Bear River Land Conservancy was established in 2011 as a small nonprofit land conservation organization. Shortly after formation, BRLC inherited a 455-acre floodplain conservation easement known as Bear River Bottoms. Located in Cache County, Utah, this nonprofit organization now collaborates with various landowners throughout the Bear River Watershed to conserve land.
Bear River Land Conservancy focuses primarily on areas such as working lands, wildlife habitats, riparian corridors, and other lands that allow public recreation. These lands are essential to BRLC because they support wildlife, locally grown food, and clean water. BRLC hopes to protect these critical areas, and their associated public benefits as surrounding cities grow and develop.
BRLC uses tools like Uinta™ Data Collection Software to stay organized while managing different properties. Operations Manager Gabriel Murray shared what feature stood out the most while using Uinta.
“The software is user-friendly. Teaching other people how to use it has been very straightforward. The design is intuitive, and our volunteers have been able to pick it up very easily.”
The BRLC is a nonprofit that relies on volunteer support. They need to trust the data their volunteers are collecting is accurate. This is made simple with easy-to-learn data collection software like Uinta. With the ability to train new users in minutes, users save time and money without compromising quality.
Because Uinta was designed with the customer in mind, it has a wide range of applications. Bear River has utilized Uinta to accomplish its goals in several ways rather than on just one specific project.
One of the ways BRLC works to conserve land is through conservation easements. Conservation Easements are agreements between entities such as BRLC and private landowners to protect the conservation values of a property by limiting development.
BRLC has spent the last year using Uinta and the Mesa® Rugged Tablet together to create accurate profiles of these properties and keep track of notable features on the property, such as springs, fences, and buildings. Once a conservation easement has been executed, BRLC uses Uinta to complete annual monitoring of various conservation properties and to ensure the terms of the conservation easement are being met.
With Uinta, professionals can quickly create maps and templates to mark areas of note on properties when land surveying. These maps are highly accurate and can be exported and shared for analysis and record keeping. This type of precise record keeping can have huge consequences if done incorrectly, damaging property or wildlife. Juniper Systems knows this and recommends pairing Uinta with our Geode GNSS Receiver for the most accurate maps possible.
In land conservation, users often find themselves in spaces without great reception. Murray also noted how helpful the ability to download and access offline maps was. Juniper Systems doesn’t want a lack of service to prevent users from doing their job, especially those working in Natural Resources.
BRLC also monitors threatened species. Uinta is a cost-efficient GIS mapping software, making it a perfect asset for BRLC to monitor species changes over time by mapping their populations on the landscape. The same principles also apply to pest and invasive species management.
These are just some of the ways that Uinta can be used. To learn more about the different industries Uinta serves and more about its specific features, visit our website or contact us today.