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Seeking the elusive sage grouse

The goal: 20 birds from Oregon to jump-start a failing population in Washington. Though the species is faring better in Central Oregon, the falling numbers of sage grouse have biologists worried - and its plight could have dire ramifications for industria

By Kate Ramsayer / The Bulletin

Published: April 06. 2008 4:00AM PST

HART MOUNTAIN NATIONAL

ANTELOPE REFUGE —

With binoculars to his eyes and a spotlight in front of his nose, illuminating the darkness, Christian Hagen scanned the flat landscape around him — lava rocks, patches of snow, small clumps of sagebrush and not much else.

The biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Bend was searching for a pair of emerald greenish reflections, the eyes of greater sage grouse that blend in with the basalt.

It was cold, and the moon had not yet risen, the kind of night grouse trappers like. Moonlight might reveal their movements to the chicken-sized birds.

And Hagen and other state and federal biologists needed the birds to stay still. Their goal was to catch 20 sage grouse and shuttle them from Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in south-central Oregon to Washington to try to jump-start a population where the native birds died off.

The relocation project comes as sage grouse populations across the West are dropping, and people are examining whether the birds should be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

While the Central Oregon population hasn’t fared as poorly as others in recent years, some experts are still concerned. If the birds do become federally listed, it could mean dramatic changes for the way the desert is used for activities such as grazing and energy development, Hagen said.

“They call it the spotted owl of the desert,” he said.

But he and others are working on projects such as the one on Hart Mountain to help the sage grouse population along.

“Efforts like this help to prevent listing,” said Mike Schroeder, upland bird research biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Game. “The goal is healthy populations.”

Last Sunday night, the group split up, one team following Hagen and the noisy, fume-spewing generator backpack that powered his spotlight.

Suddenly, he started flashing the light on and off, signaled to fellow biologist Derek Stinson and sprinted after a confused greater sage grouse.

“It kind of mesmerizes them apparently,” Stinson said of the light. “They kind of freeze, they don’t know what to do. It’s something outside of their experience, it’s kind of like a close encounter of the third kind.”

A paralyzed grouse stood in the flashing beam of light, as Stinson ran to its side, swooped a dog-catcher-like net over the top of the bird and hugged it to the ground.

“I was just trying to be relatively invisible until the very last minute,” he later said of his strategy.

Stinson sat up, holding the bird in his hands, as Hagen untangled it from the net, whispering “shhhhhh” to the struggling grouse. Hagen slipped it into a cloth sack, and knotted the top.

After about 212 hours in the desert night, the team had five male grouse flopping around in bags and boxes. Fifteen more to go.

Drawn to the desert

Sagebrush provides food and cover to the grouse and draws them to the desert, said Jan Hanf, a wildlife biologist with the Prineville district of the Bureau of Land Management. The grouse will eat vegetation like forbs in the spring and summer, but when those dry up, they depend on the sagebrush for protein through the winter.

But some of the sagebrush is disappearing. There’s more oil and gas development, bringing in roads, she said. There’s livestock grazing, power lines going in, the encroachment of juniper trees and also simply more people using the sagebrush ecosystem for recreation.

“You just have a lot more people that are going out into areas where you just didn’t have folks (before),” Hanf said.

Some private lands, like those east of Bend, have been divided into smaller parcels, she noted. In one place near Millican, a paint ball facility has gone in, she said, and one of the first things the owners did was take out the sagebrush.

She and others with the BLM and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife go out to do bird counts at 60 or so leks, an area where sage grouse gather during mating season, in Central and Eastern Oregon, and have done that for two decades.

“Birds statewide and westwide are definitely down,” said Hagen, the sage grouse coordinator for the state. “We’ve lost 20 to 30 percent of our populations since 2005, which is a lot, but we’ve seen similar fluctuations in the past, so it’s nothing outside of the natural range.”

In Central Oregon, however, the population is doing OK, even a little better than other populations of the bird.

“What’s been interesting to watch there is the population just east of Bend,” Hagen said. “Since the early ’80s, they’ve probably seen more dramatic declines than other parts of the state. But in recent years, when other populations have declined ... they’ve remained even-keeled.”

While the reason for that disparity is still unknown, he said, it could be precipitation related. That Central Oregon population has learned how to live with less water and so are better suited to drought conditions, he said.

But others are still very concerned about the population in Millican, east of Bend.

“We’re about to lose our sage grouse lek in Millican Valley,” said Bill Marlett, senior conservation adviser with the Bend-based Oregon Natural Desert Association. “If it hasn’t blinked out, it’s about to.”

That lek is the westernmost fringe of the sage grouse habitat, Marlett said. And if a species is struggling, it’s often the populations on the edges that suffer first, since they are less likely to attract new birds moving from area to area.

There could be other contributing factors as well to the lek’s struggle, he said, including the all-terrain vehicle play area, livestock grazing and the increase in “mini-ranches” nearby, but it’s hard to know for sure.

“The birds are cyclical, but I don’t see this as a cycle,” Marlett said. “This appears to be a downward trend, which is typical for a species in decline.”

Moving night

On the night of March 30, refuge specialist Marla Bennett was out in the field, using a global positioning system device to help lead Hagen’s group to one of the refuge’s 55 leks.

After the group caught five males, the limit for that lek, they headed to the bunkhouse, where the kitchen was converted into a grouse processing area.

Schroeder, of the Washington DFW, took measurements of each bird’s weight and wing size, counted tail feathers, took a blood sample and mouth swab to test for disease and banded the foot.

“They’re not shabby birds,” he said, as he weighed a 6-pounder.

One bird had been cut across the air sac by the net; Schroeder super-glued the cut, and the team released the bird back onto the refuge so it wouldn’t be stressed any more.

The rest, he fitted with a half-dollar-sized, radio collar, which will be used to track the birds as they explore their new home.

“I must admit, a male greater sage grouse is my least favorite bird to put a radio collar on,” Schroeder said, citing their lack of much of a neck.

Over the course of two nights, the group trapped 10 male grouse and seven hens.

Early Monday morning, volunteers who went out to count birds at leks at Hart Mountain didn’t have much luck finding sage grouse. Two leks appeared to be empty.

And another roadside search for birds among the sagebrush only turned up one male, strutting in a circle, making a kind of popping sound, displaying his speckled tail feathers in hopes that a hen might be nearby.

Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 617-7811 or kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.

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