Wyoming Wilderness Association

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Red Butte

Written in collaboration with Brad Carr and Gretchen Hurley
(010‑131)
 

Summary

Citizens' Proposal:
Intensive Inventory:
Wilderness Study Area:
BLM Recommendation:

23,685 acres
11,500 acres
11,350 acres
0 acres

Location and Access
This study area is located 12 miles northwest of Worland and directly southeast of Sheep Mountain WSA, in the Fifteenmile Creek drainage. Access is from either from the east using US Hwy 16-20 and turning west via the Dobie Creek drainage road, or from the north, from Basin using State Hwy. 20 and cutting south along the Sandstone ditch and onto a two-track to Sheep Mountain. Four- wheel drive vehicles are recommended.

Highlights
Red Butte is characterized by bare, red badlands and sharply cut drainages. The Butte towers over the surrounding terrain, while several ephemeral creeks head up at its base. The northeastern part of the area has badlands intermixed with terraces overlooking the flat bottom of Fivemile Creek. In the western portion, steep ridges flatten out to broad drainages and rolling plains. Plant cover varies across the area from sagebrush grasslands to saltbush to bare, eroded rock and mudstone.

Wilderness Qualities
The Red Butte area is typified by unusually beautiful and solitary badlands scenery‑‑red ridges, purple and tan hills, as well as spires and hoodoos of brown sandstone. Outcrops of the Willwood formation within the area contain internationally significant paleontological resources, including specimens of an extremely rare arctocyonid, an ancestor of hoofed mammals (Rohrer and Gazin 1965). Vegetation here is classified in the Wyoming Basin Province Ecoregion, which is not represented in the NWPS.

Red Butte provides undisturbed habitat for wild horses, trophy‑sized mule deer, pronghorn antelope, mountain lions, bobcats, and nesting golden eagles, sage and sharp‑tailed grouse. Ferruginous hawks, a candidate for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, and burrowing owls (a state Priority Species in Need of Special Management) have been documented in the area (Ritter 1991). Merriam's shrew, another Priority Species, may occur here, as well (Luce 1991).

Survey work for rare plant species has not been completed in this area.