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and protect or entrance the wildlife populations. In these instances, shrub reestablishment will oust likely be necessary. Not all rangelands, however, have population limiting habitat for wildlife. In such areas, there will be little or • no benefit from reestablishing shrubs. Shrub establishment standards, even when wildlife is a planned post-mining land use, should not be selected without regard for the other land uses of livestock grazing and watershed management. In such cases, an optiirum shrub density is not what's optimur for deer, e1 k, or grouse, but rather what is c?timam for ali the intended uses combined. For areas where wildlife use is only incidental, the post-mining land use objec- tives should not include wildlife habitat and it should nut be necessary to reestablish shrubs. Shrubs can decrease the forage available to domestic live- stock and decrease water availability in streams. 4lithout shrubs, incidental wildlife use can still be expected to occur. In fact, deer may be better able to survive on winter range dominated by shruhs if they have spring, summer and fall range with grasses and forbs available. Where important deer winter range is not affected by mining, reclamation may best serve deer populations by providing grasses and forbs for spring, summer and fall forage. Even for areas where wild- , life habitat' is a planned post-:lining land use, the utility for important species ' can often be enhanced by decreasing the number of shrubs present. r1 U At least four concepts for shrub density standards can be considered. These include densities based on reference areas (stems per acre), on carrying capac- ity, on animal use, and cn shrub clump densities. Any of these standards are theoretically possible and should be allowed singly or in combination. Any stan- dard selected, however, should be meaningful to the post-mining land use. The reestablishment of any plant species or lifeform to a landscape should be done with careful consideration for its value to important users. Shrubs should be reestablished where Chey are important for wildlife for cover and forage. It does not follow, however, that simply because shrubs exist before mining, they should be reestablished, The lands in question may, in fact, provide a higher level of use abased on post-mined land use decisions) if shrubs are reduced or eliminated. Moreover, it may be desirable to alter the dominate lifeform. For example, a change from tall overstory shrubs to low and midsized shrubs may be best for optimum land use. `J -21- _ . _,F.