Groups unite to save sage grouse

A lot of good can come from one conversation. Such is the case when Julie Lutz, an environmental engineer from Tronox, was having a light conversation with Gavin Lovell, assistant manager of resources for the Bureau of Land Management and Mark Zornes, regional wildlife managing coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The two were discussing issues with wildlife, particularly sage grouse and pronghorn antelope, running into the old BLM fences that divide regions and properties and injuring themselves or unable to cross the fence, and ways to fix that problem; ways to make the fence more wildlife friendly.

Lutz interjected, saying "Hey, that's just by our facility." The area discussed, located near the Granger Tronox plant.

From there, the Tronox Greater Sage Grouse Conservation Initiative was born.

"A lot of projects come from those informal conversations," Lutz said.

It's been a collaboration from the start. Tronox provided the funds for the fence and sage grouse projects, while the BLM provided the materials, the Wyoming Conservation Corp built the fence and Sean Davidson, from Boy Scout Troop 85 made reflectors to attach to the fence for sage grouse and other wildlife to see and avoid hitting the fence.

"To me, collaboration is a big deal," Lutz said. "It's a great example of different groups working together."

"It's a good way to get something done of common interest," Mark Snyder, wildlife supervisor for the Rock Springs BLM field office said.

Tronox hired WCC for build a portion of the wildlife friendly fence for 10 days in 2013 and 2015 and could take a few more years of fence building to complete the project in its entirety, 15 miles worth of fencing. The new fence replaces the net wire fence installed by the BLM over 50 years ago. The old fence is made up of a wire on the top with the bottom portion made of woven wire; a fence used for herding livestock but is restrictive and potentially threatening to wildlife. Pronghorn antelope cannot get underneath.

"We are converting that net wire to four stringed, and then the animals can get underneath it and with Sean's project of putting markers on the top and anything getting near it is going to see it and jump over or fly over that. So that's the value to the environment to this project," Lutz said.

Tronox brought the WCC out to their site to do the fencing and have done several miles now and will continue to go north. Now the Boy Scouts came out and did the marking as a service project. Boy Scout Sean Davidson and his crew are went out and marked the top wire of the fence near the Tronox facility with the reflectors.

"It's very close to our facility and we knew that it had a lot of value for wildlife and it was something that we could fairly easily do because there were people that could help, like the WCC and the Boy Scouts and the BLM. So it really is a big partnering project," Lutz said. "Because we've done this with BLM, the crew stayed out at Seedskadee, we have the boy scouts, so we like to work on collaborative type projects and it's just an easy one to collaborate on."

Tronox paid for the labor and the BLM donated the materials. The Boy Scouts made enough reflectors for not only enough for this project but for future projects as well. Tronox's greater sage grouse conservation initiative is an ongoing project. They continue to make steps toward conserving the wildlife effected by their facilities.