Provide implementation, monitoring, and strategy integration capacity to support BLM offices including canyon country district office (moab monticello field offices), bears ears national monument,…

Provide implementation, monitoring, and strategy integration capacity to support BLM offices including canyon country district office (moab monticello field offices), bears ears national monument, color country district office (ST. George cedar city field offices), and or paria river district office (grand staircase-escalante national monument), as well as the utah BLM state office and other regional and state partners to accelerate watershed restoration including riverscapes, riparian zones, in high-priority landscapes in southern utah. We propose low-tech process-based riparian restoration efforts to complement an existing cooperative agreement (grant number L23AC00658-00) between the BLM headquarters aquatics program and the nature conservancy (TNC) focused on (1) implementing and stewarding 150 miles of low-tech, process-based restoration (ltpbr) in prioritized watersheds across seven western landscapes including southern utah, (2) supporting the efficient permitting and implementation of ltpbr, and (3) leveraging additional funding to support ltpbr work and the surrounding restoration economy. That cooperative agreement was designed to initiate efforts in this landscape, but IT did not include sufficient funds for full-scale execution. Accordingly, this project proposal requests additional and complementary (not redundant) riparian restoration funding to allow utah partners to maximize on-the-ground implementation of the 5-year national-level cooperative agreement. This project proposal will also add flexibility to the partners project planning focused on utah BLM priorities for riparian restoration in the color country converging restoration landscape, bears ears and grand staircase-escalante national monuments, and surrounding BLM lands. Over the next five years, we expect to implement ltpbr on 20 miles of stream in southern utah (in addition to 130 miles in other states).we expect these efforts to benefit the blms mission to conserve the natural resources of these regions and to directly benefit the people and communities of grand, SAN juan, washington, kane, and garfield counties through workforce development and contracting opportunities. Specifically, we expect our efforts to benefit rural and indigenous communities, livestock grazers and permittees, recreationalists, and local workforces. Our project would also directly benefit native riparian vegetation, instream biota, and the wildlife and livestock species that use these riparian habitats and or migrate through these riverscapes. Our overall goals are to work with the BLM and partners in utah to (1) promote watershed resilience to drought, fire, erosion, and flooding by enhancing riparian zones and reconnecting stream channels with their floodplains along with improved soil and watershed conditions and (2) enhance economic opportunities and workforce development in rural and indigenous communities in southern utah.