Wyoming Chapter - Sierra Club

Citizen's Conservation Alternative
Bighorn Mountain Working Group

Bighorn National Forest
Citizen's Conservation Alternative American Wildlands, Biodiversity Associates,
Bighorn Forest Users Coalition,
The Wilderness Society, Wyoming Outdoor Council,
and the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club

Conclusion | Acknowledgements | Literature Cited | Appendix
Position Statements on Forest Issues

Purpose

The National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan (Forest Plan) was developed to direct management of the Bighorn National Forest (BNF). The purpose of the Forest Plan is to establish a systematic process for forest management, to achieve integrated consideration of all resources, and assure that minimum performance standards are established, monitored, and changed where necessary while fulfilling legislative requirements and addressing local, regional, and national issues.

The purpose of the Citizens' Conservation Alternative (CCA) for the Forest Plan Revision is to raise the level of current management standards to protect and sustain the resource, and assure that generations of Americans will enjoy the BNF restored to its wild past, thriving and full of healthy wildlife and ecosystems. The public is concerned about the environmental degradation on the BNF since the enactment of the 1985 Forest Plan, from over-logging, over-grazing, too many roads and off-road vehicle abuse resulting in habitat damage, water and air pollution, loss of fisheries and extinction of wildlife or its displacement to private land refuges. The CCA will connect the public to these issues on their public lands. The CCA emphasizes accountability to the broader public over the long term. It establishes a management direction to reverse the damage done to the Bighorn National Forest over the past 17 years, and to restore a healthy ecosystem.

The CCA will:

Place the management priority on restoring and protecting a diverse community of flora and fauna;
Favor pristine water sheds over resource extraction when these goals conflict;
Raise the importance of visual qualities;
Honor and preserve the remaining old growth forests;
Regulate and control off-road vehicle usage so that no damage will occur; and
Protect all remaining roadless areas for wilderness and wildlife sanctuary.

Preserving the Bighorn Mountain's genetically unique wildlife species is the centerpiece of the CCA. Beauvais (1999; attached as Appendix A) states:

"From a zoogeographic perspective, this process separated the Southern Rocky Mountains from the Northern/ Central Rocky Mountains via the dessication of the Wyoming Basin-Green River Canyon complex (Findley and Anderson 1956, Kirkland 1981). It also formed several small boreo-alpine islands on mountain ranges lying to the east of the main Rocky Mountains, 2 of which lie completely or partially in Wyoming: the Bighorn Mountains and the Black Hills. The shortest line between conifer-dominated habitats on the Bighorn Mountains and similar habitats on the Absaroka Mountains to the west crosses about 80 km of dry prairie. The 150 km-wide Powder River Basin lies between the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains, and is dominated by prairie and shrub types with widely scattered patches of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa)."

"Although some forest-adapted vertebrates (e.g., Lynx canadensis, Gulo gulo) can disperse across large expanses of open vegetation, several others cannot. Wyoming species in the latter category include: Rana sylvatica, Rana luteiventris, Lepus americanus, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, Glaucomys sabrinus, Microtus richardsoni, and Martes americana. Populations of these species on the Bighorn Mountains and Black Hills have likely been isolated to these ranges for at least 8,000 years, with extremely low if any genetic exchange with adjacent populations. The combined influences of founder effect, genetic drift, and differential selection (Hartl 1988, Caughley and Gunn 1996) have likely caused these populations to diverge genetically from adjacent populations. This is evidenced by the existence of subspecies endemic to the Bighorn Mountains (Ochotona princeps obscura, Lepus americanus seclusus) and Black Hills (Clethrionomys gapperi brevicaudus, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus dakotensis) (Long 1965, Hall 1981, Clark and Stromberg 1987). It is likely that populations of other boreo-alpine species on these ranges have similarly diverged from mainland Rocky Mountain populations."

The CCA focuses on the protection of the Bighorns as a distinctive and isolated mountain with unique wildlife species. The BNF is owned and funded by the taxpayers. Accordingly, the CCA incorporates a responsible management philosophy supported by a majority of the American public.

To accomplish this protection, the Citizen's Conservation Alternative:

Establishes management direction and associated goals and objectives that will manifest the vision developed by the "Bighorn National Forest Conservation Vision Workshop" held in November of 2000 with over 30 members of Sheridan and Johnson Counties participating.
Envisions standards and guidelines and the approximate vicinity of areas needing protection to achieve sustainability and resource conservation;
Establishes advanced monitoring and evaluation requirements that include ground-truthing, more extensive wildlife surveys, regeneration data that ensures sustainability, placing the priority on restoration rather than outputs; managing the forest to ensure that the cumulative impacts from 30 years of abuse will be mitigated;
Assures that the BNF will provide an on-going monitoring and evaluation procedure, updating collected data that ensures the protection of resources and wildlife, so that further revisions will be minimized;
Recognizes the uniqueness of the Bighorn Mountains as an isolated mountain range that provides crucial habitat for genetically unique wildlife species;
Insists on the protection of wildlife and wildlife habitat, developing management plans to provide special habitat and protection of critical habitat for genetically unique species -- such as the American marten, red-backed vole, montane vole, least chipmunks, red squirrel, pika, spotted and wood frogs, snowshoe hare, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, etc;
Calls for maintenance of the MIS (Monitoring of Indicator Species) list that includes all genetically unique species, to assess habitat and species health and to develop a management plan that would prevent the listing of these species; and
Advocates better ecological stewardship in all management activities.

The CCA demonstrates that the management direction of the Forest Plan consists of goals, objectives and management requirements that achieve a vision of conserving the Bighorn National Forest for wildlife, recreation and the land resource for the next decade, the next century and even the next millennium. The desired future condition of the BNF must be the conservation vision to protect the resource from long-standing damage, non-regenerated forests, extirpated or extinct wildlife, too many roads and two-tracks, and over-impacted wilderness areas. The goals, objectives and management requirements in the CCA needed for the BNF in the next century were developed by a diverse public group in response to growing concerns about the emphasis on resource extraction during the past decade. These concerns relate to laws, regulations and policies as well as the ethics and morale of land management agencies charged with overseeing the Bighorn National Forest.

The BNF and the Citizen's conservation groups are in agreement that the key element for achieving a majority of the vision, goals and objectives of this Forest Plan Revision is a healthy forest. The CCA presents both the "Current Condition" of the Forest and broad objectives for its improvement, noted as "Desired Condition", as formulated by the participants of the "Vision Workshop". It describes the physical, biological, social and economic environments associated with a sustainable and protected Forest.

Position Statements on Forest Issues

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Citizen's Conservation Alternative should be included fully in the Forest Plan Revision as a designated alternative to give an intact voice to conservation concerns in the Forest Plan Revision. The CCA will give greater depth and breadth to the alternatives that the Forest will most likely offer. The CCA encourages the BNF to determine the level of support for the conservation measures that will best protect the future of the Bighorn National Forest. It is not acceptable for this hard-wrought alternative to be merely "folded in" to the Forest Plan Revision. The CCA is a vision developed by and for the conservation community. It embraces a multiple use vision that includes the hunter, angler, hiker, backpacker, horse rider, photographer, artist, scientist, wildlife and scenery watcher, skier, snow shoe and boarder, collector, rock hound, archeologist, paleontologist, botanist, historian, tourist and camper communities as well as the communities dependent upon clean drinking water and the fish hatcheries that need pristine streams.

The citizens presenting the CCA would like to be included in all future discussions, comment periods and public meetings concerning the Bighorn Forest Plan Revision process. More groups will be joining our initiative to support the Citizen's Conservation Alternative. We appreciate this opportunity to have substantial input into this public process.

Acknowledgements:

Many thanks to the Researchers, Editors and Compilers:

Liz Howell
Robert Damson
Nicolas Cooper
Ronn Smith
Mary Homan
Bev Hiza
Michael Hiza
Helen Moriarty
Lisa Cooper-Reece

Gary Beauvais
Janet Maxwell
Roger Wilson
Kelly Matheson
Chris Santin
Shelly Nelson
Kirk Koepsel
Larry Mehlhaff
Andrea Knutson

AND THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO HIKED AND INVENTORIED THE BIGHORN NF ROADLESS AREAS.

Documents and assistance provided as a public service by
the Bighorn National Forest,
the Wyoming Game and Fish,
and The Wyoming Natural Diversity Database.

Literature Cited

Beauvais, G.P. 1999. Suggestions for new taxa to track in Wyoming's BCD. Unpublished report prepared by the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database - University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.

Beauvais, G. P. 2000. Mammalian responses to forest fragmentation in the Central and Southern Rocky Mountains. Pages 179-201 in R. L. Knight, F. W. Smith, S. W. Buskirk, W. H. Romme, and W. L. Baker. Forest fragmentation in the Southern Rocky Mountains. University of Colorado Press, Boulder, Colorado.

Beauvais, G.P. 2001. Insular populations of vertebrates in Wyoming. Unpublished report prepared by the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database - University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.

Kruse, C.G. 1998. Influences of non-native trout and geomorphology and distribution of indigenous trout in the Yellowstone River drainage of Wyoming. M.S. Thesis, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.

Congressional Record. 10/2/1984. Wyoming Wilderness Act of 1984.

Appendix

Suggestions for new taxa to track in Wyoming's BCD. By Beauvais, G.P. 1999.

Insular populations of vertebrates in Wyoming. By Beauvais, G.P. 2001.

Columbia spotted frog (Rana lutieventris; Bighorn Mountains population)
Suggested common name - Bighorn Mountain spotted frog.
Suggested Heritage rank - G3G4T1Q/S1
Comments - Occurs in only one small drainage on the range; extremely vulnerable to extirpation from the cumulative effects of logging, water development, and stocking of exotic trout.

Wood frog (Rana sylvatica; Bighorn Mountains population)
Suggested common name - Bighorn Mountain wood frog
Suggested Heritage rank - G5T1Q/S1
Comments - Known to occur in 2 drainages on the range. Porter (1969) and Collins (1990), among others, recognized the Southern Rocky Mountain population of R. sylvatica (which has been isolated for as long as the Bighorn Mountain population) as a new species, R. maslini. The Bighorn population is vulnerable to extirpation from the cumulative effects of logging, water development, and range expansion by exotic salmonids.

Southern red-backed vole (Clethrionomys gapperi; Bighorn Mountains population)
Suggested common name - Bighorn Mountain red-backed vole
Suggested Heritage rank - G5T3Q/S3?
Comments - Apparently widespread on the mountain range (Beauvais 1997), but certainly isolated from any adjacent population.

Water vole (Microtus richardsoni; Bighorn Mountains population)
Suggested common name - Bighorn Mountain water vole
Suggested heritage rank - G5T2Q/S2
Comments - Recent surveys by USFS personnel suggest that water voles are extremely rare on the Bighorn Mountains. Livestock grazing of montane riparian meadows may substantially decrease habitat quality.

American marten (Martes americana; Bighorn Mountains population)
Suggested common name - Bighorn Mountain marten
Suggested Heritage rank - G5T2Q/S2
Comments - Large area requirements (Ruggiero et al. 1994) and preference for late-seral timber types (Ruggiero et al. 1994, Beauvais 1997) makes martens extremely vulnerable to extirpation on the Bighorn Mountains. Note that the extirpation of isolated populations of marten on the northern Laramie Mountains and Black Hills occurred synchronously with increases in timber harvesting on those ranges.

INSULAR POPULATIONS OF VERTEBRATES IN WYOMING

Prepared by G. Beauvais, Director Wyoming Natural Diversity Database - University of Wyoming April 2001

Black Hills red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus dakotensis) - This subspecies is established in Long (1965), Turner (1974), and Hall (1981); supporting evidence is provided by Lindsay (1987). See also Cark and Stromberg (1987), Beauvais (1999), and Young (1999).

Black Hills red-backed vole (Clethrionomys gapperi brevicaudus) - This subspecies is established in Long (1965), Turner (1974), and Hall (1981); see also Clark and Stromberg (1987), Beauvais (1999), Hafner et al. (1999), and Merritt (1999).

Bighorn Mountain snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus seclusus) - This subspecies is established in Baker and Hankins (1950, as cited in Long 1965), Long (1965), and Hall (1981). See also Clark and Stromberg (1987), Beauvais (1999), Murray (1999).

Bighorn Mountain pika (Ochotona princeps obscura) - This subspecies is established in Long (1965) and Hall (1981); see also Clark and Stromberg (1987), Hafner and Sullivan (1995), Beauvais (1999), Smith (1999).

Bighorn Mountain spotted frog (Rana luteiventris, undescribed taxon) - Baxter and Stone (1985) recognized the insular nature of this population. Recent surveys (H. Golden, Bighorn National Forest, unpublished data) have shown this population to be isolated to a very small portion of the Bighorn Mountains.

Bighorn Mountain wood frog (Rana sylvatica, undescribed taxon) - Baxter and Stone (1985) recognized the insular and relictual nature of this population, and with Dunlap (1977) noted coloration differences between this and other regional populations. Baxter and Stone (1985) and Hammerson (1999) summarized research suggesting genetic compatibility between Rocky Mountain populations and those in Canada. Recent surveys (H. Golden, Bighorn National Forest, unpublished data) have shown this population to be isolated to a very small portion of the Bighorn Mountains.

Southern Rockies wood frog (Rana sylvatica, undescribed taxon) - Baxter and Stone (1985) and Hammerson (1999) recognized the insular and relictual nature of this population, and with Dunlap (1977) noted coloration differences between this and other regional populations. Baxter and Stone (1985) and Hammerson (1999) summarized research suggesting genetic compatibility between Rocky Mountain populations and those in Canada.

Black Hills flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus, undescribed taxon) - Not recognized as a unique taxon by Long (1965), who examined only 1 specimen from the range and who incorrectly assumed connectivity with populations to the west. Similarly, Hall (1981) incorrectly assumed population connectivity across all of northern Wyoming. Clark and Stromberg (1987) and Heaney (1999) recognized the insular nature of this population; see also Beauvais (1999). Turner (1974) only tentatively accepted the inclusion of this population in the subspecies G. s. bangsi, and advised that further taxonomic study is needed; he also recognized the clear relictual nature of Black Hills boreal forest, boreal-derived fauna in general, and G. sabrinus in particular. The accepted isolation and subspeciation of Black Hills red-backed voles and red squirrels (see above) suggest strongly that northern flying squirrels on the range have experienced similar pressures.

Bighorn Mountain water vole (Microtus richardsoni, undescribed taxon) - Not recognized as a unique taxon by Long (1965), who examined only 1 specimen from the range and, along with Hall (1981) and Ludwig (1999), assumed population connectivity to the west. Clark and Stromberg (1987) recognized the insular nature of this population. Local research (M. Klaus, Sheridan College, personal communication) suggests population isolation. See also Beauvais (1999). The accepted isolation and subspeciation of snowshoe hare (see above), least chipmunk, and montane vole (Long 1965, Hall 1981, Clark and Stromberg 1987, Bergstrom 1999, Hafner et al. 1999, Jannett 1999) on the Bighorn Mountains suggests strongly that water voles here have experienced similar pressures.

Bighorn Mountain marten (Martes americana, undescribed taxon) - Not recognized as a unique taxon by Long (1965), who examined no specimens from the range and, along with Clark and Stromberg (1987), incorrectly assumed population connectivity to the west. Hall (1981) and Clark (1999) failed to recognize the occurrence of an extant population on the range. Clark et al. (1987) (as cited in Buskirk and Ruggiero 1994) and Buskirk and Ruggiero (1994) discuss this population's relictual status, including its ca. 10, 000 year isolation from populations to the west. See also Beauvais (1999). The accepted isolation and subspeciation of snowshoe hare (see above), least chipmunk, and montane vole (Long 1965, Hall 1981, Clark and Stromberg 1987, Bergstrom 1999, Hafner et al. 1999, Jannett 1999) on the Bighorn Mountains suggests strongly that marten here have experienced similar pressures. This is emphasized by marten having a stronger association with continuous forest cover than any of the aforementioned taxa.

Bighorn Mountain red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, undescribed taxon) - Not recognized as a unique taxon by Long (1965) or Hall (1981). These authors, along with Clark and Stromberg (1987) and Young (1999), assumed population connectivity to the west. See also Beauvais (1999). The accepted isolation and subspeciation of snowshoe hare (see above), least chipmunk, and montane vole (Long 1965, Hall 1981, Clark and Stromberg 1987, Bergstrom 1999, Hafner et al. 1999, Jannett 1999) on the Bighorn Mountains suggests strongly that red squirrels here have experienced similar pressures. This is emphasized by red squirrels having a stronger association with continuous forest cover than any of the aforementioned taxa.

Bighorn Mountain red-backed vole (Clethrionomys gapperi, undescribed taxon) - Long (1965) did not recognize this population as a unique taxon, but did note pelage differences relative to other regional populations. Long (1965), Hall (1981), and Merritt (1999) all assumed connectivity across lowlands with populations to the west. Clark and Stromberg (1987) recognized the insular nature of this population. See also Beauvais (1999). The accepted isolation and subspeciation of snowshoe hare (see above), least chipmunk, and montane vole (Long 1965, Hall 1981, Clark and Stromberg 1987, Bergstrom 1999, Hafner et al. 1999, Jannett 1999) on the Bighorn Mountains suggests strongly that red-backed voles here have experienced similar pressures.

Position Statements on Forest Issues

Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club
247 Coffeen Avenue, Sheridan, WY 82801
Phone: 307-672-0425 -- Fax:307-674-6187
wychapters@vcn.com