April 27, 2007
Lee Johnson
Moab-Monticello District Ranger
Manti-La Sal National Forest
599 West Price River Drive
Price, UT 84501
Michael Crawley
Forester, Supervisor’s Office
Manti-La Sal National Forest
62 East 100 North
Moab, UT 84532
Dear Lee and Michael,
On April 2, 2007, Dr. Robert Beschta (Oregon State University Professor Emeritus) and I briefly visited the planned 2007 Horse Creek aspen burn site within the Moab Face area with Greg Montgomery (Forester, Moab-Monticello), Michelle Smith-Kause (Fire Management Officer, South Zone), Michael Crawley (Fire Ecologist, Manti-La Sal NF), Brenda Dale (Fuels, South Zone), Wayne Hoskisson (Sierra Club, Utah Chapter), and Terry Shepherd (Red Rock Forests).
During that visit, Dr. Beschta and I asked about the potential for some livestock exclosures within and outside the burn area in order to learn about the role that livestock grazing does and does not play within both burned and unburned aspen clones in this area. Erecting exclosures is critical because:
- This is the first large aspen prescribed burn the Forest has undertaken in the La Sal or Abajo Mountains and the Forest needs information about aspen community post-burn responses; and
- Only with exclosures can we hope to learn about the relative roles that lack of fire and livestock grazing play in relation to:
- aspen recruitment
- aspen understory vegetation diversity and structure
- conifer encroachment on these aspen clones
- wild ungulate browsing/grazing impacts.
As Dr. Beschta noted, adaptive management requires us to be able to separate aspen responses to livestock grazing from responses to fire suppression as well as aspen responses to fire from responses to reduced livestock grazing and to wild ungulate browsing.
Michael Crawley encouraged me to submit a proposal for exclosures, and Grand Canyon Trust would like to propose four small exclosures, each 100’ by 200’. Two would be at upper elevations: one inside and the second outside the burn perimeter. Two would likewise be established at lower elevations: one inside and the second outside the burn perimeter. The total length of fencing (at least 40” high) would thus be 2,400’, a little more than a half mile of fencing.
Grand Canyon Trust would like to work with the Manti-La Sal NF and other interested parties to gather basic baseline and post-burn vegetation data (e.g., ramet counts, diameter of aspen, shrub/grass/forb density, bare soil) within and adjacent to each exclosure over the next five years, according to mutually agreed-upon rapid assessment monitoring protocols.
We would appreciate a discussion with you regarding the possibility of establishing these four small, “permanent” exclosures within and near the burn perimeter as soon as possible.. We would work with members within the Three Forest Coalition and local community to gain volunteer labor for construction of these exclosures. I would like to discuss potential cost-sharing on materials, as well.
I will phone both of you early next week (April 30-May 4) to speak further with you regarding this proposal.
Sincerely,
Mary O’Brien, Ph.D. (Botany)
Southern Utah Forests Project Manager
Grand Canyon Trust
mob@uoregon.edu
541/485-6886 (until May 7)
435/259-6205 (after May 7)