How Utah's Wildfire Partnership Is Rewriting the Rules of Conservation
By Brian Rhodes
In Utah, a unique alliance between a utility company and conservation groups is proving that protecting power lines, wildlife habitat, and rural communities can be the same job.
In Utah's high-desert foothills, sagebrush seas roll beneath transmission lines and aspen groves cling to mountain slopes. Fire has always shaped these landscapes. For millennia, lightning ignited low-intensity burns that renewed soils, recycled nutrients, and kept forests and rangelands open and resilient.
In some places, that balance is gone. Decades of fire suppression, prolonged drought, and invasive plants have transformed many Western landscapes into powder kegs. Cheatgrass increasingly carpets hillsides where native bunchgrasses once slowed fire. Juniper and pinyon pine have expanded into sagebrush country, creating dense, continuous fuels. When fire comes now, it burns hotter, faster, and far more destructively. The stakes are no longer ecological alone. Homes, highways, and critical infrastructure now crisscross fire-prone terrain. Across the West, utilities, in collaboration with many other groups, are working to ensure the safety of people, wildlife, and landscapes: one spark, in the wrong place at the wrong time, can unleash catastrophe.
In Utah, instead of treating wildfire risk solely as an engineering or liability problem, Rocky Mountain Power also chose to look outward, to the landscape itself, and inward, to its role in the communities it serves. The result is a growing partnership with Pheasants Forever and the Intermountain West Joint Venture (IWJV) that is changing how wildfire mitigation, habitat restoration, and infrastructure protection can work together.
Their shared goal is simple: reduce wildfire risk around power lines while restoring healthier, more resilient ecosystems. The implications reach far beyond Utah.
A Utility's Opportunity for Conservation
Rocky Mountain Power operates thousands of miles of transmission and distribution lines across Utah, many of them threading through some of the state's most fire-prone forests, shrublands, and rangelands. Like utilities throughout the West, the company has invested heavily in wildfire mitigation: rebuilding lines with covered conductor, undergrounding power where feasible, and intensifying vegetation management within rights-of-way.
"But it is contained to the right-of-way. We can't independently do habitat work on outside lands if we have no authorization."
That limitation became an opportunity. As Utah required utilities to strengthen wildfire plans, Liguori began asking a broader question: what if the vegetation work needed to protect power lines could also make the surrounding landscape more fire-resilient?
To answer that, she turned to partners with deep experience in landscape-level habitat conservation. Rocky Mountain Power has worked with the Intermountain West Joint Venture for more than two decades on bird and habitat conservation, and with Pheasants Forever on on-the-ground restoration across working lands. Those relationships came with trust, and with a network of federal and state agencies, landowners, and conservation practitioners already doing the work.
"Rocky Mountain Power came to us looking for a way to get ahead of fire," says Al Eiden, Western Lands Director for Pheasants Forever. "The idea was to reduce wildfire risk tied to their infrastructure, but to do it in a way that also delivered real habitat benefits."
Clear parameters guided the partnership from the start. Projects must occur in Utah, reduce wildfire risk, and protect Rocky Mountain Power infrastructure, particularly transmission and distribution lines. Within those boundaries, IWJV and Pheasants Forever help identify projects that are already planned, permitted, and shovel-ready, but need additional funding to move forward or to expand their impact.
The difference, Liguori says, is intentionality. "We want to build resilience long-term. A healthy landscape, with fire-resistant vegetation, functioning watersheds, and intact habitat, is what protects communities and infrastructure from wildfire risks over time."
Finding the Right Balance
On a hillside in Utah's Bear River Range, chainsaws cut through dense juniper that has overtaken former sagebrush country. A transmission line runs nearby, but the work extends well beyond its narrow corridor. Crews are strategically thinning trees, breaking up fuel continuity, and restoring a more open, patchy landscape.
This is typical of how the partnership works. Fire does not follow along property lines, so neither do the projects. Instead of focusing solely on vegetation directly beneath wires, the partners evaluate how fire behaves across entire landscapes, how it might move upslope, funnel through draws, or crown through dense stands.
"We look at where Rocky Mountain Power's lines are on the map, and then we ask what's reasonable. The projects don't have to overlap with a line. Fire spreads, so proximity and landscape context matter more than distance alone."
The goal is to find places where reducing fuels lowers fire risk to infrastructure while also restoring habitat for wildlife and improving watershed health. Because the projects are already in motion, Rocky Mountain Power's funding often fills critical gaps or enhances treatments, making the work both efficient and effective.
From Strategy to Shovels in the Ground
The partnership's early projects focused on northern Utah's Bear River watershed, an area under increasing pressure from development and recreation. Working with Bear River Land Conservancy and state forestry agencies, Rocky Mountain Power helped fund habitat conservation projects and fuels treatments in high-risk fire zones.
Crews thinned approximately 200 acres of mountain mahogany and juniper beneath and adjacent to power lines, creating natural fire breaks and improving habitat for big game and upland birds. Dense, continuous canopy gave way to a mosaic of openings where native grasses, forbs, and other flowering plants could return, reducing the fuel ladders that carry ground fires into tree crowns and transmission infrastructure. The work went further. About 200 acres of conifer were removed to regenerate aspen stands, among the most fire-resistant forest types in the West, and critical habitat for a wide range of wildlife. Another 60 acres received reforestation treatments in previously burned areas, stabilizing soils and jump-starting recovery.
These projects demonstrated the model's value: wildfire mitigation dollars could simultaneously protect power lines, improve habitat, and safeguard the watershed feeding the Great Salt Lake.
Playing the Long Game in Southern Utah
With early success came confidence. The partnership's most ambitious effort is now unfolding in southern Utah's Pine Valley Ranger District, where transmission and distribution lines parallel a highway corridor through forest and pinyon-juniper woodlands.
Here, Rocky Mountain Power is investing in year eight of a ten-year fuels treatment effort led by the U.S. Forest Service and partners. The work focuses on maintaining and improving historic treatments, removing encroaching juniper, clearing brush, addressing invasive weeds, and reseeding native plants to keep fuels from rebounding.
"It's a long-term investment. Changing landscapes and habitats doesn't happen overnight."
The wildlife benefits are tangible. Pinyon jays, a declining species dependent on open, patchy woodlands, are responding to the restored structure. Fuels treatments designed to slow fire are recreating exactly the kind of diverse landscape these birds need to forage and cache pine nuts. Big game species benefit as well, with improved forage and movement corridors.
In 2024, Rocky Mountain Power approved an additional $400,000 for a new Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative project, reinforcing its commitment. Over the past several years, the company's total investment in these wildfire habitat projects in Utah has approached $1 million, and the program is included in its Utah wildfire plan.
Measuring Success Without a Megafire
Wildfire prevention presents an uncomfortable paradox: success often means nothing happens.
"Fortunately, no, we have not had a fire come through any of these areas," Liguori says. "And I don't want that to happen."
Instead of waiting for disaster as proof, the partnership relies on proven science and long-established fuels management practices. Projects are implemented by experienced agencies and contractors with track records across the West. Annual reports document acres treated, vegetation responses, and progress toward long-term objectives.
Field biologists and land managers add another layer of validation. In Pine Valley, Forest Service staff have observed pinyon jays actively using treated areas, anecdotal but encouraging evidence that the work is producing intended outcomes.
The Multiplier Effect
Perhaps the partnership's greatest impact isn't any single project, but rather the leverage it provides. Rocky Mountain Power's investment often unlocks additional state, federal, and private funding that would otherwise remain out of reach.
"We could not do this work on our own," Liguori says. "To do things at a meaningful, landscape scale, you need partnerships."
By providing non-federal dollars, the utility helps projects qualify for programs such as Utah's Watershed Restoration Initiative, thereby multiplying the impact of each contribution. IWJV and Pheasants Forever, in turn, coordinate among agencies, NGOs, and landowners to ensure the work aligns across boundaries.
"That partnership is helping find other people in that landscape and get more done. It adds value for everyone, and for wildlife."
The model resonates well beyond Utah. "When we talk with partners in other states or meet with representatives in Washington, D.C., these efforts resonate with everybody," Liguori notes. "Regardless of their perspective, people like to see this kind of collaboration getting work done on the ground."
Conservation That Works for Communities
Every acre treated represents more than an ecological benefit. It means jobs for local forestry crews, equipment operators, seed suppliers, and restoration specialists. Conservation dollars circulate through rural economies, supporting cafes, hardware stores, and seasonal employment.
"We're investing in boots on the ground," Eiden says. "These projects keep people working while keeping the lights on and wildlife populations healthy."
Healthy landscapes also underpin Utah's outdoor economies. Hunters pursue mule deer and elk in restored aspen stands. Birdwatchers seek sage-grouse and forest birds in improved habitat. Scenic highways remain open and safe when catastrophic fires are less likely to close them.
"Everything connects. Healthy habitat supports reliable infrastructure, which supports strong communities."
A Blueprint for the West
Across the West, megafires and drought are forcing land managers and utilities to rethink wildfire strategy. Utah's partnership offers a template: proactive rather than reactive, science-driven, and built on shared responsibility between industry and conservation.
"Fuels and fire drive a lot of policy and funding in the West," says Andrew Olsen, IWJV's Conservation Coordinator. "And there are so many opportunities for win-wins for wildlife. By combining shared investment, local expertise, and landscape-scale vision, this collaboration offers a practical blueprint for durable conservation partnerships across the West."
For Pheasants Forever, the partnership reflects evolution, not mission drift. Upland birds depend on the same landscapes threatened by catastrophic fire. By framing habitat restoration as wildfire mitigation, conservation groups can access funding streams that traditional programs cannot, while delivering tangible benefits for people who live and work on the land.
PacifiCorp is now exploring whether the model can expand into other states where it operates. Other utilities are already moving in similar directions, including Salt River Project in Arizona and PG&E in California.
"When we started, it was an idea," Liguori says. "Could we tie all these pieces together? And it is working."
Lighting the Way Forward
Utah's wildfire partnership shows that protecting infrastructure does not require sacrificing natural systems. By investing in landscape health, Rocky Mountain Power and its partners are reducing fire risk, restoring habitat, and strengthening rural economies before disaster strikes.
The West faces a choice: continue reacting to megafires at enormous cost, or invest proactively in resilience. Utah's experience suggests the path forward is not only possible, but practical.
When people, power lines, and wildlife share common ground, everyone benefits. And in a region defined by fire, that shared ground may be the brightest spark of change yet.
Brian Rhodes is a Working Lands for Wildlife Communications Specialist at Pheasants Forever.