Valleys and Headwaters Restoration
The project area has been heavily impacted by insects and disease over the last two decades, and more recently by large high-intensity wildfires, including the unprecedented 2020 fire season.
The Valleys and Headwaters Landscape Restoration Partnership, located in Southeast Wyoming, is named after three river valleys and important headwaters on both sides of the continental divide. Two of Wyoming's largest population centers, Cheyenne and Laramie, rely on water flowing from the mountains.
The project area also provides habitat for federally listed and sensitive species, and species of local conservation concern. The project area has been heavily impacted by insects and disease over the last two decades, and more recently by large high-intensity wildfires, including the unprecedented 2020 fire season.
Partnership goals include mitigating hazardous fuels; providing for human safety; protecting municipal water supplies and infrastructure; enhancing forest and rangeland resilience; providing forest products; enhancing terrestrial wildlife habitat; restoring streams and aquatic habitat; and conserving and improving management of irrigated croplands, rangelands, and irrigation water supplies.
The Partnership will employ a full suite of activities to accomplish these goals, including prescribed fire, mechanical/hand fuels and habitat treatments, good neighbor authority timber harvest and thinning, aspen and shrubland treatments, meadow restoration, road rehabilitation, streambank stabilization, irrigation efficiency projects, and invasive plant management.
The proposal area is anchored around the Medicine Bow Landscape Vegetation Analysis (LaVA), a NEPA decision authorizing vegetation management for multiple resource objectives across 288,000 acres of the Medicine Bow National Forest, and includes surrounding State and private land to create and maintain resilient landscapes, watersheds, habitats and communities across boundaries.
Partners: Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities, Little Snake River Conservation District (LSRCD), Mule Deer Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Saratoga Encampment Rawlins Conservation District, Valleys and Headwaters Landscape Restoration Partnership, Wyoming Department of Agriculture, Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative, Wyoming State Forestry Division, Wyoming Water Development Commission, and Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust
- Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
- Little Snake River Conservation District (LSRCD)
- Mule Deer Foundation
- National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF)
- Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
- Saratoga Encampment Rawlins Conservation District
- Wyoming Department of Agriculture
- Wyoming Game and Fish Department
- Wyoming State Forestry Division
- Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative
- Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust
- FY 2022
- FY 2022 Joint Chiefs' Landscape Restoration Project
- Total FY22 Funding Request: $2,853,032
