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olive, One -seed Juniper, Rocky Mountain Juniper, American plum, Skunkbush sumac and Siberian elm. Techniques suitable to enhance wildlife in Colorado are presented by Rutherford and Snyder (1983), who reported that with respect to Mule Deer habitat in Colorado, the three most important axioms are "1) Early stages of plant succession are more beneficial than climax vegetation; 2) A mixture of plant communities provides better habitat than any single community; and, 3) More browse is preferable to less browse." Among the "shrub, tree and vine species for use consideration in Colorado" they recommend that Native plum and Skunkbush sumac are "shrubs recommended for priority use in wildlife plantings." Among the woody plant species recommended "Shrubs for supplement to taller species & for direct seeding" they recommend Fourwing Saltbush and Rubber Rabbitbrush. With respect to Elk habitat they state that "Opening up over mature oakbrush to stimulate new sprouting and to create stands of grass, following the techniques of Kufeld (1977, 1978), will greatly enhance this habitat type for elk." With respect to the pinyon - juniper type, they recommend that: "mechanical control of pinyon - juniper, with followup seeding to establish grasses in the openings, can be a highly effective means on suitable sites for making this vegetation association more valuable as a producer of elk. The techniques (anchor, chaining, cabling, and bulldozing) are quite standardized, and the concepts of limiting the treatment to small blocks or strips are fully applicable." EFCI submits that although the objectives of mining are somewhat different, the surface disturbance caused by mining and the corresponding reclamation have resulted in a significant improvement to mule deer and elk habitat and have almost exactly resulted in the duplications of the habitat modifications recommended by the Division of Wildlife and has made this property significantly better than it was prior to disturbance with respect to big game. In probably the best compilation of literature ever prepared dealing with wildlife and range habitat improvement, in the Intermountain Region, which included Colorado east wards to and including the Rocky Mountain foothills, Monsen and others (2004) report that for the Mountain Brush plant community (including the Oakbrush type) that many areas have been so altered by grazing and the elimination of fire that the understory vegetation layer has been decreased to such a point that there is often no longer any herbaceous understory. In many areas the clumps have become so high that much of the vegetation is out of the reach of grazing animals or so thick that the stands are impenetrable to livestock and wildlife. At the Southfield Mine many areas of the Oakbrush type is so thick that during the vegetation sampling effort, it was necessary in many instances to get to the transect starting point by walking around trees or brush clumps to the desired transect commencement point and then lay out the transect tape. While the transect tape was being laid out along the necessary compass bearing, it was often necessary to throw the transect tape through trees or brush and to sample the predetermined random intervals or to get around the really thick patches or vegetation. It was also frequently necessary to get down on your hands and knees and literally crawl to the desired sampled interval or break through the brush so thick that ones clothes were literally ripped off