Restoration of Greater Sage-Grouse habitat: A framework for landscape and site-specific decisions

Background/Question/Methods

Sagebrush-grassland ecosystems are one of the most imperiled ecosystems in North America. Fire has resulted in large areas instantly losing their shrub component with little hope to regain it soon. The Greater Sage-Grouse is a candidate for endangered species status that selects sagebrush habitat at multiple scales. Sage-grouse require both large extant areas dominated by sagebrush but also select specific sites with adequate native herbaceous plants to provide nesting and hiding cover. Fragmentation of habitat has limited the range of this threatened bird. As a result, managers are faced with a need to restore sagebrush-grasslands that meet both landscape and site-specific requirements. Managers are seeking decision support tools for implementing restoration across landscapes in a cost-effective manner that meets a diversity of management objectives. Using recent concepts about sagebrush ecosystem resilience to disturbances and resistance to invasive species and about Greater Sage-Grouse needs for extant sagebrush landscape dominance, we developed a decision support tool that meets these objectives and will address simultaneously restoration of habitat for Greater Sage-Grouse.

Results/Conclusions

The decision support tool is assembled in three parts. Part I provides background concepts that are necessary for the practitioner to use two successive decision tools. We use a hierarchical approach to restoration with the initial decisions conducted at the landscape level (Part II). It is geared toward decision makers who must prioritize where limited funds could be applied to gain the greatest benefit across a region. We used Greater Sage-grouse habitat restoration within the western U.S. as the example of this process. Using landscape cover of sagebrush across the entire range, we determined areas of existing high (>65%), medium (25 to 65%), and low (<25%) landscape cover. We coupled this with soil temperature and moisture regimes used as surrogates for resistance and resilience to prioritize restoration locations and potential management options. Part III describes project-level restoration tools. It involves decisions regarding use of either passive or active restoration techniques. These latter parts are designed to be followed in a step-by-step progression to ensure that critical decisions are made in the appropriate order to ascertain best management practices with the least amount of back-tracking or wheel spinning on the part of the decision-makers and practitioners.