New West Guest Column
Why Federal Regulators Should Do More To Protect The Sagebrush Sea
While mountain forests and wetlands enjoy plenty of protection, the Serengeti of the American West receives very little oversight. Mark Salvo, leader of the Sagebrush Sea Campaign, argues it’s time for a change in policy.By Mark Salvo, Guest Writer, 12-07-10
Last March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that sage-grouse, the emblematic ambassador for the Sagebrush Sea, should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. A proverbial canary in the coal mine, the grouse is an indicator of ecosystem health and an umbrella species for more than 600 other sensitive sagebrush species. Photo by Gary Kramer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
It is time to give some love to the vast Sagebrush Sea that dominates the western landscape between the Sierras and the Rockies. For too long, federal conservation policy has favored “scenic” mountains, verdant forests, rushing streams, and procreant wetlands. Even the hotter, drier Sonoran and Mojave deserts enjoy more protection than shrubsteppe. Despite its size, the Sagebrush Sea remains the least known and least conserved landscape in the American West.
We need a new federal conservation vision that provides long-term protection for the Sagebrush Sea for the benefit of native flora and fauna and the people who live there. The Obama Administration should use the occasion of the recent listing decision for greater sage-grouse to designate a new system of sagebrush reserves on public land.
The Sagebrush Sea is our own Serengeti, the seemingly endless rangelands that fill expansive basins and cover the vast plateaus of the Intermountain West. While often portrayed as hot, barren, dusty desert, healthy sagebrush steppe is, in fact, a colorful and complex landscape, where sagebrush grows in delicate balance with other shrubs, trees, bunchgrasses and wildflowers. The landscape is replete with lakes, rivers, streams, springs and wetlands, hot springs, alkali flats, salt flats, dunes, volcanic rock formations and mountain ranges.
This rich mosaic supports hundreds of species of fish and wildlife. The Sagebrush Sea is vital habitat for the charismatic sage-grouse, the tiny pygmy rabbit, the fleet-footed pronghorn, and the gorgeous Lahontan cutthroat trout. It serves as a migratory corridor for birds and important winter habitat for big game. At least 15 species of raptors use sagebrush steppe. More than 1,250 insect species have been identified on a single tract of sagebrush in Idaho.
Most of the Sagebrush Sea is publicly owned, mostly managed by the Bureau of Land Management. A number of the fastest growing communities in the Interior West—the fastest growing region of the country—are in the Sagebrush Sea. BLM lands are increasingly important for their provision of water and other ecosystem services, recreational opportunities, and cherished moments of solitude for millions of Americans.
Unfortunately, much of the Sagebrush Sea has suffered from a tragedy of the commons. Accessible, irrigable, and rich in minerals, the Sagebrush Sea has been a working landscape since ranchers, miners and homesteaders first laid claim to it 200 years ago. Millions of acres have been lost to agriculture and development. Remaining sagebrush habitat is fragmented and degraded by oil and gas drilling, livestock grazing, mining, unnatural fire, invasive weeds, off-road vehicles, roads, fences, pipelines and utility corridors.
Despite majority public ownership, the Sagebrush Sea is one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. Current policies prioritize resource extraction over conservation and nonconsumptive uses. The BLM routinely permits harmful gas and oil drilling, livestock grazing and off-road vehicle use on millions of acres of sagebrush steppe. Meanwhile, only 3 percent of the landscape benefits from some level of federal protection. Very little sagebrush habitat is protected as wilderness, national wildlife refuges, national parks, national conservation areas, or national monuments.
Mismanagement of this ecosystem has taken its toll: last March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that sage-grouse, the emblematic ambassador for the Sagebrush Sea, should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. A proverbial canary in the coal mine, the grouse is an indicator of ecosystem health and an umbrella species for more than 600 other sensitive sagebrush species.
Experts agree that sage-grouse and other sagebrush species cannot be recovered without protecting large expanses of sagebrush steppe. The Department of Interior just released new maps identifying the most important areas in the Sagebrush Sea for sage-grouse and other sensitive wildlife. Key areas include the Hart Mountain/Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge ecoregion, the Owyhee Desert in north-central Nevada, and public lands adjacent to Charles M. Russell and Arapaho national wildlife refuges.
The Obama Administration has options for designating sagebrush reserves. The Bureau of Land Management could administratively designate conservation areas, the Secretary of Interior could order the creation of new wildlife refuges on public land, or President Obama could proclaim new monuments in the Sagebrush Sea. Or the federal government could do all three. It doesn’t matter how reserves are created or what they are called, so long as they protect sage-grouse and other wildlife.
The envisioned system of sagebrush reserves should be managed to conserve and restore ecologically functioning sagebrush steppe and associated watersheds, with a full complement of native species. Since sagebrush species are negatively affected by oil and gas drilling, livestock grazing, off-road vehicles, and other land uses, they would be prohibited or restricted in designated reserves. The reserves must be of sufficient size to withstand the effects of climate change, and the new system should include habitat corridors to facilitate migration, dispersal and gene flow.
No other western landscape is more deserving or has waited longer for protection than the Sagebrush Sea. While designating a system of sagebrush reserves is not a trivial political commitment, postponing action will only make conserving this landscape, recovering these species, and restoring these watersheds even more difficult. The Obama Administration has both the legal authority and ecological mandate to designate reserves now.
Mark Salvo is Director of the Sagebrush Sea Campaign for WildEarth Guardians.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Add your comment below
I know it is a money maker for environmental groups to fund raise for XYZ species, but it is detrimental to the overall picture.
I count sage grouse in the spring for G&F;, this spring one lek had more hens than I have seen at one time even though there were signs of predation. I also saw more cow pies in the area and the hens picking around them, (the males were showing off and strutting). Were they getting bugs, grains or were there little grass shoots as one article indicated they like to pick, I don't know and I try not to disturb them so I didn't look close at the cow pies. I don't know if this will work or not, but it is one of the shots of birds at the site.
http://www.pbase.com/mariond/image/130763408
Rural cleansing at its finest.
Dave I really enjoy your articles in Range Magazine, the rest of the magazine too of course.
(Todd is also prone to rampant paranoia that them durn libruls is out to take his guns, land, Hummer, mule and woman, not necessarily in that order.)
While Salvo is entirely correct that the sagebrush Serengiti needs protection, that won't happen to the degree it needs to, because of the energy plays: CBM, in situ uranium and newest of all, the deep shale play that will sweep from Cheyenne up to Sheridan.
In 1921 Hewitt recorded events that are today not just disregarded but wildlife experts go out of their way to promote the complete opposite. Hewitt told readers nearly 100 years ago that if you protect predator species, prey species will diminish; all species and not just game species.
"The creation on any extensive scale of wild life reserves will inevitably result in an increase within, and the attraction to such reserves of predatory mammals such as wolves and coyotes, and of birds such as eagles, great horned owls, and such noxious hawks as the goshawk, Cooper’s, and sharpshinned hawks, owing to the fact that these reserves will not only contain a larger number of the animals and their young which predatory animals destroy, but as the reserves afford sanctuary to such animals they will tend to contain a much greater abundance of wild life than neighbouring territory. Following the general rule in nature that predatory species collect where the species on which they subsist occur in unusual abundance, an increase in game and other animals will bring about an increase in their enemies, especially when the latter are harassed elsewhere." --C. Gordon Hewitt -- 1921 his book- “The Conservation of the Wildlife of Canada“.
In these same writings, Hewitt alludes to reports of what happens to prey species, more specifically deer, elk, moose, caribou and mountain sheep, when large predators, such as wolves, coyote and cougar are not controlled and are allowed to multiply in numbers. And yet today, wildlife biologists and managers readily advance the theory that these predators have little or no impact on prey species and/or even livestock.
It was an accepted fact that coyotes readily killed larger prey.
"There is no doubt that they destroy not only young deer, mountain sheep, and antelope, but also large numbers of game-birds, such as geese, ducks, etc." --C. Gordon Hewitt -- 1921 his book- “The Conservation of the Wildlife of Canada“.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr;=&id=T9uNuZlalwoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=c.+gordon+hewitt&ots=Zq1sJkoJ97&sig=7Gj1KZPpIG9Cq5pVmLH7kIp6cqM#v=onepage&q;&f;=false
Ducks and Geese are much more difficult for wolves, coyotes, cougars, bobcats, than Sage Grouse are.
" The coyote nuisance has become a very serious one, as not only have they practically cleaned up all the stock of GROUSE, killed fawns and the deer themselves by the hundreds, but they have made the keeping of sheep in some parts of the interior almost an impossibility at the present time, and the number of domestic fowl they have killed would total a good many thousand dollars. The whole of the Dry Belt simply swarms with these pests. . . .” Canadian Provincial Warden
Of course though, all that time in the actual field is worthless, it's the Computer Modeling that has it right. (sarcasm)