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SALT LAKE CITY — A program that has been quietly operating in Utah for years has spurred progress across multiple landscapes, making a stunning difference when it comes to the health of vital habitat, wildfire restoration, stream restoration and more.
Created in 2006, a Utah Department of Natural Resources partnership-based program called the Watershed Restoration Initiative focuses on:
- Improving watershed health and biological diversity;
- Increasing water quality and yield;
- Improving opportunities for sustainable uses of natural resources, including restoring fish and wildlife habitats;
As one of the initiative's founding partners, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources plays a critical role in planning, overseeing and implementing regional restoration projects.
"These proactive projects to improve wildlife habitat and watershed health throughout the state are crucial, not only for our fish and wildlife species, but also for the residents of Utah," Utah's Watershed Restoration Initiative program director Tyler Thompson said. "It takes a great deal of coordination and funding to make these projects possible, and we are very grateful to our many partners and their continued support of wildlife conservation and improving water quality."
Between 2023 and 2024, the initiative attacked the effects of wildfires on more than 23,000 acres. It did this by mixing and spreading 442,572 pounds of seed on various landscapes across Utah. Additionally, it completed 148 habitat restoration projects, improved 119 miles of streams and created an estimated 835 jobs in the state.
Over $48 million in funding was invested by more than 80 partners to pay for the different restoration projects. Part of the funding for these projects comes from the Division of Wildlife Resources Habitat Council, which is funded by a portion of revenue from the fees that customers pay for licenses, permits, stamps and certificates of registration. Other funding partners include the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
Habitat work through Utah's Watershed Restoration Initiative includes aerial seeding after a fire, removing encroaching trees for sagebrush preservation and rangeland fire, staging prescribed fires to reduce fuels in an area and stream restoration through a variety of techniques that include building artificial dams. Why are they important?
The dam-mimicking structures conceptualized in Utah decreases erosion, raises river levels and improves water quality. The project also plants shrubs and sagebrush to provide feed and shelter for mule deer, sage grouse and other wildlife.
Since 2006, this program has improved nearly 2.7 million acres of Utah's landscapes through more than 2,800 restoration projects.
Current projects include 281 efforts encompassing 580,318 acres at $138 million with in-kind donations.
Over the years, the Watershed Restoration Initiative has completed 2,837 projects involving close to nearly three million acres.
Thompson said the initiative has been so successful, it has been been looked to by other states hoping to do the same thing.
He said the project will actually do a disturbance to mimic a large fire's effects through mechanical means or prescribed burns.
By doing so, it creates more vegetation diversity on the landscape through a variety of plants with age and type.
"We're setting it back in succession," he said. "By doing so, it creates a healthier landscape for wildlife. It is a healthier system when it comes to resisting large wildfires and stuff like that. It helps create cleaner water and, you know, better water supply."
While the state's Watershed Restoration Initiative has been set up as an example to follow for other states, Thompson concedes it can be difficult.
"One of the things that we do is we pool all these different sources of funding, and we do that here in the Department of Natural Resources, and we don't take any overhead. So we basically engage in these partnerships free of charge, and really the benefit is to the natural resources."
