Conservation highlights

1980 and 1995

Conservancy's Great Basin Field Program

Projects in Utah and Nevada

Projects included purchase of a 13,320-acre property of Ash Meadows near Death Valley; creation of the Nevada Heritage Program, a statewide database of rare plant and animal species in Nevada; the Ruby Valley Conservation Project, which secured protection of two ranches totaling 9,400 acres and valued at $1.6 million; a $45 million land exchange with the BLM that added 5,300 acres to Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area; and a desert Tortoise preserve through which one million acres of land was retired from grazing.

1983

Layton Marsh

The Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve

Acres: 1,192

Location: Eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake in area formerly owned by Morton Thiokol.

First wetland preservation by a private conservation organization. Preserves lake habitat for waterfowl. Since 1984, the Conservancy has completed 30 transactions preserving 10,000 acres on the lake and 11 miles of shoreland.

1986

Lytle Ranch

Acres: 462

Location: On the edge of the Mohave Desert.

Ranch supports critical habitat of the rare Virgin River spinedace (a desert fish) and the threatened desert tortoise along the Beaver Dam Wash.

1987-89

Strawberry River

Acres: 3,000 and five river miles in first purchase.

Location: Along the Strawberry River in Duchesne County.

This is one of the most productive brown and cutthroat trout fisheries. Today, after the investment of more than $2 million, 14 river miles on the Strawberry and 5,500 acres have been preserved.

1988

Utah Natural Heritage Program

This is the first statewide database cataloguing rare plant and animal species in Utah, home to the fifth highest number of these at-risk plant and animal species in the country.

1989

Deep Creek Basin

This project was a three-way land exchange with the Bureau of Land Management in Utah whereby the sale of valuable BLM lands near St. George paid for preservation of 3,200 acres of critical bighorn sheep habitat in Utah's western desert.

The Deep Creek Mountain Range is a "biological island" in the Great Basin on the Utah/Nevada border, which harbors rare plants and animals inluding the Bonneville cutthroat trout.

1991

Scott M. Matheson Preserve

Acres: 900

Location: Along Colorado River in Utah's Canyon Country.

Originally called the Moab Slough, the preserve is a magnet for 220 bird species in the heart of Utah's redrock canyons. It is the largest wetland on the Colorado River in Utah, and was "stitched together" through purchases of 15 tracts of land.

1993

Mayberry Preserve

Acres: 209

Location: Heart of the Colorado River corridor near Moab.