Ranchers in Idaho can be key in protecting sage grouse habitat, keeping out cheatgrass | Opinion

Of the six native prairie grouse species in North America, three are extinct or endangered and three more are close behind, especially sage grouse. The lesser-prairie chicken in the southwestern Great Plains, a sage grouse cousin, was just protected under the Endangered Species Act. Extensive loss of habitat, just like with Idaho’s sagebrush, is the threat that caused the lesser-prairie chicken to be listed. It’s a cautionary tale for our state.

Lesser prairie-chickens and sage grouse both need large blocks of wide-open prairie and sage. Stopping habitat loss and restoring lost habitat is key. For sage grouse that means stopping cheatgrass spread which leads to landscape-altering fire. Allowing ranchers to receive market-based value for sage grouse that competes against traditional development is critical to sage-grouse conservation success.

An astounding 1.3 million acres of sagebrush range are lost each year, primarily to cheatgrass. With only 32 million acres left of the 160 million acres of sagebrush originally, we’re losing both bird habitat and productive rangeland at an alarming rate.

Nearly 70,000 acres of farmland, ranches and prairies have been developed in Idaho over a 15-year period through the past decade, an area larger than Boise, according to Farm Bureau reports. Land development, fragmentation and loss of native prairie often leads to commensurate losses of our wonderful birds and grouse species — including the beloved sage grouse here.

Cheatgrass is the biggest problem, but the way to help the sage grouse is not different from what we are essentially doing for the lesser prairie-chicken to create strongholds and restore landscapes. The conservation banks are paying private ranchers a market rate, combined with a permanent easement and endowment for strategic and durable conservation.

With cheatgrass in Idaho, we must pay ranchers what they need to get the outcome the sage grouse needs. If that’s reducing stocking rates, to allow native grasses to out-compete cheat grass, we must do that. If it is paying ranchers to do targeted treatments to try and restore native grasses or manage cheat grass, we should do that.

Motivated ranchers are trying to save the lesser prairie chicken in the southwest. All they ask — very reasonably — is to be paid the market price for their work and rewarded with protection from the penalties of the Endangered Species Act. Conservation bankers like Common Ground Capital provide these payments through U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-approved Conservation Bank Agreements and Habitat Conservation Plans. The LPC landowner alliance, run by Grouse Partners, works in coordination with conservation bankers to improve farm bill programs with ranchers as well.

In sage grouse country, federal land managers also need to ensure ranchers are empowered to provide healthy sagebrush habitat and suppress cheatgrass. Then, when a fire burns, we are more likely to see the area recover as a sagebrush ecosystem like it used to, and not a cheatgrass desert.

Well-intentioned local programs funded by small government or nonprofit grants help sharpen our understanding, but they will not save the sage grouse. State mitigation programs developed years ago, unfortunately, share many of the design flaws of the 2013 vintage program created by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies for the lesser prairie chicken, which is headquartered right here in Boise. We need large-scale changes in the relationship between private and public land management.

Grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent, and birds like these prairie grouse have declined more than in any other habitat type. It’s time to use all our tools, including durable and strategic, market incentives and new approaches to public land management, to conserve them.