Wildlife and natural beauty surround us in Wyoming. We are blessed to experience this vastness and freedom daily. I often spend time in the desert, camera in tow. Spring is especially exciting, with migrating birds returning and the opportunity to witness the sage grouse leks, one of my favorite sights to photograph. It is humbling to see the show the sage grouse put on right in our backyards. Not many people have the chance to watch this ancient ritual play out so close to home. I feel compelled to document and share this unique event with my photographs.
Opinion
In light of this, I’ve been glad to hear that the Bureau of Land Management is updating how it manages sage grouse habitat with resource management plan amendments. We have all heard the news of ongoing sage grouse declines over the past several years. Sage grouse are a keystone species in a diverse ecosystem that supports mule deer, pronghorn, pygmy rabbits, songbirds and countless other species. Therefore, managing habitats to conserve sage grouse will simultaneously benefit other species of conservation concern. Seeing sage grouse and their many counterparts in the sagebrush ecosystem fade away would be a devastating loss for all of us. Conservation updates are critically needed to assure resource availability to all the users of the sagebrush ecosystem, not only animals but humans too.
Thankfully, the BLM can play an important role in turning things around with its new management plan. This agency manages more sage grouse habitat than any other, including about 18 million acres here in Wyoming. By focusing carefully on restoring and protecting habitat, the BLM can ensure the survival of sage grouse and other sagebrush steppe species while sustaining the health of the rangelands that ranchers, hunters and the rest of us depend on. Every year it seems the threats of invasive weeds, wildfire, drought and habitat fragmentation grow more prevalent on the landscape. I believe it will take bold management action from the BLM to keep them at bay and save quality habitat for sage grouse and the rest of us.
By amending its sage grouse resource management plans, the BLM can do more than stem the decline of this iconic bird and its habitat. Proactive management is our best chance to avoid more severe restrictions that could come with the potential listing of the sage grouse as an endangered species. It’s much better to improve outcomes for the bird with robust management plans from the BLM than to see sage grouse management taken out of the hands of states and local communities. Wyoming, in particular, has deployed tremendous resources to avoid this and has a vested interest in a plan from the BLM that elevates strong conservation measures.
The resources expended to better protect sage grouse over the years have included significant investments in scientific research. There may not be another western species that is as exhaustively studied as sage grouse. Since the BLM last updated its sage grouse management plans in 2015 and 2019, government agencies, universities and researchers have gathered copious data and published dozens of new papers and reports. We know more about how sage grouse use the landscape and react to disturbance now than ever before. It is imperative that the BLM take advantage of this wealth of knowledge to properly manage and prevent this species’ decline. Having so much information to draw on is a gift the BLM should take full advantage of by integrating the latest scientific research and leads into its sage grouse management plans.
Surrounded by nature’s bounty here in Wyoming, it can be easy to take for granted that it will always be there out the back door. Visiting the local sage grouse lek to be captivated by the spectacle playing out, we can forget the mounting threats these birds face. Securing a bright future for sage grouse and the broader sagebrush steppe ecosystem will take a commitment from all of us, especially here in Wyoming. I am optimistic the BLM will partner with state and private entities to act quickly and decisively toward proper land stewardship. Those of us who love this bird and its ecosystem are hopeful and counting on it.
In the 70s I used to summerfallow to remove weeds before planting either wheat or barley or alfalfa. Now they chemfallow, killing the weeds with chemicals and then plan chemresistant plants. This to me is the issue. We wonder why the birds and animals have a tough time surviving. It’s as though there is no concern for the future generations so long as we got what we want from the earth.
BLM might be protecting sage grouse but their destroying families of wild horses,those that are caught are put into holding pens where stallions fight killing foals and injuring other to no fault of their own,sure they have adoptions at certain times but most will pay the low fee only to sell them to slaughter house and receive more than they paid few are lucky enough to find good homes. They are part of Wyoming history as well and the cattle ranchers want save grazing grounds,there is plenty of space for all. What they need to do is stop putting up solar fields which I’m told we do not receive the benefits of other states do. If you ever get a chance go watch how they horses are rounded up,some foals are killed because they can’t up with he herd they are runned into the ground by the others it cost more to hold them in the holding pens where most will spend the rest of their lives. I would do a story on that. There are people who have no idea what happens to them and when they are shipped out they are packed into trucks so tight that if the fall they are trampledvto death all because other countries think horse meat is a delicacy.
On the point of invasive plants, one thing that was stressed for years was the introduction of seeds on people’s shoes. Education is the best way to inform people, but a mandatory cleaning of shoes before entering protected areas may be necessary, it’s an innocent but primary way to spread seeds.
Awesome article Mcmahill.
“Everything works when it rains!” A wise observation from old time farmers and ranchers in Wyoming. If we could just control this important variable in habitat health and the resulting wildlife production, things would be easy. Spring sage grouse counts appear to reflect the good rainfall Wyoming had last summer.
I assume that most of the comments come from folks outside of Wyoming. I’ve lived in western wyoming for 73 years. Livestock grazing is more restricted and better managed than ever and grouse decline. Drilling is at an all time low and grouse decline. The most significant change is the increase in predators, both on the ground and avian. For most of my life foxes and raccoons were virtually non existent in Sublette County, and ravens were scarce if here at all. These three predators have devastated ground nesting birds. Reduce the number of ravens and our grouse will rebound.
I would like the chance to see and photograph this magnificent bird.
I Have had multiple chances of doing so with Greater and lesser prairie chickens and sharp tail grouse.
Since Covid I have not been able to find an area that is open to photograph sage grouse.
Can you help me.
I Have been on WY parks and game website. They mention several but it seems you can only use a spotting scope for these.
I Have blinds and a gilley suit. I understand staying on the lek and not disturbing the mating rituals.
They are abundant on both sides of the Red Road north of St Anthony, Idaho from mid-April through mid-May. It is about ninety minutes west of Jackson Hole. If you pull off the side of the road before 5:30 am, you can photograph sage grouse on the lek from your vehicle. They start leaving the lek around 7am.
Though I have hunted sage grouse in Wyoming, I am not going to do that anymore until I can see they are more plentiful.They are special and their environment is so fragile
Ottocreek6@gmail.com
Good start and intentions.
If only state of Wyoming could do the same for grey wolves and STOP killing them.
I totally agree.
Nature has amazing ways of keeping wildlife numbers on check. Eliminating what we think should go is ignorant and nature will always rebel.
Oregon also has declining Sage Grouse population that is largely due to reduced habitat caused by human s. Oregon FWL and BLM are trying to manage their populations here. It is spectacular to see the birds,especially the display. I saw it once. I think if areas prefered by nesting birds was closed to other activities, we could allow the birds to survive.
I am all for sage grouse conservation; I haven’t hunted them for 20 years to do my part. However I believe in multi-use recreation, so we must strike a better balance between protecting wildlife and protecting our Wyoming open spaces for all forms of recreation. I sorely miss my 150 year old recipe for sage grouse.
Not many decades ago, I began to understand that people, or rather large groups of people, determine that which survives or thrives and that which is abandoned, in land management, and everything else. Those decisions are made based upon whatever notions are popular at a given time and place. My only resentment is that, in more recent times, eastern and west coast “conservationists” have exercised their penchant for preserving or “saving” everything within the western landscape, so very far from their own homes, where everything else has already been terraformed over the past several centuries to support THEIR ways of living. And yet, they have been the benefactors of western land development, from energy, to essential mineral extraction, to food production. (Heck….the folks who developed southern California neglected to build reservoirs within their own domain, and they claim they’re short of water….after torrential downpours!) It’s exciting to watch sage grouse; but it’s also nice to be able to heat or air-condition our homes, refrigerate foods, transport….everything, and otherwise power our lives in the 21st Century. So the title of this article may well have been, “As go the BUFFALO, so goes Wyoming.”
Good article, I’d grade it a B-. The author left off one key component: severe overgrazing. It seems that everyone, including BLM and Bureau of Rec leadership (and apparently the author of this article) is deathly afraid of the Wyoming stockgrowers who pillage and plunder the public lands for almost the price of free. Much of the degradation of Sage Grouse habit has been grazed into the dirt
It wasn’t a problem when more sheep and cattle were on the range, and the bison before that. I only heard of the problem after increased oil field activity (never mind the social problems it brought to places like Rock Springs in the 1970s). Wyomingites can have good jobs and still keep what makes Wyoming great, just not the oil field. Is the USGS afraid to the WSGA?
https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/livestock-grazing-effects-sage-grouse-study-identifies-options-sustain-0
https://www.uidaho.edu/news/feature-stories/sage-grouse-ten
Over grazing??? You haven’t seen anything until the impact of massive solar farms is realized on the Wyoming landscape!!! How about the $1.2 billion dollar solar farm on about 5,000 acres just south of Cheyenne – and that’s just one of many impacting wildlife habitat in Wyoming. We could be looking at up to 50,000 acres of habitat destroyed by solar farms. Remember the million acres of Occidental Petroleum land in the checkerboard which sold to an oil company – they certainly would entertain any proposal to locate solar farms on the checkerboard sections. That means the loss of critical habitat for sage grouse and especially for wild horses and winter range for deer, elk and antelope. Both sides of I-80 may be developed. Did you take note of the new high voltage power line from southern Carbon County to the Las Vegas/LA market – and, the half dozen data centers around Cheyenne that require unheard of amounts of electricity – where do you think that’s coming from. it isn’t ranching thats an immediate threat to sage grouse and wild horse habitat – its green energy development – especially on the high desert. The best way to protect sage grouse habitat on private surface is to purchase conservation easements which bar subdivisions forever – that is, keep the ranches in business because they are the best stewarts of the land. The impact of ranching on wildlife habitat is nothing compared to subdivisions and large infrastructure and industries. At this point, Wyoming is wide open for industrial development that will replace the loss of the coal industry – new rare earth mines, trona mines, expanded natural gas exporting capabilities from SW Wyoming, a new nuclear reactor near Kemmerer and multitudes of wind and solar projects – that isn’t ranching impacting wildlife habitat.
Over grazing is right.
Well said.