Under the Umbrella
Examining the lasting impacts of the greater sage-grouse
By Matt DeMille
In front of a large wood table in the basement level of the Alberta Wilderness Association’s office, Ruiping Luo sits comfortably and stares aimlessly.
Under the low-hanging ceiling with sunlight filtering through a set of time-honoured blinds, the snug yet cozy atmosphere entices some light daydreaming out of the conservation specialist.
Luo is imagining a world where the greater sage-grouse thrives in the open air of the grasslands region.
The thing about daydreaming however, is that it's merely a concept of one’s imagination. Reality will eventually punch through drifting thoughts, pulling one back into the moment they originally left.
As Luo snaps out of her daze, she finds herself back in the real world where the greater sage-grouse, a large bird that has made its home in the great plains of North America, is fighting to keep its species alive.
A taxidermied greater sage-grouse sits tucked away in the basement of the Alberta Wilderness Association.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt DeMille
Human expansion
According to recent counts, just 22 males remain in the wild areas of Alberta and about 250 males across Canada.
These numbers have not always been so staggeringly low. There was a time when the greater sage-grouse’s numbers were plentiful.
“As early as maybe the 1600-1700s, there were reports of sage grouse all over the place. [When] the first settlers came in, there [were] written reports, written records that say they saw sage grouse commonly. So before the 1800s, there seemed to still be quite a lot,” says Luo.
“There's estimated to have been millions throughout the entire Great Plains and we've seen roughly a 90 per cent decline since then.”
The number of greater sage-grouse in the wild tends to mimic the size and condition it’s ecosystem is in. When the ecosystem was spread wide and thriving, the grouse’s population was booming. But, as their habitat shrunk in size, so did the population of the bird.
What’s most concerning about the drastic drop in the bird's population is that there is no one or two factors that are the root cause.
Mecah Klem, a priority species at risk biologist, and Joel Nicholson, a senior wildlife biologist, both work for the Government of Alberta’s Fish and Wildlife Stewardship department. According to the two biologists, the decrease in population is more of a cumulative effect.
“That's sort of the death by a thousand cuts analogy, right? What's going on with sage-grouse is a combination of habitat loss being a major driver, but then, changes in habitat, changes in connectivity of habitat with populations farther south. There are disease issues, [and] there are changes in the predator community that cause impacts to the sage-grouse,” says Nicholson.
And that doesn’t even include the human impact.
“Humans are needing and requiring and using and tilling up and impacting those grasslands more and more all the time,” says Klem.
This can come in the form of oil and gas extraction, conversion of crop land, and even planting trees across the landscape.
“There's not one magic bullet. There's like 26 different things that are occurring,” says Nicholson.
Maintaining Diversity
This grouse species is also known to be very perceptive to changes in its habitat and loud noises. Especially when it comes to their mating grounds, known as leks. Disturbances and loud noises can be sensed by the grouse from as far as three to six kilometers away, which can negatively affect their mating rituals.
This cause for concern only heightens after learning that only three leks remain in Alberta, and two in Saskatchewan.
Since 1968, the amount of male sage-grouse that have been spotted in a Alberta lek has dramatically decreased.
CREDIT: Alberta Environment and Protected Areas (Fish and Wildlife Stewardship)
Within a generation’s time (the length it takes for a greater sage-grouse to mature into an adult) of about three years, disrupting their natural breeding process can slow down the birds’ chances at getting more females ready to reproduce. And thus, hurting its likelihood to maintain their already sputtering population.
“Sage grouse are large birds, which means there's going to be a slight population lag. That means that you have this effect that goes in [one] year and then you’ll see the population actually respond to [changes] in maybe two to three years,” says Luo.
Alberta’s grasslands ecosystem is the preferred habitat for a greater sage-grouse and its chicks.
PHOTO CREDIT: Christyann Olson
But, these endangered birds are not being left to revive their fading population on their own. Revival efforts are being made by some local conservation groups. Calgary’s Wilder Institute, for example, is attempting to safeguard the grouse population by breeding the species in captivity and releasing them into the native grasslands.
We reached out to the Wilder Institute to learn more about their grouse program, but the organization declined to comment.
While reintroducing human-bred grouse into the wild may seem like a perfect solution, Luo argues there needs to be more emphasis on protecting the free reign grouse and its habitat first. This is because the grouse in the wild are more diverse and can easily adapt to changes in the environment like natural disasters and disease. The grouse that are being bred in captivity may not.
“​​It means having a lot of different animals, but also a lot of large enough populations that there's genetic diversity within a species, that they're adaptable to any changes and having them at populations that they're sustainable,” says Luo.
If methods — like the ones being implemented by the Wilder Institute — are to be successful, conservationists predict the greater sage-grouse population will need to be similar to the population of their very close relatives, the Gunnison’s sage-grouse — which is about 5,000.
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At the provincial level
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The Government of Alberta has been keeping tabs on the greater sage-grouse population for well over two decades, and since 2000, the species was officially listed as endangered under the Wildlife Act.
“Once a species is listed, the Alberta government has essentially an obligation to get a recovery plan together to try to conserve that species,” says Nicholson.
In 2013, the Alberta government released the Alberta Greater sage-grouse Recovery Plan. The plan, which is still in effect today, had outlined two main goals that needed to be met: to build up the greater sage-grouse’s habitats to the point where the species could support and maintain in population through its life-cycle and natural reproduction methods and the increase the amount of birds to the point where humans could view and hunt the birds recreationally.
Since then, the biologists — and their small team — have been working to revitalize the population in several ways.
One way, in particular, involves taking greater sage-grouse native to Montana and moving them into Alberta every handful of years.
“We try for about 40 birds to bring up and while these recovery actions are taking place on the landscape we're bringing birds to help with that breeding portion,” says Klem.
As a matter of fact, Klem and his colleagues will have their hands full of Montana-based greater sage-grouse soon, as they will be translocating another 40 birds into Alberta’s population in April.
Other methods done by the government include, converting fencing, removing abandoned structures, and collecting sagebrush seed.
Although the results haven’t been obvious, the Fish and Wildlife Stewardship knows their work has been successful already.
“I think that without some of the translocation work and other work that we've been doing, we probably would've lost sage-grouse by now. So, the population is still critically imperiled, I mean, let's not kid ourselves when we've got less than a hundred birds in the province. But, I think if we can call it success [if] we still have sage-grouse on the landscape,” says Nicholson.
“We've got many decades of change that we're trying to reverse, and it's very difficult. And, yeah, they're not a species that gives you immediate gratification for your work, let's put it that way. It's a pretty slow process.”
But, the Fish and Wildlife department is only one team that can only do so much at a time. This is why collaboration and partnerships with other groups is key.
“It's a fairly complex program. There's a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot of collaboration that takes place. As the provincial agency we take the lead [on many projects], but we work with many partners,” says Klem.
The Orphan Well Association and the City of Medicine Hat, for example, are reclaiming defunct oil wells in order to return the grasslands region — and the sage-grouse’s habitat — to the state it used to be in.
“[The oil and gas reclamation is] probably the biggest piece on the habitat side that we're most excited about currently,” says Klem.
“We're seeing a tremendous amount of oil and gas sites come off the landscape and really moving into that reclamation phase.”
Oil and gas reclamation is key when looking to revitalize the already shrinking grassland ecosystem/
PHOTO CREDIT: Adam Thielen / Unsplash.
The Fallout
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Just as the greater sage-grouse is reliant on the condition of its ecosystem, the ecosystem itself also relies on the health of the species population.
The greater sage-grouse is what’s known as an umbrella species. Meaning, the health of the grouse population indirectly affects large chunks of its community, such as a proper balance among organisms and the general health of the ecosystem. Almost like an umbrella shields those under its canopy from inclement weather.
“They do play quite a big role in the system as prey for a lot of different species,” says Luo.
But, they also play the role of predator in some cases.
“They help to keep several insect populations in check. And, if you're losing sage grouse, or even if you're losing any large bird, then there’s going to be effects in terms of the prey populations that they normally prevent from becoming too large,” says Luo.
Eliminating this grouse from the grasslands is like knocking the first domino over in a multi-route domino train.
Its predators will have one less source of prey, while its prey has one less predator to worry about. This cascades into larger scale concerns like insects running rampant through the grasslands or larger predators having to hunt the same depleting food sources.
“So, if you lose a species, even if that species is not quite as specialized in terms of there's no one animal that relies on it, you're still losing a lot of the effects that species has on the ecosystem,” says Luo.
The greater sage-grouse plays both prey and predator in the grasslands food chain.
PHOTO CREDIT: Christyann Olson
While the situation seems dire for greater sage-grouse, hope to revive and conserve this species still remains with Luo.
“I know things are really depressing and we are always talking about how important it is to change things now, and I still think that's important. I think taking action quickly is vital in order to stop all of this destruction, and this loss that we're seeing. But I also want to say that just because we've lost something doesn't mean that's it. Like it's not a win or lose kind of game,” says Luo.
“We can still keep trying and we still have hope as long as there's [wild] spaces remaining, as long as there's people trying to do something about it.”
