THE GREATER SAGE-GROUSE

It was in the early 19th century that a familiar American surveyor along Montana’s Marinas River, called Lewis, first observed the Greater Sage-Grouse. A private on the expedition, John Shields was sent to kill one. The private’s shot, like much of that Western enterprise, was a failed attempt. But Clark held steadfast (as Clark was known to do) and finally killed his prey four months after its initial sighting, on October 17, 1805. He described the bird, somewhat aptly, as “a large Fowl…the Size of a Small turkey.”  

Of course, by that point, the sage-grouse had long been hunted as a food source and emulated in the ceremonies and traditional dances of Western tribes.

Before the arrival of European settlers, an estimated 16 million flew above the Western plains. According to historical accounts, they could darken the sky upon taking flight in their numbers. Or such is the flowery language of explorers.

But now, as few as 200,000 of the birds exist within the United States.

Alison Holloran, a vice president of the National Audubon Society, likens the sage-grouse to another bird caught in a precarious position:

“They’re a canary in the coal mine,” she says.

The technical term to describe the role of the sage-grouse in its ecosystem is “indicator species” says Holloran who, prior to joining the National Audubon Society 23 years ago, completed the fieldwork for her master’s degree in Pinedale, Wyoming studying the bird 

“They’re a representation of the sagebrush ecosystem; the holistic health of that ecosystem,” says Holloran. 

According to the scientist, 350 other species are dependent on the sagebrush for their wellbeing.

“Right here in the Eastern Sierra, healthy ecosystems are threatened by all kinds of things,” says Wendy Schneider, Executive Director for Friends of the Inyo. “Climate change, development projects … The species is suffering across the American West mostly due to habitat loss.”

It’s the extent of that habitat loss, and subsequent decline of the species’ populations, that instigated a November, 2022 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity to list the Greater Sage-Grouse as Threatened or Endangered under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).

On Tuesday morning, the Mono County Board of Supervisors considered submitting a comment letter to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) concerning the potential listing.

“There are two listings on the table at the moment,” clarified Community Development Director, Wendy Sugimura. “One is under the California Endangered Species Act, and the other one is the Federal Endangered Species Act.”

The state-level listing was discussed independently of its federal counterpart on Tuesday.

The comment letter was specific to the Bi-State Distinct Population Segment of Greater Sage-Grouse—a genetically unique population that straddles the California and Nevada border, and lives primarily in the Bodie Hills and Long Valley.

In 2002, a partnership organization was created amongst the CDFW, Nevada Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and multiple field offices of both the BLM and U.S. Forest Service to implement a conservation effort on behalf of the sage-grouse population. 

Since the implementation of that organization’s Bi-State Action Plan—iterated in 2012, and currently being updated—143 acres of habitat have been improved. More than a thousand sage-grouse have been radio marked and tracked. 

Evaluating the effectiveness of the sage-grouse population’s management practices, a draft study of the U.S. Geological Survey (still subject to revision) suggests marked population stabilization and halted population decline in the Bi-State Sage-Grouse since the 2012 Action Plan’s implementation.

According to Sugimura, a formal listing of the Greater Sage-Grouse would be redundant at best, and impede local conservation efforts at worst. 

Should the Greater Sage-Grouse be included on California’s endangered species list, protection of the bird becomes confined to the parameters of state law and all of the red tape that marks its reach.

Moreover, said the Community Development Director, the current interagency approach is commensurate with the intent and purpose of the California State Injured Species Act, as well as those recovery efforts that would be implemented upon a formal endangered species listing by the state.

“So,” explained Sugimura to the Board, “in the comment letter to the State California Department of Fish and Wildlife, we’re essentially continuing our commitment to the Bi-State Conservation Effort…Because it’s been effective, there isn’t a need to list our population of the Bi-State Sage-Grouse in Mono County.” 

The Board of Supervisors voted, unanimously, to submit the comment letter to the CDFW.

Exclusion from an endangered species list may sound counterintuitive to conservation. But, as explained by Audubon’s Holloran, exclusion is (paradoxically) the goal.

“I think from an outside point of view, people think that conservation organizations want to see a species listed; that it’s a win,” said Holloran. “It’s not a win. It means we utterly failed.”

The role of conservationists, instead, is to keep species off the list. To prevent them from hitting what Holloran calls “that critical point.”

In the past month, national attention has been drawn to the sage-grouse because of the federal draft plan, approved by the Biden administration on March 14, to avoid such a critical juncture.

The draft, notably, restores some drilling restrictions as implemented by the Obama administration in 2015 and subsequently ousted by the Trump administration.

Kathleen Sgamma—president of the oil and gas trade association, Western Energy Alliance—criticized the draft  as a “one-size-fits-all approach” to land management.

And even conservationists, as a whole, are flummoxed. Some believe that the plan’s enhanced protections of the species are crucial to its survival, but that the draft doesn’t go far enough in banning mining and oil and gas extraction. Others believe that some of the habitat protection alternatives outlined in the proposal will impede the development of renewable energy projects in the region (i.e., the installation of solar and wind farms, and critical mineral mining activity for electric vehicles).

“Renewable energy, just because it’s renewable and maybe doesn’t have the climate impacts that oil and gas does, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have impacts,” said Holloran. 

And, said the scientist, articulated species protections are hardly a catch-all approach for environmental stewardship.

“Whether a species is listed or not, we should be developing in a responsible way.”

In Washington, then, the determination of the bird’s future has become synonymous with the determination of energy assets located upon the sage-grouse’s brushland ecosystem. 

Schneider, too, emphasized that the preservation of the American West—and all of the flora and fauna commensurate with its notion—remains a balancing act of priorities.

She believes that an endangered species listing for the Greater Sage-Grouse could be a good thing. She also acknowledges the need for large-scale renewables in the region.

“I am of the ilk, among conservationists, that we can do what we need to do,” said Schneider. “There is enough of what I’ll call ‘damaged land’—fallowed farmland, disturbed land, low quality land to cite those projects. We don’t need to go out and bulldoze a bunch of pristine desert, western sage, and habitat. We don’t need to make that trade off.”