Grouse Habitat Restoration Fund – a private land management assistance program.

A Ranch for Grouse: The Crooked Creek Ranch Sage Grouse Project

Crooked Creek Ranch (the Ranch) will demonstrate how to plan, implement, and evaluate landscape level management for sagebrush steppe ecosystems where multiple land uses and ownerships exist. These systems were identified by a broad-scale Columbia River Basin assessment as the highest priority habitat for conservation based on bird population and habitat trends (Saab and Rich 1997). The Greater Sage-Grouse is an umbrella species for many other obligate sagebrush vertebrates and other species that use sagebrush as their primary habitat. Conservation of Greater Sage-Grouse will likely also extend to cover invertebrates, the myriad organisms in soil ecosystems, plants, and cryptobiotic crusts.

Funding and Ownership

A founding member of the North American Grouse Partnership (NAGP) donated monies to purchase the Ranch with grazing allotments that directly influences about 70,000 acres. Ownership was transferred to the Idaho Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in July of 2001. NAGP and TNC are now partners to conserve these lands for Greater Sage-Grouse and the sagebrush steppe and riparian habitats that grouse and many other wildlife and plant species depend upon.

Habitat

The Ranch provides breeding, nesting, brood rearing, and winter habitat for Greater Sage-Grouse in one of Idaho's few remaining strongholds for the species. Vast expanses of lower elevation sagebrush provide critical winter food and cover. Agribusiness values the same lands and has destroyed most of the prime winter habitat in the region. Sub-alpine meadows, irrigated alfalfa field edges, streams, and springs provide needed forbs for broods and adults throughout summer.

Objectives

The Crooked Creek Conservation Program has five objectives to complete by the end of 2003:

1. documentation of the ecological conditions of the existing upland and riparian vegetation communities to provide a foundation for management and restoration actions;

2. compilation and analysis of data on the distribution and abundance of wildlife resources;

3. identification of management actions needed to conserve the conservation targets: sage grouse, shrub steppe communities, riparian and meadow communities;

4. implementation of vegetation management and restoration actions;

5. development of an efficient and sound biological monitoring system that measures progress toward meeting conservation objectives.

Measuring success

Conservation and restoration of Crooked Creek depends on long-term effective implementation of the plan that results from our initial two years of efforts and adaptive management. Annual sage grouse lek counts, permanent upland and riparian vegetation studies designed to detect change, permanent riparian bird monitoring plots along Crooked Creek, and incorporation of all data into a relational database linked to a geographic information system (GIS) will help us to measure success. Clearly identifiable positive outcomes for the vegetative communities, sage grouse, and other shrub steppe dependent and associated wildlife are expected as a result of management changes and pre and post-monitoring studies.

Outlook

Although habitats on the Ranch appear to have been less degraded by grazing, water diversions, and other human activities than on many other ranches in the region, still there are improvements to the current situation on the ground that should increase the carrying capacity for sage grouse and other wildlife. The three officers and several members of NAGP-Idaho each have 20 or more years of practical experience with the grouse population in the watershed and have seen its numbers drop from thousands of birds in the 1980s to hundreds today. We believe that with the protection now in place through TNC stewardship, the Crooked Creek grouse population will increase and could become an important source of birds for repopulating adjacent areas.

Sage-Grouse Conservation

Crooked Creek birds are part of a larger Greater Sage-Grouse population that inhabits and depends upon this region. Effective conservation efforts throughout the region are essential if these grouse are to persist and increase their numbers and will depend upon the cooperative efforts of neighboring landowners, which consist of the U.S. Forest Service, BLM, State of Idaho, TNC, and three private ranches in the Crooked Creek watershed. One of the main goals is to use the Crooked Creek Conservation Program as a catalyst to develop a unified and cooperative web of activities throughout the neighborhood of landowners in the watershed and eventually throughout the Upper Snake River Plain.
Greater Sage-Grouse will never again be as abundant as they once were but with wisdom combined with required social and political resolve, we can conserve sagebrush steppe ecosystems with thriving grouse populations that once again number in the thousands.

References Cited
Saab, V. A. and T. D. Rich. 1997. Large-scale conservation assessment for neotropical migratory land birds in the Interior Columbia River Basin. USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, General Technical Report PNW-GTR-399. Portland, OR.


What makes good Grouse habitat?

The North American Grouse Partnership (NAGP) is a coalition working to promote the conservation of Grouse and the habitats necessary for their survival and reproduction. Habitat conservation includes 1) identifying important habitat components, 2) managing intact habitat and 3) restoring degraded habitat.

Currently there is much interest in which plants are important to Grouse. The Native Seed Network is working with NAGP to be an additional conduit for the information they discover and to facilitate the education and public relations mandate of both organizations.

We hope to learn:

1. What are the habitat requirements of grouse at each life history stage?

2. What are the plant communities in these habitats?

3. What are the “elements” (plant species) of these plant communities?

4. How are these elements utilized by grouse (ex: directly as forage, or indirectly as structural community dominants)?

5. How are plant communities integrated to create a landscape level habitat where grouse are viable and reproductive?

We are developing an index of plant attributes that includes direct and indirect value according to grouse life history requirements. NSN will be relying on the good work of NAGP to provide this information about grouse.

We plan to organize the information by connecting the life history requirements of grouse, such as:

1. Breeding

2. Nesting

3. Brood rearing

4. Winter habitat

5. Bachelor colonies

With the corresponding habitats, such as:

1. Shrub steppe

2. Riparian forests

3. Wet meadows

Landscape-level restoration

We all want to know what makes good grouse habitat and which plants benefit grouse. As NAGP identifies important habitats, plant communities and species, NSN will incorporate these components into the standardized National Vegetation Classification System (NVCS) currently being developed by The Nature Conservancy and the Federal Geographic Data Committee. Using a standardized classification system, lists of species can be embedded in plant communities and anchored within the landscape. Instead of species lists in space, we hope to develop them within a landscape context.

What is Riparian habitat?

If grouse require Riparian habitat, we can identify types of Riparian habitat appropriate to a given Ecoregion, such as Low Elevation Riparian Shrubland and Woodland habitats in the Northern Great Basin. Potential plant assemblages for Low Elevation Riparian Shrubland habitats may include black cottonwood/water birch-willow Associations and chokecherry-willow/Wood’s rose Associations. Ideally, we would like a full species list for these Associations, and examples of intact habitat for reference.

Where does pale agroseris occur?

If grouse eat pale agoseris (Agoseris glauca) as forage, we would like to know that pale agoseris can be found in Mountain Big Sagebrush Steppe in association with Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana and Pseudoroegneria spicata. Again, we would like to be able to visit intact examples of this habitat.

Recipes for Restoration

On the ground, plants assemble into Associations and Alliances. These groupings provide the measurements for assembling species into communities. The trouble with Associations and Alliances is that they are too small to map at a reasonable scale.
Ecological System categories organize Associations into larger map-able units. Ecological Systems compose intuitive “habitats” under which nest all the species lists for Associations and Alliances. In a cookbook analogy, Ecological Systems organize species into “ingredient” lists. Associations and Alliances then provide the instructions for assembling those species by frequency, abundance and distribution. Together we hope they will provide solid guidelines for restoration of grouse habitat.