Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Utah
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

This project is part of the Utah Natural Heritage Program (UNHP) botany plan to update and gather new information on all federally listed, candidate and otherwise rare plant species in Utah. The UNHP tracks rare species in a geodatabase that was recently updated by NatureServe. ESMF support will provide funding to update listed species records in our geodatabase, replace hand drawn field maps with GPS based digital maps and use quantitative sample methods in the field to replace simple visual estimates of the number of individuals. Using the GPS locations, we will create statistical models to encourage more targeted field surveys. This will broaden the known distribution of these rare species and provide valuable data for plant species that are currently proposed or likely to be proposed for federal listing under ESA.