Safeguarding Sage Grouse and Their Elaborate Courtship Dance

When permanent settlement began in the West some 16 million greater sage grouse lived on the steppes of the high plains. There may now be as few as 200,000 of these ground-dwelling birds, famous for their elaborate courtship dance, and they are on the decline, hit especially hard by oil and gas development. Their dwindling numbers warrant protection as an endangered species, federal officials say. Because other species need listing first, though, and because protections for endangered species are widely reviled in the West, a unique way of managing the birds is under way. The Sage Grouse Initiative, a project administered by the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service, targets for protection three-quarters of the birds on about a quarter of total sage grouse habitat. Officials call it a triage approach to conservation — protecting land where habitat is mostly intact and ignoring much of the land that has been degraded by energy development and other things. The effort is also unique because it covers so much land — some 56 million acres across 11 Western states. Nothing near this scale has been done with a species in trouble. The project received $18 million last year and $30 million this year from the conservation service. Last week, the conservation service announced the addition of $23 million to buy conservation easements on core habitat...more