December 2012 Number 1 - Utah Native Plant Society

Calochortiana December 2012 Number 1
The Contribution of Cedar Breaks National Monument
to the Conservation of Vascular Plant Diversity in Utah
Walter Fertig and Douglas N. Reynolds,
Moenave Botanical Consulting, Kanab, UT
Abstract. Like most national parks in Utah, Cedar Breaks National Monument was initially established to protect its
spectacular scenery rather than to preserve biological diversity. At less than 2500 ha, the monument is one of the
smallest in the region and has a relatively small vascular flora of 354 documented species. Based on conventional
measures of species richness (alpha diversity), Cedar Breaks might not seem like an important component of the protected
area network of Utah. However, nearly 10% of the flora of Cedar Breaks is comprised of local or regional endemics
that are mostly restricted to the Claron Formation or volcanic substrates. Many of these are rare species of
high management interest. Our surveys in 2007-2008 documented nearly 1200 point locations for 17 of the monument’s
rarest plants, including first records for Aster welshii and Jamesia americana var. rosea. The monument is
especially significant in terms of beta diversity or complementarity, as it protects 63 plant species that are not otherwise
found in NPS units in the state. As measured by an averaged Jaccard’s Coefficient of Similarity, Cedar Breaks
National Monument has the second most unique flora among the parks in Utah.
The Cedar Breaks Amphitheater is a large bowlshaped
valley carved from orange and white limey sandstone
layers of the Eocene Claron Formation on the west
face of Cedar Mountain, about 18 miles east of Cedar
City in southwestern Utah (Figure 1). Local Indian
tribes called the area “the circle of painted cliffs” or the
“place where the rocks are sliding down all the time”.
Early Mormon settlers named it Cedar Breaks for the
abundance of juniper (known locally as ‘cedar’) and the
precipitous badland cliffs or breaks. President Franklin
Roosevelt acknowledged the area’s “spectacular cliffs,
canyons, and features of scenic, scientific, and educational
interest” in designating Cedar Breaks as a national
monument under the Antiquities Act in 1933
(Evenden et al. 2002, Fertig 2009b). Administration of
the monument was transferred from Dixie National Forest
to the National Park Service (NPS), to be managed
to “conserve unimpaired” the area’s natural and cultural
resources and values “for the enjoyment of this and future
generations” (NPS 2000).
Protection of native biological diversity was not one
of the rationales for creating Cedar Breaks National
Monument, though this would eventually become an
important part of NPS’s mandate to conserve natural
resources. The botanical significance of the Cedar
Breaks area was just beginning to be discovered in the
early 1930s. Botanists George Goodman and C. Leo
Hitchcock collected the holotypes of Breaks draba
(Draba subalpina) and Cedar Breaks wild buckwheat
(Eriogonum panguicense var. alpestre) from the rim of
the Cedar Breaks Amphitheater in 1930 and Bassett
Maguire added the holotype of Cedar Breaks daisy
(Erigeron proselyticus, or Erigeron sionis var. trilob-
atus) in 1934 (Fertig 2009b). These species are among a
suite of nearly two dozen Claron formation endemics
restricted to the Cedar Breaks area and the vicinity of
Bryce Canyon in south-central Utah (Madsen 2001).
Today Cedar Breaks National Monument is part of a
network of highly protected areas that conserve biological
diversity. This network includes other NPS units
(national parks, monuments, recreation areas, and historic
sites), designated wilderness areas, research natural
areas, BLM-managed national monuments, and private
nature preserves such as those managed by The Nature
Conservancy. In Utah, these lands cover nearly 14% of
the state (Prior-Magee et al. 2007). Though extensive,
the Utah network does not yet capture a representative
sample of the full array of the state’s biological diversity.
Protection remains biased towards common and
widespread species and vegetation types of low economic
use (Fertig 2010a, Prior-Magee et al. 2007).
The purpose of this paper is to examine the contribution
of Cedar Breaks National Monument to the state’s
preserve network by comparing the monument’s floristic
composition, species richness (alpha diversity), degree
of endemism, and number of rare species with that
of other parklands. We hope to demonstrate that despite
the monument’s small size, low alpha diversity, and
relatively homogeneous vegetation, Cedar Breaks is
significant because of its large number of plant species
that are not protected elsewhere (i.e., the monument has
high complementarity or beta diversity). We also hope
to show how comparing annotated species checklists
can be useful for identifying and prioritizing specific
taxa that are missing or under-represented in the preserve
network.
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