The spotted owl became a rallying cry for the old-growth forests of the Northwest. Can the sage grouse, also in peril, help save the vast shrublands of the inland west? 

By Susan J. Tweit
 

The day is already heating up as biologist Kara Leonard drives slowly up a dirt track to the top of a butte in eastern Idaho's sagelands, listening intently through headphones for the characteristic blips transmitted by her radio-collared band of sage grouse. She's followed this group of several hundred birds for more than a year on their annual 50- to 80-mile migration cycle. In late winter, they gathered near Dubois around leks--openings in the sagebrush shrublands. There, groups of males strutted and danced in spectacular courtship displays. As the season cycled through to spring, females nested in the sagebrush within a few miles of the leks. When the heat of summer desiccated the grasses and wildflowers they depend on for food, the hens walked their chicks on a slow migration eastward to feed in the higher, wetter sagebrush grasslands around Island Park. In winter the birds flew west and south onto the windswept reaches of the Snake River plains. Now it's summer again, and the grouse are headed back to Island Park.  

"Blip, blip . . . blip . . ." The signals are getting louder. Leonard stops her truck and gets out, unfolding an antenna. She listens in the headphones as she moves in a slow circle, homing in on where the signal is the strongest. There! The sound marks the location of a hen with a brood in a valley tinted gray-green by sagebrush and dappled with summer wildflowers. Leonard notes that location and tunes in to another bird. She keeps her distance to avoid disturbing the grouse and their downy chicks, but the radio signals trace their daily movements as the birds continue their yearlong trek. 

Greater sage grouse are North America's largest grouse, and until recently, they were among its most abundant. They live in what author Stephen Trimble calls the "sagebrush ocean," the vast expanses of arid shrublands from eastern Washington and California to the Dakotas and south to the Oklahoma Panhandle. In the four years since Leonard finished her radio-tracking project, sage grouse have moved from relative obscurity to center stage in the western land-management debate. Soon they may move onto the federal endangered-species list. 

Like Pacific salmon, sage grouse were once so abundant that they seemed indestructible. Early settlers dubbed them "sage chickens" and ate them like domestic fowl. No more. In the past few decades, populations of sage grouse have declined 30 percent across their range and as much as 80 percent in some places. Found in 16 states and 3 Canadian provinces in the late 1800s, today the birds have been extirpated in 5 states and 1 province. In other places, populations are so small that biologists worry they are no longer sustainable. So last year two conservation groups, the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance and the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list Washington State's greater sage grouse populations, the most imperiled, as threatened or endangered. Only 1,100 birds remain in a state that once boasted individual flocks of that size. In January the American Lands Alliance and several other groups filed another listing petition, this one for the newly described Gunnison sage grouse (see "An Even Rarer Bird").

"If sage grouse are listed," says wildlife-science professor Kerry Reese of the University of Idaho, "it will affect a far larger area of the West than the spotted owl." For example, listing would require individual evaluation of some 5,000 federally managed grazing allotments, on millions of acres of public land, which would affect thousands of ranchers. It could alter development, surface mining, farming, hunting, and recreation on public and private lands. No one is willing to predict exactly what listing would mean at this stage in the process, but since it could affect so much of the inland West, it's already controversial.
 

On a gray November day that threatens rain, I am touring central Washington's Douglas County with Mike Schroeder, an upland-bird research biologist for the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. We bounce down dirt roads and climb out of the truck half a dozen times to look for sage grouse, but we see none. At midday we park the truck and climb Chester Butte, a black basalt outcrop that sticks above the surrounding landscape like an observation platform. We brush through waist-high sagebrush, releasing the turpentine-like scent of its foliage. Thick clumps of native grasses dot the understory beneath the shrubs; a bumpy biotic crust carpets the sandy soil. "This is great sage grouse habitat," comments Schroeder, an easygoing biologist who's called Mr. Grouse by his peers. We find an old dropping, a whitish crescent half the length of my little finger, but no grouse.

From the top of Chester Butte, Schroeder and I look over the heart of the landscape that is home to the larger of Washington's two remaining populations of greater sage grouse. As I scan the miles of rolling basalt uplands, I understand what Schroeder said when he first suggested this tour: "You'll be stunned." He wasn't talking about the birds but about what's happened to their habitat. Once sagebrush clothed this landscape from horizon to horizon. Now enormous fields of winter wheat dominate the view. No wonder we haven't seen a sage grouse.

If they were here, the birds would not be easy to overlook. They are big: Females weigh three to four pounds, males five to seven; and they stretch one and a half to two and a half feet from beak to tip of pointed tail. In late winter and early spring they engage in courtship displays described as "spectacular" even in the normally restrained prose of scientific literature. Dozens of male grouse gather on leks and strut for females, feathers erect, wings swishing, and esophageal sacs audibly popping.

A lek full of strutting male sage grouse looks like a Disney nature film crossed with a Las Vegas chorus line. Each male fans the long feathers of his tail into a spiky, punk-rocker bustle, erects his yellow eye combs and a neck ruff of black feathers, and puffs out his white chest. He then takes two steps forward, swishes his stiff wings, coos, whistles, and quickly inflates and deflates two yellow, breastlike esophageal sacs. The compressed air in the sacs makes a "plopping" sound that can be heard as far away as two miles. Beginning around dawn--and sometimes in the bright light of the full moon--males display for three to four hours. They put a lot of energy into the show, losing a significant amount of body weight during breeding season. The object is to mate with as many females as possible; a single male may mate with 20 females in one morning. Female sage grouse wander among the displaying males as if comparison shopping.
 

The main problem for sage grouse today, most experts agree, is the fragmentation and decline of sagebrush shrublands. As Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring, "The sage and the grouse seem made for each other." The pungent, gray-green shrub feeds the big grouse: From November through February its leaves compose their entire diet; in summer, chicks grow fat on insects plucked from the bunchgrasses and wildflowers growing under the shrubs. Sagebrush houses them: Hens prefer to nest in the cover offered by large sagebrush plants in relatively dense stands. Their leks are located in clearings near sagebrush shrublands. 

Nor will one or two acres of the shrub do. "Sage grouse are a landscape-scale species," says Reese. Kara Leonard, a former student of his, calculated that her band of sage grouse need at least 680,000 acres of territory--an area only slightly smaller than Rhode Island. Not all sage grouse migrate, however. If all of the components of their habitat are available within one area, they'll stick around. That's one of the things that make sage grouse management so complicated: No single prescription will do the trick.

As important as sagebrush is to sage grouse, it is equally vital to arid ecosystems. The shrub adds water to droughty soils by acting as a natural snow fence, collecting windblown snow on its lee side. As each shrub-shadow-size drift of snow melts, the water sinks into the thirsty earth. Soil dries out more quickly where sagebrush is removed. 

The greater sage grouse is only one of dozens of species tied to sagebrush ecosystems, directly or indirectly. Some, such as the pronghorn and the prairie falcon, are familiar. A host of others, like the sagebrush sheepmoth, an eye-catching black-and-white relative of the luna moth, are known mostly to scientists. As the once-unbroken expanses of sagebrush vanish, these species disappear, too. Still, sagebrush is despised by many as a weed. Historically, it covered an estimated 155 million acres of the region, dominating an area nearly the size of Texas. During the past three decades, however, about one-third of that land has been plowed under, sprayed, burned out, strip-mined, overgrazed, carved up by development, or paved over. 

With the sagelands vanishing, sage grouse are forced to make do with what's available. As Schroeder and I pick our way down the side of Chester Butte, he points to a nearby field, pale green with sprouting winter wheat. "That's the site of one of the biggest leks in the county," he says. Beginning in late February, 50 or so male sage grouse gather there to jockey for the best displaying spots. The short "turf" of germinating winter wheat substitutes for a grassy clearing in the sagebrush. Unlike the smaller openings of the natural habitat, however, the immense field provides little cover, making the displaying birds easy pickings for golden eagles, hawks, and coyotes.

Schroeder points to another example of habitat the grouse turn to when sagebrush isn't available, a straw-colored expanse planted in nonnative crested wheatgrass. "One of my radio-collared hens nested here," he says. This is a Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) field, funded by a federal program that pays farmers to plant perennial grasses on marginal farmland for 10-year periods in order to control soil erosion. Here in the uplands of central Washington, sagebrush gradually reinvades the nonnative grasslands, thus providing nest sites for the grouse and cover from predators. (In drier sagebrush ecosystems, the shrub cannot reinvade; and crested wheatgrass alone does not provide good habitat.) "The CRP lands are saving the sage grouse," says Schroeder, who notes that about one-third of the farmland in Douglas County was enrolled in the last CRP sign-up. However, he cautions, the program and its benefits are only temporary. "When the current agreements expire, habitat now sustaining the grouse could be plowed up again."

Many experts think the long-term solution to the decline of sage grouse is fairly simple: Restore sagebrush ecosystems, and the grouse populations will rebound. "If you do what's best for the habitat," comments Schroeder, "the sage grouse are going to take care of themselves." However, restoring the vast expanses of sagebrush shrublands required to support the grouse is not a simple process. Millions of acres of the best potential habitat are in private hands, and much of it has been converted to farmland, overgrazed, mined, or subdivided. On both private and public lands, however, the most serious threat is cheatgrass, an exotic annual that takes over and eventually eliminates the sagebrush and native grasses. 

Cheatgrass apparently arrived in the inland West with domestic livestock in the late 1800s. It found a niche in soils bared by overgrazing. "It is called 'cheat,'" says ecologist Neil West of Utah State University, "because it gets a jump on other plants by taking the water and nutrients first." Cheatgrass greens up quickly, forming a thick carpet that looks deceptively lush. But within a few weeks, the plants dry out. And dry cheatgrass is perfect tinder. When lightning ignites it, the fire races across the landscape, often killing the sagebrush and native perennials. In August 1999, for instance, firestorms in northern Nevada burned 1 million acres, most of which were sagebrush shrublands. The huge wildfires of 2000 were mostly forest fires, but they did torch hundreds of thousands of acres of sagebrush in Idaho, Wyoming, Washington, and seven other states. In some places, the sagebrush may grow back in 30 or so years; in others, it may never recover. 

The Bureau of Land Management, which manages the majority of public lands in sagebrush country, is asking Congress for as much as $25 million a year to fund the Great Basin Restoration Initiative, a sweeping effort to reverse the invasion of cheatgrass and other annual weeds and decrease the danger of catastrophic fires. Although the details are sketchy, some conservationists are already skeptical, noting that while the plan talks about the importance of native wildlife, including sage grouse, it emphasizes planting nonnative grasses, in part to improve forage for livestock. Biologists disagree on whether sage grouse can coexist with domestic grazers. But research shows that cattle tend to eat precisely the grasses and wildflowers that provide the grouse with both insects to feed upon and cover from predators. Cattle also trample nests and chicks. 

Many conservationists view the petitions to list sage grouse as a way to force changes in the management of sagelands, since federal and state lands provide the majority of grazing land for livestock operations in sagebrush country. But as sage grouse numbers have declined, working groups of biologists, ranchers, grouse hunters, and others have formed all across sagebrush country in an effort to keep sage grouse management in local, not federal, hands. Some experts think that listing will tangle the cooperative effort needed to restore sagelands and sage grouse in a thicket of lawsuits and regulations. "It has the potential to spark another sagebrush rebellion," says San Juan Stiver of the Nevada Division of Wildlife. 

Rancher Allen Miller, who seems more inclined to negotiate than fight, grazes cattle on 20,000 acres of private, leased, and public land in Washington's Douglas County, much of it habitat for sage grouse. He hopes the grouse aren't listed but figures he'll manage. "I saw this coming," Miller says, "and when Mike [Schroeder] moved to this area, we started talking and trying to work together." Cooperation is in Miller's interest: Leasing public land helps his ranch survive. A past president of the Douglas County Cattlemen's Association, Miller is also a member of area working groups, including the advisory committee for the pygmy rabbit, another sagebrush obli-gate. He and his family are in sagebrush country to stay, he says: "If you allow me to do my business and make a profit, I'll do my best to provide good grouse habitat."

Not everyone is likely to be so cooperative, however. Industry leaders in ranching, farming, and mining have already voiced their opposition to listing sage grouse as endangered. The water boards of the Southwest's three largest cities--Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix--may be the most powerful opponents. An endangered-species listing could impair the cities' right to use water they already own, just as a court ruling forced Los Angeles to give back water to restore California's Mono Lake. Although restoring sagebrush ecosystems could benefit the water-hungry cities--healthier plant communities mean less bare soil, which in turn means cleaner water and more even stream flows--water-department representatives are already worried about the effects of listing sage grouse. As one biologist put it, "If sage grouse get between municipalities and 'their' water, don't bet on the grouse." 
 

One thing is clear: the decline in sage grouse populations sends an urgent message about the health of sagebrush country, that ocean of shrubland that symbolizes the inland West. Back at Chester Butte, Mike Schroeder lets his Brittany spaniel out of the truck. "Find us a bird, Belle," he commands, and off she charges through the waist-high sagebrush, stub tail waving as she casts back and forth. But to no avail. Schroeder says there just aren't as many sage grouse as there used to be. "Nearly 1,400 square miles of potentially fantastic grouse habitat," he says, shaking his head, "and we've got a breeding population of only about 700 birds." 
 

Colorado writer Susan J. Tweit studied sagebrush shrublands for a decade as a field ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service.
 

In July the American Ornithologists' Union recognized that the sage grouse was not one bird but two. The Gunnison sage grouse (named for the Gunnison River valley of Colorado, where it was first described) was declared a species, and what was known as the sage grouse was rechristened "greater sage grouse." 

The history of these two birds is a cautionary tale of habitat fragmentation. Some 300,000 years ago the Pleistocene era brought cooler climates to the inland West. Mountain forests moved downhill, covering basins that had been dominated by sagebrush and other shrubs and, biologists speculate, isolating the sage grouse east of the Colorado Plateau from the rest of the population. When the climate warmed again, sagebrush recolonized the basin floors, but by then the grouse populations had begun to differentiate. 

Today, Gunnison sage grouse average two-thirds the size of other sage grouse, display a very different mating ritual (with nine chest-sac "plops" per strut), and are genetically distinct. But this unique population remained unrecognized until the late 1970s, when Clait Braun, one of the leading experts on sage grouse, noticed their physical differences. He and Jessica Young, now a biologist at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, began a research collaboration that led to official recognition of the new species. 

Young sees Gunnison sage grouse as a classic example of the rapid evolution possible when birds that use a lek mating system become isolated: "Usually only 10 to 15 percent of the males mate at all, and a smaller percentage do the vast majority of the mating." With a small subset of the gene pool dominant, the population quickly becomes homogeneous. In fact, notes Young, "Gunnison sage grouse show the lowest genetic diversity of any bird species I've come across. They're analogous to cheetahs." 

Low genetic diversity isn't necessarily a problem, unless populations plummet. But Gunnison sage grouse are beset by the same problems as other North American sage grouse, from habitat degradation to development. Their range has shrunk to parts of Colorado and Utah, with fewer than 5,000 individuals in eight isolated populations. It is ironic that just when these birds have been recognized as unique, they may disappear.

What You Can Do

Stand Up for Sage Grouse
For more information on sage grouse and links to organizations that are working with the Gunnison sage grouse, visit biologist Jessica Young’s web site [www.western.edu/bio/ young/gunnsg/gunnsg.htm]. You may also consult:

• the American Lands Alliance (503-978-1054) http://www.americanlands.org/forestweb/sage.htm
• the North American Grouse Partnership (send an email to sealingc@acsol.net)
• the Sisk-a-dee Environmental Organization (send an email to msewolt@hotmail.com)  
   
  
  

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