HLP Projects and Partners

 


Below you will find information on just a few of our monitoring projects and areas of interests across the country, and on the right, a list linking to a number of our project partners.

 

Arch Canyon, Utah: Located in Southern Utah, Arch Canyon is a deeply incised canyon with ancient Indian ruins, three dramatic sandstone arches, and the only perennial creek in the area which supports at least six fish species and a diversity of plants and wildlife. Currently, OHV traffic is allowed in Arch Canyon and the legal route crosses the perennial stream 59 times in eight miles. Great Old Broads for Wilderness and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance are partnering to improve management in Arch Canyon and in surrounding San Juan County, Utah.

 

California Forests: During the summer of 2006, HeLP teamed up with the California Wilderness Coalition (CWC) to coordinate a state-wide Forest route inventory in California. The inventory of roadless areas and other sensitive lands covered 13 National Forests in California and have provided a comprehensive, ongoing record on all major forests in California. CWC and their partner groups are using the information gathered to improve land management in the Forest Services Travel and Land Management Planning processes.

 

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM): Located in Southwestern Colorado, Canyon of the Ancients (CANM) is home to literally thousands of unique archaeological sites and numerous wilderness study areas. The site of HeLP's first monitoring project, we have been gathering data here since 2003. Our data and comments were shared with CANM staff as a part of management plan formulation. Great Old Broads is confident that our data as provided to CANM staff was instrumental in the creation of the best possible travel plan for the monument.

 

Community Watershed Restoration Initiative: A multi year partnership between HeLP, the San Juan Citizen's Alliance, the San Juan National Forest, the Community Watershed Restoration Initiative is using GIS, conservation biology, citizen volunteers, and agency planning processes to help to protect public lands from irresponsible motorized recreation, to restore quiet, non-motorized recreational settings and to improve fish and wildlife habitat by laying the foundation for physically restoring core areas by decommissioning of unnecessary and redundant roads.

 

Dixie National Forest, Utah Working with the Three Forests Coalition and the Escalante River Basin Initiative, we seek to improve the Dixie's Travel Management plan. The project has inventoried key travel corridors on the Dixie Forest, and the data gathered has been used to develop a complete Citizen's Sustainable Multiple Use Alternative for the Forest Service planning process.

 

Kane County, Utah: Since 2004, Land Use Volunteers (LUV) of Kane County in Kanab, UT, has monitored motorized activity on the Kanab BLM Field Office, especially the Moquith Mountain WSA and Hog Canyon area. LUV, in collaboration with SUWA, successfully petitioned for the non-discretionary closure of Hog and Trail Canyons in 2006, but illegal incursions have continued off of the established route in Hog Canyon. LUV has been monitoring the health of Welsh's Milkweed, a rare species found in the Moquith Mountain WSA. LUV submitted substantive comments on the recent Kanab Resource Management Plan that included specific suggestions for route closure and improvement of travel management in the final plan.

 

Manti-La Sal National Forest: Since 2007, HeLP has partnered with Red Rock Forests to complete a comprehensive route and dispersed campsite inventory for the Abajo Mountains of southeast Utah. The aim of the Manti-La Sal Monitoring Project is to assist the Forest Service in maintaining the integrity of natural resources by providing local citizen-based monitoring, data collection, and analyses of designated routes and closed areas. Such information is critical to the formation and enforcement of responsible policies that will maintain the ecological health of the Abajo mountains.

 

Sky Island Alliance: HeLP has partnered with Arizona-based Sky Island Alliance (SIA) to enter historic data into our online database. The data is being used to comment on ongoing travel and resource management planning processes, as well as to measure change over time. We continue to partner with SIA.

 

Utah Wilderness Coalition Historic RS2477 Inventory: In 2007 and 2008, HeLP converted and entered a large quantity of historic data gathered for a Utah Wilderness Coalition RS2477 inventory conducted by more than 600 volunteers in the 1990s. Many thousands of data points, including photos, are now available for use by volunteer monitors and SUWA staff in establishing the existence (or non-existence) of routes in Wilderness Study Areas, Wilderness Inventory Areas and areas within America's Redrock Wilderness Act. SUWA's staff can now access information on many routes on which they work in the Kanab, Richfield, Moab and Monticello BLM field offices. This work, along with monitoring in the BHLP database completed by Broads over the last two years as a part of our Recapture Utah Campaign is being used by SUWA as a part of ongoing RMP and TMP litigation.

 

Wasatch-Cache National Forest, Utah: HeLP, in conjunction with eight other partner organizations, is working on a multi-year program concerning motorized recreational use in the Logan and Ogden Ranger Districts of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest in Utah.