Sage Grouse

 Sage Grouse

In nearly four decades of birding, I had never managed to make contact with Sage Grouse. It is mostly a resident of Wyoming, southern Idaho, eastern Montana, and eastern Washington, places to which I have rarely or never ventured. This summer we traveled to northern Colorado to see them at the southeastern edge of the bird’s range.

Greater Sage-grouse, Coalmont

The Sage Grouse is well named.  It is intimately tied to sagebrush, especially the species known as Big Sagebursh, Artemisia tridentata (the leaf being three-toothed in shape). Before European settlement, tridentata occupied vast areas of the American west (270 million acres), and it was healthy. (Varieties of this shrub can be bought in nurseries in New Mexico, and they do well in the yard with no supplemental water – as we learned when living there.) This made the Sage Grouse happy and it thrived. There are several closely related species of grouse in North America, likely deriving from some original grouse-like bird before specializing into the continent’s unique habitats. Sage Grouse decided to settle down in the semi-arid, mostly flat areas between mountain ranges in the upper northern portions of the American west, including nearby parts of Canada. The vast regions of Big Sagebrush were also colonized by specialized bunchgrasses that occupied the places between shrubs. The Sage Grouse found good use for that too, with the tall grasses helping to hide chicks from predators. In the long cold and windy winters of the region, the Sage Grouse learned to survive by eating sage leaves. The unique characteristics of this habitat caused the species to differentiate from the other grouse like Dusky Grouse, which kept to the mountains, and Greater Prairie Chicken in the tallgrass prairie to the east.

Native American tribes would have been intimately familiar with the Sage Grouse. The lavish and energetic displays of males during courtship must have been witnessed and marveled at by generations of tribal people. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to imagine that spring-season Sage Grouse dances at lek sites were part of the inspiration for tribal dances that one can still experience today. The tribes would have hunted the abundant grouse in appropriate season, and would have treasured the breeding plumes of the male birds as precious and rare. They would have been expertly informed about where the grouse thrived and what it needed to perpetuate.

These lessons, like so many of the period, were lost on European settlers, who were oblivious to the specially-adapted species until the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1806. The settlers were obsessed with raising livestock, which became a lucrative business once the railroads were established in the late 1800s. At first, coexistence was possible; after all, the semi-arid plains of Wyoming and Montana were not particularly attractive places to raise a family. But livestock-raising quickly turned into an industry, and the two were set on a collision course that would become contentious in 2005. Conservation groups noted a steep decline in Sage Grouse numbers in that era, resulting in a petition to force federal and state governments to take protective action.

After studying the maps in field guides and in eBird, I settled on the headwaters of the North Platte River, in north-central Colorado. One of the premier Sage Grouse locations is the expansive Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge near the town of Walden. Tourism is important but not a dominant economic force in this remote region of large flat sagebrush-grass flats ringed by three towering mountain ranges, which feed snowmelt into the meandering streambeds that feed ponds and eventually merge into the river. The Arapaho, nicely named after one of the tribes of the region, was established in the mid 1960s. The main purpose was habitat for nesting and migrating ducks and geese, who were losing ground to agriculture in the Midwest. An incidental benefit was the preservation of Big Sagebrush and the aptly-named Sagebrush Steppe habitat. This is yet another example of how habitat preservation for one group of species brings benefits to many more, a not-so-subtle feature of public lands management that is quickly forgotten in every case of proposed new refuge or park establishment. 

Sunrise at Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge. In the morning haze of distant forest fire smoke.

We began our refuge tour at sunrise, noting a great many perched Swainson’s Hawks waiting for warm air to soar in. Brewer’s and Vesper Sparrows were camped out with Sage Thrashers at the top of almost every sagebrush. A thrilling Long-tailed Weasel bounced along just off the road, looking for breakfast in the fields of White-tailed Prairie Dogs, which scampered across the road at every bend. American White Pelicans paddled around improbably in the ponds, a Sora sounded off, and American Coots were too numerous to count. Every large puddle held a few Wilson’s Phalaropes gathering insects on the surface. White-faced Ibis floated over in formation.

Swainson's Hawks near Coalmont, Colorado. Juveniles waiting for the next feeding.

Our first Sage Grouse appeared in sage and tall grass off the refuge road in the dim early light. They were unexpectedly large for grouse, much more so than the Dusky Grouse to which I was accustomed from New Mexico. They seemed weirdly huge, as if they had stretched beyond their prescribed body contours. Initially at rest, they perked up when I stopped the car, and mildly alarmed, soon wandered off into the sage. The light was challenging because the skies were filled with smoke from distant forest fires to the north and west in other parts of the continent. But we could make out the fine white markings on the back, a black belly, and long tail. A disjunct population of these birds occurs further to the south in Colorado and to a limited extent in eastern Utah. Having no contact with the rest of the species for probably millennia, it was declared a separate species a few decades ago, the Gunnison Sage-grouse. In the Arapaho, the new name is Greater Sage-grouse. Greater indeed, for these birds seemed to stalk off with aplomb. They melted quietly into sagebrush and out of sight.

White-tailed Prairie Dog, Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge

Oddly enough, these birds were not far from a herd of cattle. The refuge permits livestock in small numbers, reportedly to shake up the vegetation a bit and promote the growth of young sagebrush. Not being a big fan of arid-lands grazing, I was skeptical, but I must say that judging by the vegetation, the grazing is light indeed. Maybe someday the cows can be replaced by American Bison.

Cattle herd in the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge. Notice the relatively healthy sage and grass: the grazing intensity is light here.

Later that morning we found a trio of Greater Sage-grouse in the area around Coalmont. They first appeared sitting in the middle of the gravel road, apparently taking in some sunshine in the cool morning air of about 6 degrees C. As we approached, they lost patience and took to the air. They flew strongly and with purpose on large wings, a few feet off the ground, and slowly dropped over the horizon. We found a large group farther down the road near a lake. Two adult females were chaperoning 6 young birds. We stayed silent and got close looks in the tall grass, before they slowly wandered off and disappeared. It was a perfect illustration of their need for luxuriant grasses. Although it appeared to be private land here, both sage and grasses looked healthy. Several Pronghorn wandered around as well, trotting through the sage with a supreme ease.

Greater Sage-grouse near Coalmont, Colorado

In the 1990s, wildlife observers and biologists became worried about a decline in Sage Grouse numbers, and a shrinking of the range. The causes were documented well by researchers. Habitat alteration by residential and commercial development and by a growing number of oil and gas wells were contributors. Fences and poles provide perches for predators that enhance their success at grouse capture. The intrusion of exotic plants is another factor. Livestock grazing, prompted by a growing national demand for MacDonald’s cheeseburgers, has also been mentioned. Many ranchers protested the analysis. Cows eat grass and Sage Grouse eat sage, so what’s the problem?

The impacts are many. Livestock can trample the sage shrubs as they forage, threatening the health of the plants. Heavy grazing causes the grasses to decline and even be eliminated. That leaves Sage Grouse chicks easy to spot by predators, causing a dent in nest productivity (the number of chicks fledged each year). The reduction of grasses alters the insect life, which adult and young grouse need for growth. Cow herds tend to bring in Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), an invading annual species from Asia that chokes out the natives. (I personally witnessed the dramatic growth of Cheatgrass in northern New Mexico in the 1990s and 2000s. The ground grows eerily green very early in the spring, and then quickly turns inedibly brown and shades out native perennial grasses that green up much later.) Incubating adults may abandon their nests when large herbivores come too close. Livestock are also devastating to fragile riparian areas that the grouse sometimes use for water and forage. Sagebrush can fall prey to ranchers who use heavy equipment to rip it out of grazing areas, in a desperate but usually fruitless attempt to increase the grass cover on the land. We saw a few areas like this in our drives around the area.

In theory, we have land managers who are federal employees and can watch out for these negative impacts on native wildlife, working in agencies such as the US Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In practice, it is a different story. One of the conservation groups observed shrewdly, “the BLM is trapped by federal law, and compelled by politicians, local resource users, and its own organizational culture to continue livestock grazing even to the detriment of fish, wildlife and watersheds.” I have been known to cynically refer to BLM as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining.”

In the face of this, conservation groups filed petitions in the 2000s to get the federal agencies to declare the grouse endangered. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) agreed in 2010 that the bird should be classified as endangered, but that they lacked the money and staff to do so (the dreaded “warranted but precluded” designation). Conservation groups like the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project kept the pressure on with negotiation and the threat of lawsuits. In 2015, it seemed like a victory for the conservationists was imminent.

It was not. Enter our beloved US Congressmen. They included language in appropriations bills in 2015 to prevent the USFWS from declaring the bird endangered. Now, this creates all kinds of confusion over the role of government agencies. The USFWS is ostensibly supported by Congress. Funds are allocated to them annually by Congress to carry out a prescribed mission. But now we have Congressmen dictating what actions they can and cannot perform? That seems blatantly contradictory. What is the use of having an agency to protect endangered species if Congress has its hand on the steering wheel? The USFWS, under pressure from western Congressmen, issued a statement in 2015 that they would rely on a land management plan as an alternative to Endangered Species Act listing. They trumpeted it as “an unprecedented conservation partnership” and claimed to be protecting 90% of the 173-million acre range of the bird.

Pronghorn near Coalmont, Colorado

Then Trump got elected, and things got worse, as you might guess. In 2018, Trump ordered political appointees (Ryan Zinke) to gut protections for the Sage Grouse, carving out nine million acres of land to wind and solar farms, drilling, mining, and cornfields for ethanol production. The recent Supreme Court decision on the Chevron doctrine (2024) is likely to complicate things even further. The rationale of the Congressmen (mostly western-state Congressmen) is that local authorities are already doing everything they can to protect habitat and ensure the grouse’s future. Is that true? The way to assess those programs is to look at numbers of birds detected in surveys, and those numbers continue to shrink.

Lark Bunting in Colorado

And that leaves us at a standstill. Both species of Sage-grouse are in a downward spiral, and both forms of government (state and federal) are standing around with their hands in their pockets. The likely outcome is that the birds will eventually become critically endangered. It might get to the point of no return, with no amount of money able to retrieve them. The bird with such a facility for vanishing into the tall grasses might end up vanishing into the aether instead.

Greater Sage-grouse, before disappearing into the tall grasses

We didn’t stay in the Walden area long enough to get an idea of how local people think about these issues. But one minor bit of insight comes from a roadside sign related to different wildlife issue. In November 2020, Colorado held a referendum on reintroducing wolves to the state, as a way to supplement the highly successful effort in Wyoming and its spillover effects in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. There was controversy over the proposal, and the vote was very close, but voters approved the proposition, and Coloradans are looking forward to hosting wild wolves for the first time in a century. In Walden, a landowner voiced his or her scorn over the reintroduction program with a prominent sign saying “If you voted for reintroduction of wolves, do not recreate here. You are not welcome.”

Roadside sign just north of Walden, Colorado

One would be hard-pressed to find a sadder manifestation of entrenched attitudes toward wildlife. Is this landowner really prepared to reject the revenue from wildlife tourism? In our short trip, we spent several hundred dollars to see Greater Sage-grouse, on rental car, gas, hotel bills, restaurant meals, and groceries. We participated in keeping Colorado businesses active and prosperous, just to see a rare resident bird. We plan to do so again in the future, since Greater Prairie Chicken and Sharp-tailed Grouse are still on the list. All of this provides a badly needed shot in the arm to Colorado’s economy. Doesn’t that count for something?

 

Variegated Fritillary. Near Zimmerman Lake, Colorado.