BLM Utah Special Status Species and Other Special Wildlife Inventories in the Color Country District

Background: Climate and land use change are the major drivers of biodiversity loss and speciesâ¿¿ range contractions in sagebrush ecosystems (Anderson and Inouye 2001). Climate projections for the Intermountain West indicate a warming and drying trend over the coming century (Seager et al. 2012), combined with expansion of water, mineral, and transportation development (Leu et al. 2008, MacDonald 2010). A number of BLM sensitive species, including Sage Grouse, are of economic and intrinsic concern as they are sensitive to climatic variation and to anthropogenic habitat fragmentation (Lendrum et al. 2013, Stoner et al. 2016). Several unique projects adjacent and including BLM lands have been identified as historically supporting several sensitive species. This type of monitoring and inventory would be utilized as a validation or other supporting scientific recognition to many years of project implementation and its effects on the sensitive species populations and their habitats in the Color Country District. Data is needed to determine if historical migratory pathways and habitats have been instrumental in maintaining or improving population numbers and habitat expansion as the result of the antoropogenic treatments. Objectives: BLM Utah, Color Country District is looking to partner with an organization to establish and implement a special status species and special wildlife inventory and monitoring program within the Color Country District. This project will focus on data collection pertaining to a wide array of special status species including presence/absence, nest locations, species distributions den locations, breeding and brood rearing data, identification of migratory flight paths, etc. Information obtained through this project will provide valuable information to the BLM and other stakeholders regarding special status species and/or special wildlife within respective areas. This information will better equip stakeholders in analyzing potential impacts to the species from projects and to provide answers to other inquiries about these species. This data will assist the BLM in making management decisions in facilitating the efficient design and/or projects of wildlife study plans. Examples of efforts for this project include golden eagle and other raptor nesting inventories, raptor migration inventories, kit fox monitoring, acoustic bat monitoring, greater sage-grouse inventories and habitat monitoring, geodatabase development and possibly plant inventories. The work for 2016 is primarily focused on inventories for Sage grouse in the Color Country District. Public Benefit: The public benefit of this project is to monitor and inventory, and forecast future conditions for target species such as Greater Sage-Grouse. With this data the BLM will be able to assess the benefits of the Best Management Practices applied at the project level and determine if connectivity between populations is occurring. The BLM will also be able to assess if the protections allowed through the land use plans are appropriately applied on the project scale to adequately protect habitat for things such as migration. Through these efforts the BLM can work to better preserve habitats and the species that rely on those habitats for future generations and work to keep species off the endangered species list. By reducing the potential for species listing less public dollars would need to be expended in the future for species benefit.