Saving sage grouse: Baker County's campaign gets federal financial boost

Jul. 20—Emmy Tyrrell calls sage grouse the "mountain men" of birds.

That's because they don't like to be around people.

Unfortunately for the chicken-size birds, many of the places they live — tracts of land dominated by sagebrush, including in Baker County — are popular with people, too.

But a Baker County program coordinated by Tyrrell, which aims to improve conditions for sage grouse on private lands, recently received an influx of dollars.

Baker County will receive $100,000 from last year's federal infrastructure bill.

Four other Eastern Oregon counties will get the same amount — Crook, Harney, Malheur and Lake.

The three latter counties harbor the large majority of Oregon's sage grouse habitat, most of which is on public land.

Baker County is at the northern fringe of the sage grouse's range in Eastern Oregon, and the county's sage grouse population accounts for less than 10% of Oregon's total. Much of the county's sage grouse habitat, unlike in those three other counties, is on private property.

The federal dollars augment a $6.1 million, six-year grant that Baker County received in 2019 through the Lottery-funded Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. The state money is also intended to pay for sage grouse conservation projects in the county.

That can include a variety of things.

Among the projects planned in Baker County are deterring ravens, which prey on sage grouse eggs, and building an ATV wash station at the Virtue Flat OHV Area east of Baker City to reduce the spread of noxious weeds and invasive grasses that can degrade sage grouse habitat.

Another key part of the effort is the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA). These are agreements between the federal government and private landowners whose property includes sage grouse habitat, in which the landowners agree to take actions, such as altering cattle grazing schedules, to benefit sage grouse. Landowners don't receive payments through the agreements.

Tyrrell said the federal money will partially pay for her position as CCAA coordinator with the Powder Basin Watershed Council. She said she's also working on an application for another grant through the Watershed Enhancement Board after the current grant ends in 2025.

Tyrrell's job is to act as a liason between landowners and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to help start — or continue — conservation measures and ranching practices that benefit sage grouse.

To ensure that conservation projects are consistent across counties, CCAAs usually follow a specific outline — what's called a "programmatic" CCAA — with a basic formula for how the agreements work. The FWS established the formula in 2015.

"These programmatic (CCAAs) have these really fantastic plans laid out and we can really tailor these plans very specific to whatever the landowners goals are what exists on the landscape instead of the one size fits all," Tyrrell said.

Besides crafting these agreements, Tyrrell works to recruit new landowners into the program.

Statewide, 500,000 acres of private land are enrolled under CCAA agreements for sage grouse, Tyrrell said.

That includes 42,000 acres — among eight different property owners — in Baker County, with a small portion just across the border with Union County.

Any property that contains habitat accessible to the Baker sage grouse population — which inhabits an area northeast of Interstate 84 and south of the Wallowa Mountains, as well as a few other places in southern Baker County — can be enrolled in the program.

Tyrrell said she's in the process of enrolling 9,000 more acres divided among three properties.

Benefits for landowners

What makes the agreements enticing for ranchers is that they won't be burdened with additional conservation requirements or land use restrictions should the sage grouse ever be listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Sage grouse populations are cyclical.

A 2020 report from the U.S. Geological Survey found that sage grouse populations across their range, which covers 11 western states, had decreased by 80% since 1965 and by 40% since 2002.

According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's 2021 sage grouse report, the estimated population of the birds in Baker County (and a small part of southern Union County) in the spring of that year was 704. That's a 42.6% increase from the estimate of 494 birds in spring 2020, but the report notes that this increase "was likely a result of the analysis methodology used to generate population estimates."

The report states that sage grouse populations in the county have risen since 2014, including an average annual increase of 1.7% in the number of male grouse at "leks" — the open areas where the birds gather each spring and where the males perform the species' elaborate courting ritual, which includes inflating air sacs in their breasts and fanning their tail feathers.

However, between 2005 and 2021, among leks that were surveyed in both years, the number of males present declined by 81%.

"This area has experienced a long-term population decline and has remained stagnant in recent years," the report states.

Declining populations, which have been tied to the loss of sagebrush habitat from housing, oil and natural gas exploration, mining and other developments, has prompted environmental groups to petition the federal government to protect sage grouse.

The bird became a candidate for an ESA listing in 2010, prompting a movement from landowners to enroll in CCAAs or similar agreements in Oregon and elsewhere.

Those agreements intended to preserve sage grouse habitat is the main reason the FWS decided in 2015 not to list the sage grouse as threatened or endangered. The agency cited partnerships with over a thousand ranchers in the West and restoration of more than 4 million acres of privately owned sage grouse habitat.

A current federal law, attached as a "rider" to a 2014 budget bill, prohibits the listing of the sage grouse as an endangered species.

Monitoring habitat improvements

Tyrrell said it's too early to tell, based on sage grouse numbers, whether the CCAA program has boosted grouse populations, but she believes the program is "starting to move towards seeing that ecological uplift" on project areas, which might increase populations.

"It's easy to get overwhelmed by the large picture and be like 'sage grouse are doomed,' " Tyrrell said. "But it's great when you're able to see thousands of acres and say 'wow, it can actually be restored.' "

This ecological uplift is due, at least in part, to the conservation measures that landowners agree to when they enter a CCAA, which is generally a 30-year agreement.

And in many cases, she said, these measures benefit ranchers as well as sage grouse habitat.

For example, strategically grazing cattle can reduce fuels for wildfires that damage grazing land as well as sage grouse habitat. Livestock grazing can also reduce the spread of invasive grasses that outcompete sagebrush and native plants that both cattle and sage grouse depend on for food.

"It's helping sage grouse for sure, that's the whole point," Tyrrell said. "But it's also increasing the (ecological) value of their properties. It's just one of those things that's a win-win."

Tyrrell said other projects that are included in CCAAs, such as removing water-loving juniper trees from sagebrush habitat, can also help grouse.

Junipers, with their insatiable thirst, can deplete areas of sagebrush as well as grasses and other plants that sage grouse depend on. Cutting junipers frees up water supplies, which helpings sagebrush and beneficial grasses thrive.

If the birds return to an area that's previously been degraded, Tyrrell said that's a good indication that the overall health of the ecosystem has improved — a boon for species other than sage grouse.

"It's taken many many years to get to the degraded states of places, and it's gonna take many many years to get back to where we want to be," Tyrrell said. "You can see it work."

Landowners can cancel a CCAA with 30 days' notice, which some landowners choose to do for various reasons, usually unrelated to the length of the agreement, Tyrrell said. When they drop out they no longer have the protection from the possible restrictions if the bird is listed under the ESA.