Wild Utah Project's Grazing Research Data and Products

• GIS Analysis. We have produced various GIS overlays with sensitive species and habitats, indicators of grazing pressure (such as cattle density) in order to target high-risk grazing allotments for our conservation partners to comment on, appeal, litigate or retire grazing permits.

•Grazing Literature Review. We produced a comprehensive literature review on the environmental impacts of desert grazing, with specific attention to grazing impact studies conducted on the Colorado Plateau or in the Intermountain West. This literature review provided the basis for our development of our ecologically-based grazing management model, and for many of our comments on federal grazing plans and permit renewals.

•Grazing Database. To effectively support our conservation partners' legal efforts, we assembled all relevant grazing data for each allotment in our Utah grazing coalition's southern Utah focus area into a comprehensive grazing database, organizing a number of previously unrelated data sources on an allotment basis. The result of these efforts is the creation of a powerful tool that systematically correlates agency documents assessing habitat condition to each particular grazing allotment and the details of its management.

•Field Monitoring Data. For the past five years Wild Utah Project has conducted tedious, detailed field analysis to test the key monitoring methods the BLM and U.S. Forest Service use in making grazing decisions. We have scores of sample points across the state where we measure grass and herbaceous plant production by clipping, bagging and weighing (with help of partner Western Watersheds Project) 3ft2 sample frames of plants. Through this data collection, we have discovered that the primary survey process the BLM uses significantly underreports degraded rangelands. For example BLM Rangeland Health Assessments in our Rich County study area reported plant productivity at or above the predicted standard. But our monitoring found that the productivity for palatable plants (for cattle) was about 25% of what it should be. We also compared our data against BLM's observation estimate of how much grazing occurs. We found that in areas where significant grazing occurs, BLM's method underreports grazing pressure by more than 50%. Where we found cattle and wildlife ate 60-80% of the available forage, BLM's utilization estimates reported only about 20% utilization. We have made presentations on all this to the agency staff and have made our data available to them. Wild Utah Project's precedent setting research is starting to have a profound effect on BLM's range management not only in the allotments where our studies are conducted but also on a much broader scale.