Considerations for Sage-Grouse Management Objectives

In March 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) identified the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; sage-grouse) as a candidate species for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of habitat loss and fragmentation and that regulatory mechanisms needed to protect the species and its habitat were inadequate. However, after further review of on-going range wide conservation efforts by federal, state, and local partners in September 2015, the USFWS removed sage-grouse as an ESA candidate species because the collective conservation actions had sufficiently mitigated threats. Utah, along with other western states, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), developed and are implementing conservation plans designed to manage sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) areas which afford sage-grouse the best habitats. In Utah, the state has identified 11 priority conservation areas, known as sage-grouse management areas (SGMAs). In the 2015 decision, the FWS reemphasized the need to focus conservation efforts on protecting and enhancing priority habitats for species conservation. Many sage-grouse conservation plans have established either population or habitat management objectives within priority conservation areas. For management objectives to be valid, they must be realistic and achievable. In other words, managers must have some degree of control of the factors which most influence outcomes. If factors that influence objectives are outside the control of the manager or not within the natural variability of the systems being managed, failure and frustration is inevitable. Management objectives should also be based on the best available science and information. Thus, an understanding of sage-grouse population dynamics and how they relate to habitat characteristics (e.g., vegetation cover, scale, and fragmentation) and other environmental factors is paramount to setting effective management objectives. For example, setting objectives for the