Sagebrush The State Flower

The problem is that for each of the complex ecological problems that face Nevada and the sagebrush habitats of the Great Basin there is a simple solution -- and they are all wrong.  Letting fires burn kills sagebrush. Putting out all fires leads to accumulation of woody fuels, to sagebrush and other shrubs, and to pinyon or juniper trees.  Too many trees can permanently remove sagebrush and this occurs on about 200,000 acres per year. The accumulating woody fuel  leads to bigger fires, hotter fires and fires that no longer release native understory plants to cycle back into a strong understory and then sagebrush.  Stopping grazing leaves grasses -- fine fuels for big fires.  Turning out more livestock to consume the fuels, can harm the bunchgrasses that must survive the fires to keep out cheatgrass.  Killing cheatgrass is expensive and leaves the land open to even worse invasive weeds.  Seeding natives is difficult and risky.  It often fails, especially in the dryer zones where we miss them the most.  Seeding non-native bunchgrasses may reduce fire frequency and allow sagebrush and some native grasses and wildflowers to come back, but the process is slow, especially for the herbs.  Yet all these tools and more have a place in the tool box. 

Let’s hope that land managers can open the tool box and continue to use these tools in the right places, at the right times -- with the support of the many land users, wildlife enthusiasts and others.  To keep sagebrush lands capable of producing sagebrush it must not be allowed to permanently transition to only cheatgrass and invasive weeds. We must keep the resilience of functioning and cycling plant communities so they can continue to provide the mix of habitats that our wildlife use across a landscape and generation after generation. If we lose the resilience of our perennial vegetation, the tools for land management lose effectiveness and become so expensive they will rarely be applied.  Ironically, the fear of losing this battle may put a lock on  the tool box just when we need the tools the most.

The Nevada Wildlife Federation has been a champion of sagebrush habitats for many years.  We (along with Society for Range Management) published a booklet for private land owners about how to manage sagebrush habitats for sage grouse. Yes, that sometimes means killing some sagebrush to make the habitat better and more sustainable.  But it also means planting sagebrush and other plants to recover from wildfire, or helping agencies by gathering seed or funding seed buys for desired plants; creating fuel breaks to keep wildfires from becoming so huge that we lose entire populations that depend on a valley for winter habitat; and trying experiments, like creating sagebrush snow drifts, to help learn how to encourage sagebrush after fire.  In addition:

Nevada Wildlife federation has often featured sagebrush species in our quarterly newsletter. 

Our people have been tireless members of the Governor’s Sage Grouse Conservation Team. 

Since 1986, we’ve supported Nevada Youth Range Camp which teaches about sagebrush ecology and management. 

We present awards to outstanding conservationists at our annual banquets. 

With more members, we could do more – more projects, more for education, more to inform politicians and agencies, and more to support collaborating agencies and individuals with projects to keep habitats resilient.   We need volunteers to plant shrubs next spring and donations or memberships to support the restoration of critical winter habitat for deer and other sagebrush dependent critters. 

Global warming has added yet another layer of complexity to the needs of wildlife.  Many biologists are concerned that warmer temperatures and declining rainfall will accelerate the loss of sagebrush steppe.  There is an urgent need, therefore, to identify and protect unfragmented blocks of this wildlife habitat, increase connectivity in the landscape, and employ sound principles of landscape management to ensure the long-term survival of species such as pronghorn and sage-grouse. Many renewable energy facilities are also proposed for construction in the same unfragmented habitats that wildlife require. National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is working with federal land managers and state wildlife agencies to identify appropriate locations for renewable energy generation that will diminish wildlife conflicts. 

 

Nevada, in particular, is right in the heart of sage grouse habitat, where relatively large areas of the sagebrush steppe remain in good condition. This is one reason why NWF invests so much energy focused on special places in Nevada like the Lone Willow population management unit in Humboldt County and Elko County where fires have also burned large expanses of once-continuous habitat. NWF and its state affiliate, the Nevada Wildlife Federation, are working to conserve Nevada’s sagebrush steppe and sagebrush semi-desert in several vital ways.  Please help us.

 

 

1.   Mapping Priority Habitats – NWF will use a systematic geographic overlay to identify the sagebrush habitats that are most in need of protection so that we can optimize our advocacy. We will collaborate with Audubon Wyoming, adding information about other species, such as pronghorn and mule deer, to their high quality sage-grouse datasets. The resulting GIS will be used to help us coordinate and target our advocacy and protection efforts. For example, we will overlay potential sites of renewable energy projects and ongoing oil and gas drilling, with migration routes and sensitive habitats.

 

2.   Grassroots Activism – NWF and WWF maintain a network of grassroots activists throughout Wyoming, contacting them by phone trees and email alerts whenever there is a key issue or battle where their voices will make a difference. For example, our grassroots activists meet with elected officials or weigh in through newspaper editorials and letter-writing campaigns, putting pressure on decision-makers to do the right thing. We will deploy our activist network to speak out for sagebrush protection.

 

3.   Legal Team – There are times when litigation is the only option left to stop wholesale destruction of key areas. NWF’s legal team goes into action when needed, for example, to protect the Atlantic Rim from irresponsible oil and gas development and to challenge oil and leasing decisions made in the Rawlins Resource Management Plan.

             

4.   National Awareness Campaign – Our primary challenge may be to convince our society of the intrinsic value of sagebrush ecosystems and their unique biodiversity. Through channels such as http://www.ourpubliclands.org  and direct media outreach, we will educate Americans across the country about the importance of the sagebrush steppe. We will continue to collaborate with our key partner, Audubon Wyoming, in telling the story of how we may be losing the West’s most iconic landscape. 

 

Though this grant proposal focuses on our work in Wyoming, NWF and WWF are confident that its impact will extend across the West. In particular, we have been invited to work with the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) to assist them in their efforts to protect the priority habitats across the region and the corridors that connect them. The WGA has embraced this approach, and through our participation in the Energy and Oil and Gas Committees, NWF’s work will inform their efforts to create inter-agency and inter-state strategies for conserving vital sagebrush habitats.

 

© 1994-2009 Nevada Wildlife Federation / PO Box 71238, Reno, NV 89570
NvWF Home / Membership Info / About NvWF / NvWF in Action / NvWF Issues / Calendar / Contact / Links / About Nevada