BILLINGS – A federal agency has designated 13 areas across Montana where it will encourage changes in livestock grazing practices and other steps by landowners to help prevent the continued decline of sage grouse.
Decades of habitat loss to farms, oil and gas drilling and residential development have sharply reduced sage grouse populations. The chicken-sized bird is now under consideration for the list of threatened and endangered species.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service says its “Greater Sage Grouse Habitat Conservation Strategy” for Montana could help reverse the bird’s decline.
NRCS spokesman Larry Cooper said the agency will steer conservation money from the 2008 farm bill to private landowners in the 13 areas considered most crucial for sage grouse.
Participation is voluntary.
There are about 27 million acres of sage brush steppe habitat in Montana. However, most grouse live within the 9 million acres listed as crucial.
Conservation measures that could be taken in those areas include new grazing plans to reduce the impact of livestock, removal of power lines where birds that prey on sage grouse often perch and adding markers to fences that grouse otherwise could run into and die.
There is no set amount of money pegged for such efforts. Rather, Cooper said his agency will now consider sage grouse concerns when giving out money through existing programs.
“We’ve had programs that addressed this issue, but this is the first time we’ve taken the time to research this and come up with a recommended strategy we can all uniformly follow,” he said.
A representative of the Environmental Defense Fund said the NRCS approach to sage grouse in Montana was a “good step” that should be repeated in other states.
“It’s targeting the practices” of farmers and ranchers, said EDF’s Ted Toombs. “You can graze in ways that might harm the bird, and you can graze in ways that might benefit the bird.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether the greater sage grouse merits more federal protections across all or part of its 11-state range.