Defenders Magazine
Get Defenders Headlines
Get the latest wildlife conservation news and information... right when we post it online.
Defenders Magazine
Lean Times for the Cock of the Plains
The sage grouse's colorful mating rituals mark the return of spring in sagebrush country, but the bird is declining along with its habitat.
Across much of the West, springtime begins with a strange ritual. Before the winter snow is gone, male greater sage-grouse—beefy birds weighing as much as seven pounds—gather on windswept hilltops and open plateaus, each spreading his long, spiky tail feathers and inflating air sacs beneath his shaggy white breast, filling the cold morning air with loud, liquid “plops” that can be heard miles away. There may be dozens of males displaying together in what scientists call a “lek,” advertising themselves to the shy, camouflaged females waiting nearby.
But this bizarre and lovely tradition has fallen on hard times. More than 90 percent of the sagebrush habitat that once dominated vast stretches of the West—and provided a home to grouse and many other kinds of birds, animals and plants—has been destroyed or altered. Sage-grouse populations, once found in 12 states and three Canadian provinces, have declined drastically, and they’ve disappeared entirely from Nebraska and British Columbia. Some conservationists fear the bird’s future may be in jeopardy.
Science first learned of the greater sage grouse from Lewis and Clark, who dubbed it the “cock of the plains” and said it was found “in great abundance” on the endless sagebrush steppes. (A second species, Gunnison’s sage grouse, which is currently found only in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, wasn’t recognized as distinct until the 1990s.) Early naturalists spoke of greater sage-grouse numbers in stunned tones; George Bird Grinnell, who founded the first Audubon society, wrote that the flocks he saw in Wyoming in 1886 reminded him of the passenger pigeons he’d seen as a boy.
Such abundance did not last. Early settlers quickly began converting the shrub-steppes to farmland or pasture, and sagebrush eradication became a full assault beginning in the 1950s and 1960s with widespread application of herbicides like 2,4D and plantings of nonnative species like crested wheatgrass. Roads, towns and utility corridors cut the landscape into pieces. Today, sage-grouse populations are badly fragmented, and while the steep declines that occurred from the 1960s through the mid-1980s appear to have leveled off in some areas, conservationists remain deeply worried about the future of the grouse and other species that share its habitat, such as sage thrashers and sage sparrows.
Some conservation groups were concerned enough to petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to include the greater sage-grouse under the protection of the federal Endangered Species Act—a move that would have had sweeping effects on everything from ranching to energy development. (Defenders of Wildlife was not one of the petitioners.) In January, the agency completed a review of the bird’s status and announced that it did not feel a listing was warranted at the time—news that was greeted with approval by most business and industry groups, and with disappointment by many sagegrouse advocates.
Defending Wildlife State by State
Fortunately for creatures like the sage grouse that may not be getting the attention they deserve on the national level, there is the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program. The $70 million annual program, created by Congress in 2000, tasks each state with developing a comprehensive plan for identifying and protecting species of concern and their habitats. The goal of the program, which Defenders helped shape, is to encourage states to take action before more species require listing under the Endangered Species Act. Because of the comprehensive nature of the program, states can include habitats that many types of creatures rely upon. So protecting the dwindling sagebrush areas in western states will help not only sage grouse, but dozens of other species as well. All states will complete a wildlife plan by October.
“These wildlife plans will complement the Endangered Species Act with a proactive conservation program,” says Gabriela Chavarria, vice president for conservation policy at Defenders. “We look forward to helping states implement these important plans.”
However, Chris Haney, senior conservation scientist for Defenders of Wildlife, says the service probably made the right decision, given the uncertainty of much of the information we have about the species.
“The sage grouse is on the path to being listed, but the numbers aren’t there yet,” Haney says. Except for males gathered on a lek, sage-grouse are hard to count, and population estimates of 100,000 to 500,000 birds could be off by a great deal. “Given those biases in monitoring, it would not surprise me if there were more birds out there.”
That said, the future does not look good for sage-grouse, because the quality of its habitat continues to decline in almost every part of its range. Jack Connelly, a biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and co-author of a new assessment of the sage-grouse commissioned by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, says it is a bird with a very cloudy future.
“We’re still facing habitat loss and fragmentation—these things have not changed, though the kinds of threats have changed,” Connelly says. “There’s no more 2,4D or wheatgrass; instead we have oil and gas drilling or wind turbines.” Energy development, especially natural gas and mineral extraction, is exploding across the West, with new well sites and roads crisscrossing what had been empty sagebrush. More people are moving into the region, spurring road and home construction. Invasive plants like cheatgrass, which often follow development, are crowding out native plants and making the sagebrush plains more susceptible to damaging fires.
Haney and Connelly both speak of the dangers of “vertical fragmentation”—breaking up a previously flat landscape with tall structures like derricks, turbines, utility poles, even highway signs and fenceposts. “Whenever we build things that cause disturbance—and grouse are very susceptible to disturbance—and whenever we build things that make it easier for predators like ravens to make a living, it does not bode well for sagegrouse,” Connelly says. “People tend to look at a single project, just one cell tower or one wind turbine, and in and of itself it might not have a major impact on grouse. But when you put them all together, it gets ugly.”
A new wild card is the recent appearance of West Nile virus, a deadly mosquito-borne disease, among a few populations of sage grouse. Where it has appeared, significant die-offs of sage grouse have resulted; even worse, tests of surviving grouse in those areas showed no antibodies for the virus, and thus no evidence that some individuals can survive an attack and develop immunity to it. “It seems like if the birds get it, they die,” Connelly says. Widespread drilling for coal-bed methane, which creates pools of standing water ideal for mosquito breeding, may only worsen the problem.
Haney agrees with the gloomy assessment of the grouse’s prospects. “There’s ecosystem alteration, habitat fragmentation and disease, and we don’t know how they all intersect with one another. The worst case is that they would reinforce each other and cause an extinction spiral in some grouse populations,” he says.
With a federal listing off the table for now, the focus will shift to the state and provincial level, where sage-grouse-specific conservation plans and comprehensive wildlife plans are being developed (see sidebar). Coalitions of government, private and nonprofit groups will try to implement the various plans, as scientists scramble to fill the gaps in our knowledge of this strange and beautiful bird and work on ways to restore its damaged sagebrush habitat—all before it’s too late.
