REstoring Mule Deer Habitat, One Swing at a Time

[Ben Lamb]

This is a fantastic article by Hal Herring about a project he's working on in Idaho to restore sagebrush habitats. It's great to see MDF, RMEF & NAGP involved in work like this, as it benefits not only species we like to hunt and fish for, but over 350 species of native flora & fauna. Work like this is needed across the west and is a shining example of how people can change and influence public land management. It's well worth the read.


http://www.fieldandstream.com/restoring-mule-deer-habitat-one-swing-at-time?8pPAgxOxYMLPyhpJ.01

From the jobsite on the mesa above Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho, you can look south over the deep green of the Snake River plain and the mighty Snake itself, beyond to the Jarbidge Mountains of Nevada, hazy and beautiful in the distance. The mesa is part of the Bennett Hills, a vast expanse of mostly Bureau of Land Management land, and the winter range for an estimated 10,000 mule deer. It is a place of mahogany-colored jagged basalt, burned over too hard in the 2011 Blair Fire, an austere desert landscape that stretches to the far northern horizon, where a few tough Ponderosa pines show against a white sky.

Before the Blair Fire, this was big sagebrush country, prime winter range, and a favorite destination for local mule deer hunters looking for toads. Since then, it has become colonized by a storm of invasive weeds from the steppes of Eurasia, cheatgrass, medusahead, rush skeleton weed…none of them good for native wildlife or livestock. It is a kind of perfect storm of loss. When the fires burn here now, they burn so hot in the mat of invasive weeds that only the cheat and the medusa head can come back. Without the big sage plants to catch and hold the winter snows, there is less water in the soil every year, again favoring the invasives over the old native grasses and shrubs so crucial to our mule deer here...

 

[RaghornHS]

That's a hell of a project to try and tackle. Sagebrush is notoriously difficult to re-establish!

 

[Schaaf]

As a conservationist, I couldn't be happier to have Hal on our side. He has a hell of a way with words.

 

[1_pointer]

I wish them well, but my experience in similar country with sagebrush seedling plantings was not good.

 

[Brittany Chukarman]

1P, what about bitterbrush in sage habitat? Any success?

 

[1_pointer]

Some of them lived, but I wouldn't call it a screaming success. Most of the plantings I was involved with was after a fire. In that situation, we had better luck focusing on getting perennial bunch grasses growing and then bringing in the shrubs later. One problem with the annual grasses is that they start growing so early and can outcompete the shrub seedlings. We did have better luck with serviceberry and that might work for you instead of bitterbrush.