2011 Cache Creek WBP Restoration
Project: Locating, Identifying and Mapping High Resistant Blister Rust Whitebark Pine in the Centennial Mountain Range located in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA)
Agency/Forest or Park/District: Caribou-Targhee National Forest, Dubois and Island Park Ranger Districts within the Centennial Mountain Range.
Project coordinator: Richard L. Roberson
Contact: Avery Beyer, USFS, Caribou-Targhee NF, (208) 354-6624, abeyer@fs.fed.us
Cooperators
Student Conservation Association (SCA) provides support for hiring with a match of
4%.
Source of funding /amount
FHP: $11,000
Supplemental funding: $7,060 USDA Forest Service Region 4, $23,000 FS in kind, and $5,000 SCA.
Dates of restoration efforts
February-September 2011 (planned)
June – September 2012 (actual)
Objectives
This project proposal would continue the efforts to identify, locate, evaluate and map live mature whitebark pine trees exhibiting a high resistance to blister rust in the Centennial Range. This information will be used for the protection whitebark pine trees showing high resistance to blister rust by reducing fuels before a wildfire occurs.
Acres/ha treated
Approximately 10,000 acres
Methods
This project proposal is to continue to locate and record tree data on the surviving mature whitebark pine throughout the Centennial Range. We are proposing to hire another three person SCA intern crew for 15 weeks to continue to grid eastward from where the 2010 survey ended on the Dubois District and continue into the Ashton/Island Park District (Centennial Mountains) and locate those remaining live, mature whitebark pine showing blister rust resistance. Once found, a GPS location would be collected, white pine blister rust resistance evaluated and rated (as outlined by Mary Francis Mahalovich for the plus tree selection criteria) recording other tree data such as (height, diameter, cone history and overall genotype), producing a map with locations of these trees, an attribute table with tree data along with digital photographs. Fuel treatment plans will be prepared and fuel projects implemented to reduce conifers from adjacent blister rust resistant trees.
Planting? If so, source of seedlings? Resistance? No
Outcome
The project was not started in 2011 due to the time in the field season that we received the funding from FHP. However as mentioned above, the money has been obligated through an agreement with SCA and work will be performed in 2012. Work will begin as early as June (dependent on access) and end approximately mid/late September 2012.
Monitoring since completion of the project
Dates
Plans for future monitoring? Not applicable, the project was a form of monitoring. The data collected could be utilized as a baseline for follow-up surveys, but nothing planned at this time.
Will outcome meet goals?
Yes. Field crew inventoried many thousands of acres, locating several hundred surviving whitebark pine and collected field data on those trees.
Future actions/follow up?
Field crew collected data which will be used by resource professionals to make management decisions.
Miscellaneous comments
Funding sources allowed for the continuation of surveys by another field crew during the summer of 2013. Over the course of three summers the majority of the Caribou-Targhee NF administered lands of Centennial Range has been surveyed for surviving whitebark pine. Data collected during the first year of surveying led to protective fuels reduction treatments adjacent to 750 whitebark pines. Additional treatments are likely to result from the subsequent surveys.