Nevada Bighorns Unlimited Significant Contributions to Further Wildlife Habitat Rehabilitation By Mark Freese, Caleb McAdoo, Efforts on Burned Landscapes in Nevada Lee Davis and Alan Jenne The year 2020 proved to be a very challenging year in all aspects of life, and there is no doubt that COVID-19 challenged many aspects of wildlife and habitat management. Despite these challenges, Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW), with the great help of many partners including Nevada Bighorns Unlimited (NBU) had another successful year rehabilitating burned landscapes! This year we were able to implement 62,220 acres of rehabilitation efforts to benefit Nevada’s habitat and wildlife resources! Without the great support of NBU, many of these burned landscapes could convert to annual grass dominated rangelands that would otherwise be un-productive for wildlife for years (if not forever) into the future. The 2020 fire season was a modest fire year consuming only 259,272 acres of Nevada habitat. Even though 2020 burned significantly more acres during the 2019 fire season of 82,282 acres, 2020 experienced significantly less burned habitats compared to the 2018 and 2017 fire seasons
which consumed 1,001,966 and 1,329,289 acres, respectively. There is no doubt that Nevada is burning greater amounts of habitat as time goes on. From 1980 to 1999, Nevada wildfires consumed 4.2 million acres and from 2000 to 2019 wildfires burned 9.6 million acres. The magnitude of these fires is stressing the current system and infrastructure, which has remained largely unchanged. The problem is outpacing the ability for any one agency or entity to address rehabilitation efforts alone and demands increased partnerships to leverage resources in an efficient and meaningful way. NDOW, with the help of key partnerships such as NBU-Reno has managed to achieve meaningful post-fire habitat rehabilitation to complement the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) efforts. Working together, the BLM, NDOW, Sportsman’s Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) and
other entities can continue to grow and leverage collective resources, talents and volunteers to rehabilitate critical habitats for species like mule deer, sage-grouse and bighorn sheep as well as numerous other wildlife species. NBU’s generous 2020 donation of $150,000 will no doubt leave a lasting impact on wildlife habitats for years to come! NGO dollars are the most flexibility funding available allowing Agencies like NDOW to be nimble and responsive to achieve maximum restoration potential by maximizing our financial resources. It is donated funds like the NBU donations that NDOW can use to most efficiently to accomplish rehabilitation efforts! Additionally, NDOW uses donated funds as match to leverage against federal grants. The dollars donated by NBU-Reno allows NDOW to leverage up to $600,000 to further NDOW rehabilitation efforts.
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Figure 1. Pictures above are same photo, one taken in 2018 (left) and one in 2019 (right) on Fairview Peak following the 2017 Bravo-17 Fire. Snowstorm kochia is abundant and filled in interspace between first year plants providing great forage for bighorn sheep, mule deer, and antelope. The site is much more stable to erosion, resistant and resilient to future fires, and providing high quality wildlife forage that otherwise would be dominated by cheatgrass without seeding intervention. 16 JANUARY 2022
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