BLM UT Greater Sage Grouse Monitoring and Database Management Project

Background: Sage-grouse (Centrocercus spp.) have different seasonal habitat requirements. To meet these requirements, individuals within populations may complete long distance movements between seasonal movements. Some sage-grouse may move long distances (>30 km) from breeding to summer and from summer and to winter habitats. In concert with seasonal movement, sage-grouse diets shift from insects and forbs during breeding and summer seasons to sagebrush during winter. The distance an individual bird or population may move often reflects the availability of suitable habitat. In general, populations which occupy habitat that are more contiguous tend to move less than populations that occupy fragmented habitats. However, the ⿿space⿝ where the seasonal habitat occurs ultimately affects seasonal habitat-use pattern and movements. In 2006, the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies identified the need for the development and implementation of the formal habitat assessment process to that included a temporal and spatial method for evaluating the suitability of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) habitats for sage-grouse (Centrocercus spp.) at various landscape scales. In June 2015, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published the Sage-grouse Habitat Assessment Framework (HAF) ⿿ Technical Reference 6701 (Stiver et al. 2015) ⿿ which identified the tools and processes to help the BLM and its partners develop a landscape approach in the sage-grouse conservation initiatives. The HAF fills the need for a multiple-scale, sage-grouse habitat assessment tool that can be easily integrated into the BLM landscape monitoring approach. The HAF establishes indicators to determine the status of sage-grouse habitat needs at multiple scales for seasonal habitats. These assessments will provide the necessary information to evaluate whether the BLM-managed lands are meeting the sage-grouse habitat guidelines. Because the HAF assesses habitat needs at multiple scales, various datasets and the input of multiple partners will be needed for the analysis and assessment completion. The HAF was accepted as a method needed to interpret sage-grouse habitat suitability as part of the Utah Greater Sage-Grouse Land Use Plan Amendment that was completed in Sept. 2015. Objective: BLM is looking to partner with an organization to better understand the populations of Greater Sage-Grouse from around the State of Utah by compiling the data being collected (in cooperation with the BLM) from around the state into one central location. Once the data is compiled, the partner would assist land managers in identifying data gaps and work towards a solution to filling in those gaps. Information collected from this project would assist the BLM in completing the third order HAF and assist the BLM with some of the forth order HAF work throughout the state. Public Benefit: The public benefit of this project is to combine all of the data that the BLM and partners have collected over the past several years into one cohesive database. This database would begin to better inform seasonal habitats based on where birds are really using the habitats and begin to have a strategy about how to approach future vegetation treatments and land management decisions based on data collected about GRSG. With the data standardized and located in one place it will allow BLM to ask management questions and retrieve the answers necessary to complete the NEPA process. As the BLM and other partners move forward after the USFWS⿿s finding to not list the GRSG under the ESA it is in the public⿿s best interest to monitor the GRSG to a greater degree and all work together to ensure greater conservation of the species.