No ND Sage Grouse Season Again…
…Habitat Story Like Quail
North Dakota won’t have a sage grouse season for the fourth year in a row. Maybe not the worst thing in the world, but the story there and elsewhere is one of increasingly fragmented habitat, the same problem faced by bobwhite quail.
We’re not getting fewer Americans with fewer needs/wants, so what to do about it….
Here’s what North Dakota Game and Fish biologist Doug Leier wrote about the ND situation, excerpted from here:
> Biologists counted a record low number of male sage grouse in their spring survey….
> North Dakota is on the edge of sage grouse range, and only the extreme southwestern corner of the state currently supports these large native birds.
> The most male sage grouse that Game and Fish biologists ever counted in one year was 542 in 1953. That count fell to less than 100 in 2008, the first year Game and Fish decided to close the hunting season, even though biologists did not consider hunting as a contributing factor to the long-term population decline.
> Since 2008, with no hunting season, the sage grouse population has continued to fall, reaching 63 observed male birds in 2011. “Our numbers are declining at a consistent rate of about 5 percent a year,†Aaron Robinson, Game and Fish upland game biologist said.
> Sage grouse are tied to sagebrush [and] this plant only exists in the southwestern corner of the state…it provides food, cover from the weather and predators, and nesting and brood habitat.
> Unfortunately, about half of the sage habitat in North Dakota has disappeared from the landscape in the last five decades, and much of what remains is fragmented by energy development, agriculture and other human practices.
> Because of this long-term habitat loss and other factors…the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that in 11 western states, sage grouse warrant the protection of the Endangered Species Act. However, the service determined that other species were in more dire need of protection, so sage grouse were not added to the endangered species list for the time being.
> “The warranted but precluded designation gives states and other local entities a tremendous opportunity to develop and execute reasonable, and hopefully successful, conservation strategies,†Game and Fish wildlife chief Randy Kreil explained. “It’s an uphill battle to try and recover sage grouse in the state, no doubt about it. But listing the species probably wouldn’t help efforts to recover the bird.â€
Category: ND, Sage Grouse
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