernal RMP, are among the most threatened in the Heart of the West. This region faces accelerated oil and gas development, largely fueled by the politics of the moment. How do we effect change? Working with local conservation groups we have developed a conservation-oriented "Responsible Use Alternative" for the Vernal RMP. A broad public campaign with many facets advocates that BLM follow recommendations adopted from the HOW Conservation Plan.
The above example shows how the Heart of the West Conservation Plan can affect oil and gas development within cores and linkages. Similar analyses allow us to make specific recommendations for cores and linkages concerning off-road vehicle use, livestock grazing, wildlife habitat restoration, and so on.
Yet another example will help illustrate how our conservation plan is being employed with en eye for connectivity. Working with the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, the HOW Coalition helped inventory fences that cross elk and antelope migration routes. Management of linkages for wildlife migration includes specific fence standards (barbless wire, adequate wire spacing) that allows for the passage of wildlife. Interestingly, while an antelope can run as fast as 60 mph, it refuses to jump fences! A raised barbless lower wire solves this problem. The resulting survey identified the places where we will focus on fencing changes to restore wild patterns for antelope, deer and elk.

Future Work on Connectivity in the Heart of the West

Now that the Heart of the West Conservation Plan is completed, we are continuing our work on an implementation campaign that will focus on connectivity across the Heart of the West. In particular, we are kick-starting a new, 3-state, coalition effort that will enable us to achieve better management and preservation of key linkages. This plan involves identifying the linkages within the wildlands network that, while being extremely important from an ecological sense, are also critical sites to build campaigns around because they are either (a) extremely imperiled from pending or proposed land uses, or (b) there are excellent opportunities to preserve or better manage these important places NOW before they are at risk of being destroyed or very degraded.
By concentrating on key linkages in three states at once, we will draw attention to the entire Heart of the West effort, the wildlands network, and implementation of this ambitious vision, while simultaneously educating and drawing in other conservation entities, land managers, and other stakeholders into the larger conservation effort. The three key linkages we focus on in our linkages campaign are the Powder Rim Linkage in Wyoming, the Bear River Range Linkage in Utah, and the Yampa River Linkage in Colorado (Box 1). Particular focus is given to the Powder Rim Linkage, which is also a featured linkage in Wildland Project's Room to Roam: Endangered Linkages campaign.

Current and future implementation efforts with these key linkages, and many others in the Heart of the West, are being acted on and designed. Future monitoring will gauge to what degree carnivores and other focal species are using the linkages, and maps might be adjusted accordingly. For that matter, new scientific studies and restoration and rehabilitation efforts on the ground (i.e. road closures, underpasses) may give us new information or elevate the priority of implementing certain wildlife travel corridors. On the other hand, new threats and developments could render certain linkages unworkable. Whatever the future holds in store for the Heart of the West coalition, we will bring new information into the conservation plan, and work together with our coalition members, as well as land owners, land managers, and scientists as we work for greater connectivity and less habitat fragmentation the Heart of the West. The ecological solutions contained in the Heart of the West Plan fill a void in terms of current land management, and offer hope for this beleaguered landscape.

The Most Endangered Linkages of the Heart of the West

Powder Rim Linkage - Characterized by high-country juniper woodland, sagebrush and grasslands, the Powder Rim Linkage provides a key connection between the forested Medicine Bow Core Area and public lands administered by the BLM, including the magnificent Adobe Town Core. The linkage provides habitat for numerous rare plant and animal species, and serves as an important migration corridor for elk and mule deer. Powder Rim may also be the last remaining east-west wildlife linkage joining sage grouse populations in the Red Desert. Plagued by a rash of oil and gas development, the Powder Rim Linkage is in dire need of protection. The Powder Rim Linkage was one of the five Endangered Linkages featured in Wildland Project's Room to Roam Campaign

Bear River Range Linkage - In northern Utah there is the only continuous expanse of forested lands connecting lynx, wolverine, and wolf habitat in the Southern Rockies to that in the Northern Rockies. This makes conservation of this narrow connecting habitat in northern Utah critical for the long-term survival of these species in the American Rockies. This linkage zone also encompasses both montane and sagebrush ecosystems, offering important transitional habitat for those species whose life requirements require different elevational habitats. This area is currently plagued by private land development, overgrazing, and exploding ORV use. The opportunities to achieve greater protections and improved land management through this critical linkage are many, as the Heart of the West coalition is joining multiple citizen campaigns ranging from affecting the Forest Service Management Plan to better monitoring ORV use.

The Yampa Linkage - The Yampa Linkage is built around the wild Yampa River, Colorado's only free-flowing river. This river corridor has incredible biological values as a result of this, including supporting some of the best remaining critical habitat for the Colorado River system's endangered native fish species. The Colorado BLM is currently selling oil and gas drilling rights throughout this area. By actively watchdogging projects proposed in this area we will help protect the Yampa River's natural characteristics and biological values, while preserving this river corridor's utility as an important wildlife linkage.

Focal Species of the Heart of the West