On July 25-27, David and Emma Gardner joined William Gray and Mary O’Brien to survey which plants are growing in the beautiful, glacier-formed, but unsung, “Potholes” region between Left and Right Forks UM Creek (Fishlake NF). We even found a good “reference” spring (i.e., it isn’t generally being grazed by cattle). On the Dixie NF we surveyed a sagebrush community transect inside and outside a cattle exclosure.
Identification of gathered plants continued by headlamp into each night, after eating good suppers prepared by Trust interns Season Martin and Aaron David (who had been working elsewhere in the field all day)..
David Gray photographing nodding onion (Allium cernuum) in a sagebrush/aspen cattle exclosure
Emma Gardner checks out Pothole birds.
It isn’t easy to identify a wildflower when it doesn’t have a flower. But two super, self-taught plant identifiers, namely a retired University of Utah biochemistry professor (aka President of the Utah Native Plant Society) and a Park City custom builder came down to southern Utah to help out with three key projects.
On July 10-12, William Gray joined the Trust’s Mary O’Brien and Wayne Hoskisson, the range expert for Beaver Ranger District, the Fishlake National Forest botanist, and (one of the days) the new Fishlake National Forest Supervisor to provide much-needed skills at “re-reading” plant transects which hadn’t been read in 30 years (i.e., detecting which plants are now present in 20 frames along a 100-foot tape). The job was made considerably more difficult given that cows had already grazed the sites (e.g., see Fig. 1). The transects were in the two Tushar allotments that are the subject of the two-year Tushar Allotments Collaboration in which numerous stakeholders are involved (see http://tushar.ecr.gov/ and http://www.grandcanyontrust.org/programs/forests/utah/tushar_allotments.php )
William Gray finding a tiny buckwheat (Eriogonum caespitosum) on a heavily-grazed site.
Thanks to William Gray and David and Emma Gardner!
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