Wildlife habitat fragmentation by ORVs in Idaho

[Oak]

Here's an interesting video about habitat fragmentation in the BLM's Jarbidge Resource Area. The video is unfortunately hosted on a very slow server, so it's best to let it load completely and then watch it by clicking the link on the right side of the screen. The video is over 11 minutes long, but worth the wait. Read the background below.

Video:

http://blip.tv/file/325173

Background:

This product represents about 18 months of work and many Wilderness Society staff members played a role in its development. It started in the Spring of 2006 when Brad Brooks in the TWS Idaho office identified the Jarbidge Field Office as a priority work area. There were a number of reasons for this area’s identification as a priority including the fact it includes some lands within the Owyhee Initiative, the RMP is being prepared under a court ordered 2-year timeline in response to a Western Watersheds lawsuit over grazing, and because TWS’s BLM Action Center (AC) and Regional Office have a very good relationship with the BLM staff in the office due to our work in Craters of the Moon National Monument – the current BLM Field Office Manager used to be the Monument Manager at Craters. TWS submitted fairly standard scoping comments in March 2006 (http://www.wilderness.org/Library/Documents/upload/Jarbidge Scoping Comments_03_10_06.PDF). BLM was fairly interested in our scoping comments, so Brad contacted Janice Thomson and Mark Wilbert in TWS’s Center for Landscape Analysis (CLA) in Seattle and asked if CLA would be interested in running a spatial analysis of the existing route network in the Jarbidge Field Office to quantify the habitat fragmentation roads are causing in the Field Office. Mark immediately began collecting GIS data including species of concern critical range, route data, etc. BLM had recently conducted field inventories of routes in two areas within the field office, but not the full area. The two areas they focused their inventories on were the Jarbidge Foothills and the Canyonlands areas. These two areas were the focus of BLM’s inventory because they were identified as having the most user conflicts and most ORV damage. As a result, BLM planned to make specific route decisions in these areas as part of the Field Office RMP. As a result, Mark was only able to calculate the habitat fragmentation in these two areas. In January 2007, Brad arranged meetings with BLM staff in Idaho. Mark presented some of his preliminary findings and again, BLM seemed very interested in our methodology. Fortuitously, Brad also arranged a meeting with the ID Fish and Game Department. They were even more impressed with the findings and told TWS that the Jarbidge Foothills area was being managed as a Big Buck Unit for Mule Deer and that they had instituted special ORV regulations during hunting season which restricts all hunters using motorized vehicles to routes suitable for travel by full sized vehicles having 4 or more wheels during hunting hours in this area. During the meeting, TWS asked ID Fish and Game if they would support TWS proposing Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA) designation for the Canyonlands and Jarbidge Foothills areas using they’re ORV restrictions as a model. Although the scoping period was no longer officially open, we were confident BLM would still accept SRMA proposals from us. Unlike Fish and Game Departments in many states, the IDFG is amazingly progressive in its view on roads and the damage they cause to wildlife habitat, so they said they liked the idea and would be very supportive of our proposals. Brad and Mark then immediately set to work developing SRMA proposals for the Canyonlands and Jarbidge Foothills areas and in February 2007 we submitted the following SRMA proposal: http://www.wilderness.org/Library/D...ge-SRMADesignationProposalsFinal_02_21_07.PDF. TWS followed the SRMA proposal submission up the following month (March 2007) with an analysis CLA completed showing the current state of habitat fragmentation within our proposed units and the likely impacts to various wildlife species: http://www.wilderness.org/Library/Documents/upload/JarbidgeTravelPlanning_03_13_07.PDF. Around this same time, Connor Bailey at the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project in Denver demonstrated a new GoogleEarth type product called NASA WorldWind. WorldWind is an open source product developed by NASA which has higher resolution photography than GoogleEarth and provides a number of options GoogleEarth doesn’t have. Additionally, Waterstone Environmental Consulting was in the process of developing add-ons to this product which allows users to easily display GIS layers and make movies. Once TWS was able to secure funding for this project they were able to complete this video for under $4000. The video focuses on protecting backcountry hunting opportunities from off-road vehicle abuse because that was the stated purpose of our SRMA proposals (and by extension to help protect the Owyhee Initiative lands in the Jarbidge Field Office and other important big game habitat). Unfortunately, many of the areas within our Proposal and highlighted in this video recently burned as part of the massive Murphy Creek Complex fire, so the management of these areas is now higher profile and their future is less certain. Prior to the fire, BLM had indicated that some version of our proposal was included in at least 3 management alternatives in the upcoming Draft RMP.