FRRR Draft PEIS Virtual Public Meeting
5: What are the Treatment Options?
There are many treatment options available for restoring sagebrush communities. It is important to select the best options based on the needs and conditions on the ground. The FRRR Draft PEIS analyzes five categories of treatments, based on Monsen et al. 2004. The five categories of treatments and example uses for each are shown below. See Section 2.3 in the FRRR Draft PEIS for more information about each of the treatment methods.
Treatment Options
Manual
Interplanting
Hand cutting pinyon-juniper
Herbicide application
Mechanical
Seedbed prep
Modify sagebrush cover
Seeding
Mastication
Chemical
Seedbed prep
Invasive plant control
Fine fuel reduction
Prescribed Fire
Seedbed prep
Reduce or modify existing fuel loading
Targeted Grazing
Seedbed prep
Invasive plant control
Fine fuel reduction
Manual treatments are hand operated actions like planting sagebrush seedlings or cutting individual juniper trees with a chainsaw.
Mechanical treatments rely on machinery like tractors to mow vegetation or plant desired species.
Specialized machines like a masticator are used to quickly remove juniper trees.
Chemical treatments are herbicides used to remove undesirable vegetation and can be applied by hand, with a tractor, helicopter, or airplane.
Prescribed fire is burning an area under narrowly selected conditions to achieve a desired outcome.
This might be burning off a thatch of invasive annual grasses to prepare for seeding desired species.
Targeted grazing is concentrating livestock to graze under specific conditions to achieve a desired outcome. This may be to remove a noxious patch of weeds before they go to seed or to remove a thatch of invasive annual grasses to prepare for seeding desired species.
Monitoring, Maintenance, and Adaptive Management
All vegetation management actions would be organized around phases of inventory, assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation and reassessment, as described in BLM Manual H-1740-2, Integrated Vegetation Management Handbook , and Incorporating Assessment Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) for Monitoring Fuels Project Effectiveness Guidebook (BLM 2018), Measuring and Monitoring Plant Populations (Elzinga et al. 1998), Sampling Vegetation Attributes (USDA and USDOI 1999), and local RMP guidance or policy. Using Resistance and Resilience Concepts to Reduce Impacts of Invasive Annual Grasses and Altered Fire Regimes on Sagebrush Ecosystem and Greater Sage-Grouse: A Strategic Multi-Scale Approach (Chambers et al. 2014) would be used as a decision support tool to determine priority areas for management and to identify effective management strategies. See Section 2.2.8; Section 4.1.1, Bullet 5; and Section 4.2.1, Bullet 6 in the FRRR Draft PEIS for more information.
For more information on the FRRR Draft PEIS please contact Ammon Wilhelm, 208-373-4000.
If you have questions about the FRRR Draft PEIS or wish to be added or removed from the mailing list, please contact BLM at BLM_PEIS_Questions@blm.gov.