The Bureau of Land Management Moab Field Office has completed an environmental assessment and is seeking comments on a proposed restoration and fuels treatment project south of Moab.
The Black Ridge Fuels Reduction for Vegetative Restoration and Resource Protection Project would reduce pinyon and juniper along Black Ridge and surrounding areas where tree densities are crowding out understory vegetation and encroaching into sagebrush meadows, BLM officials said. In addition, the project targets fuels on BLM lands adjacent to the Pack Creek, Brown’s Hole, and La Sal communities that BLM officials have determined are at risk from high intensity wildland fire spreading from adjacent public lands.
According to the plan, the pinyon-juniper reduction would be completed through a variety of methods, including using a mechanical chipper/shredder or “bullhog” and cutting trees and brush with chainsaws. BLM crews would burn stacked piles of brush and would also use low-intensity burns to remove understory vegetation.
The 30,000-acre project boundary extends roughly from Pack Creek on the north, the Manti-La Sal Forest boundary on the east, La Sal on the south, and U.S. 191 on the west, according to the plan.
The proposal calls for designing the project in phases. The first phase would cover about 9,100 acres and could begin as early as this spring, BLM officials said.
Comments must be submitted by Feb. 28, to Brian Keating, fuels program manager, Bureau of Land Management, 82 East Dogwood, Moab, Utah, 84532. A copy of the EA is available at the BLM office in Moab and on the Moab Field Office website at
www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/moab.html.
