The Forest Service is planning on prescribing fire treatments for 25,000 acres in the Provo River project area. Photo: Parker Malatesta

UINTA-WASATCH-CACHE NATIONAL FOREST, Utah — On Wednesday, Park City Congressman Blake Moore joined Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee Bruce Westerman (R-AR), and local officials for a tour along the Mirror Lake Highway from Kamas to view the current phase of the Upper Provo River Shared Stewardship project.

Westerman is the lead sponsor of the Trillion Trees Act. He told Steve Brawner of the Times Record a study found a trillion additional trees would sequester 205 gigatons of carbon – two-thirds of the carbon produced by mankind since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

There’s a lot of different sources of carbon going into the atmosphere, but there’s one major way to take carbon out of the atmosphere, and that’s with a tree,” Westerman told Brawner.
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The local officials were with the Forest Service, the Utah Division of Natural Resources, and the Central Utah Water Conservancy District.

On May 22, 2019, Governor Gary R. Herbert and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue signed the Agreement for Shared Stewardship between the State of Utah and the USDA Forest Service Intermountain Region.

The agreement established six mutual commitments, such as — protecting at-risk communities and watersheds, co-managing wildfire risks, shared planning efforts and making joint decisions.

The tour was specifically focused on the Upper Provo Watershed Restoration Project. The goal of the project is to improve the resiliency of critical watersheds in the Western Uintas by implementing fuels reduction projects in strategic locations.

Reps. Westerman and Moore (left) are shown a map of the Upper Provo Watershed Restoration treatment areas.

This area of the Western Uintas includes the headwaters for the Provo River, Bear River, and Weber River drainages.

Roughly 90 percent of the Wasatch Back and Front receive primary or secondary water either directly from these drainages or their tributaries.

The project is currently facing issues with dense overgrowth and tree mortality from the Mountain Pine and spruce beetle infestations.

This creates a higher risk for potential large-scale wildfires and the resulting debris flow into watersheds.

In a worst-case scenario, burn scars and sedimentation could impact the long-term function of reservoirs.

To combat these issues, the Forest Service is planning on prescribing fire treatments for 25,000 acres in the Provo River project area. The Forest has already completed treatment on 18,000 acres.

After they finish their work in the area, they will move to management efforts in the Bear and Weber River drainages. They plan to prescribe fire there on 60,831 acres.

Mike Rau, Water Quality Manager for the Central Utah Water Conservancy, emphasized that forest health directly correlates to public health in Utah. He said the best barrier to drainage issues is protecting the watersheds.

The State of Utah, the National Wildlife Turkey Federation, and the Mule Deer Foundation have donated millions of dollars to on-the-ground efforts in recent years.

Congressman Moore will be holding a townhall event at the Richins Building (1885 West Ute Blvd, Park City, UT, 84098) on Friday, August 20 at 6 pm.

The public forum comes just days after thousands of Summit County residents were forced to flee their homes because of the Parley’s Canyon Fire.