Sage-grouse
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The photos in this story come from Sage Grouse: Icon of the West by Noppadol Paothong, a new book about the beautiful sagebrush landscape and the unique bird that defines its ecosystem and culture.
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Local plans, such as the comprehensive plan, economic development plan, and transportation plan, establish policies that are intended to guide a community’s day-to-day land use decisions and capital facilities expenditures. These policies have a major impact on whether people and property are exposed to natural hazards as well as the extent to which they are vulnerable to injury and damage. Therefore, it is imperative that these policies are based on best available hazard data, including the nature of local hazards, the vulnerability of people and property, and the potential destruction that can be caused by these hazards. This hazard data is the foundation on which natural hazard mitigation plans are developed.
Join the FEMA Region 10 Mitigation Planning Team and guest speakers as they look at opportunities for integration, review examples, and identify resources to integrate plans into local plans.
This webinar describes a project that uses management-related variation in grazing by both feral horses and livestock as well as five years of field work to assess how both greater sage-grouse and the habitats on which they depend might be influenced by grazing.
The research team includes James S. Sedinger, Tessa L. Behnke, Levi Jaster and Phillip A. Street from the University of Nevada Reno.
Learn more from the overview webinar.
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This learning series responds to Section 7.b.iii, Action Item #5 within the Fuels section of the 2015 Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy, which calls for a comprehensive knowledge transfer program to enhance the fuels management program’s role in sagebrush-steppe management. The Strategy is intended to improve the efficiency and efficacy of actions to address rangeland fire, to better prevent and suppress rangeland fire, and improve efforts to restore fire-impacted landscapes.
The learning modules synthesize the state of the science for six management topics:
- Background and origins of the conservation problems facing the sagebrush steppe and greater sage-grouse
- Understanding and applying the concepts of resistance and resilience
- Management of sagebrush ecosystems experiencing conifer encroachment
- Management of sagebrush ecosystems at risk of or invaded by invasive annual grasses
- Restoration of sagebrush steppe ecosystems
- Issues specific to the eastern range of greater sage-grouse
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This webinar highlights a project examining how projected changes in fire regimes and fire and fuels treatments may affect habitat quality for and probability of occupancy of sensitive-status breeding birds. Statistical change-point analyses will be used to detect any abrupt, nonlinear temporal changes-thresholds-in projected vegetation cover, habitat quality, and occupancy. Detection of ecological thresholds, if they exist, may suggest fuels treatments and restoration actions that will decrease the probability of entering into or remaining within undesirable ecological states. Webinar speakers are: Erica Fleishman, University of California Davis, and Jimi Gragg, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
This webinar presented by Stacy Moore, Ecological Education Program, Institute for Applied Ecology (IAE), introduces the Sagebrush in Prisons Project, which is designed to improve habitat for the greater sage-grouse by engaging state prison systems in production of sagebrush and other important plants for habitat restoration on BLM lands. BLM field offices and the IAE grow sagebrush with 11 prisons in 6 states. Inmates are involved in sowing plants, growing them over the summer, and planting-out on BLM land in the fall.
In this webinar, Steve Knick, USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, shares his research on conservation issues related to sage grouse and other species of concern and approaches for prioritizing management to address conservation issues.
This workshop hosted by the Nevada Section of the Society for Range Management and included presentations on the PJ mapping and treatment assessment tool, the conservation credit system, fire and mowing in sagebrush ecosystems, tools and applications from the Sage-grouse Initiative Projects, and more.
Some workshop materials are available:
- Workshop agenda and notes
- Conservation planning tool presentation slides
In this video, Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, announces that because of an unprecedented effort by dozens of partners across 11 western states, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that the greater sage-grouse does not require protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Workshop presentations in pdf format from the Nevada Section of the Society for Range Management annual winter meeting:
Sage-grouse listing decision – Steve Abele
Sage-grouse habitat limitations due to cheatgrass and PJ – Shawn Espinosa
State and transition models and at risk phases– Erica Freeze
Disturbance Response Groups – Tamzen Stringham
Rehabilitating rangelands dominated by cheatgrass – Charlie Clements
PJ treatments and vegetation response– Bruce Roundy
Elko County sage-grouse restoration projects– Chris Jasmine