Wyoming is one of the driest, coldest, and highest elevation states in the conterminous United States and where the Great Plains meet the southern Rockies.� Consequently, fire functions variably across gradients of topography, precipitation, and plant communities with estimated pre-European fire return intervals ranging from 6 to 15 years in the northern mixed grass prairies, 16 to 30 years in the ponderosa pine-shrub-grass plant communities, 60 to 125 years in the sagebrush steppe, and > 125 years in the sub-alpine forests.� Currently, partners at the University of Wyoming, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), United States Forest Service, and private ranchers are conducting applied research to assess how fire can be restored to optimize habitat for big game while avoiding collateral damage of additional plant invasion.� In 2014, BLM conducted prescribed burns in ravines dominated by aspen (Populus tremuloides) and serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) (re-sprouting shrub species) and paired (burned/unburned) game cameras were established to capture large ungulate responses the following growing season.� There were consistently more elk images captured in burned areas across all the camera pairs but results were variable for mule deer and pronghorn.� It appears that elk were spending more time foraging in burned areas while mule deer and pronghorn were typically traveling through unburned areas.� In another project, we have measured rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus) response to a 2010 wildfire in sagebrush steppe due to rancher concerns that fire led to rabbitbrush invasion yet ranchers desire to use prescribed fire to manage sagebrush dominance.� Our results indicate that proportional density of rabbitbrush was unchanged post-fire but the reduction of sagebrush led to enhanced visibility of rabbitbrush in the understory.� Thus, fire is an important disturbance in Wyoming that can be manipulated to alter big game distribution and structure of plant communities but additional research is a perennial need.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.