Wildfires have caused concern as they have increased in severity and intensity over the last few decades. Land managers have sought management actions to mitigate the risk of wildfire by reducing fuel loads, thus decreasing wildfire intensity. Camp Williams is a National Guard training facility near Bluffdale, Utah that is used for artillery and light arms training. Managers at Camp Williams have created fuel breaks as part of their wildfire mitigation plan. They have implemented targeted sheep and goat grazing to remove fine fuel and thin brush. Management objectives set utilization of fine fuels (grass) at 80% by weight. Questions arose as to what the ecological impact are of managements prescribed grazing rates within these fuel break. We evaluated three fuel breaks and quantified the impacts of targeted sheep and goat grazing at 80% utilization. We assessed how invasive annual grasses, such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and bulbous bluegrass (Poa bolbosa) responded to heavy utilization rates. During the summer of 2015 we collected herbaceous cover, shrub density and bunch grass density along eight paired (inside fuel break and outside fuel breaks) transects. Our results indicate that the current management grazing plan could lead to an increase of invasive annual grasses, which may be counterproductive in fuel breaks. Our results suggest that changes in timing or intensity may be needed. This information will assist managers in fine tuning targeted grazing as a fuels reduction tool to create fuel breaks.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.