Big impact on West if sage grouse is recommended as protected species

COYOTE CANYON, Douglas County — In the pre-dawn moonlight the blur of white looked like breeze-ruffled cotton — a shivering, ghostly vision among the tumbleweeds and wheat stubble.

But when the sun cracked the horizon there was no mistaking the scene: A Butterball-sized male sage grouse strutted about in full display, hoping it looked regal enough to attract a little lovin'.

"Oh, and there's a female," biologist Mike Schroeder said from the wheel of his Ford Explorer. "They might copulate right in front of us."

The increasingly rare and excitable birds dancing in the rolling fields across the county line from Ephrata, Grant County, couldn't seem less like polarizing icons. But whether viewed as the heartbeat of the troubled shrub steppe ecosystem or as an apocalyptic avian menace, the sage grouse has twisted the West in knots.

Friday the federal government will reveal how much more complicated things could get by deciding whether to recommend the birds be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

More than any native species since the spotted owl, the sage grouse sparks direct conflict with the West's industries, from livestock grazing and oil and gas development to the construction of wind turbines and power lines.

Only this bird is disappearing from 11 Western states, and is already gone from several more, a victim of human encroachment on its turf.

"It is a really, really big decision," said Chris Warren, a biologist in Spokane with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Once so common on high-desert grasslands that explorers snapped bullwhips at their feathers as the birds skittered under their horses, sage grouse have declined to about a half-million in the West.

In Eastern Washington they've been reduced by farming, development and wildfires to two tiny isolated camps — 650 birds here in Douglas County and a few hundred others on the Army's Yakima Training Center to the south. Biologists are also transplanting birds in Lincoln County.

But even in Washington, the creatures' impact extends far beyond what their numbers might suggest.

Just last week Schroeder met with people from Pacific Power in Portland and shared concerns that proposed transmission lines through the Yakima Training Center could drive away birds.

And the Douglas County Public Utility District recently scaled back and relocated plans for a 14,000-acre, 160-megawatt wind farm. The new proposal calls for turbines that would produce no more than 60 megawatts.

"No one wants to see them go extinct," said PUD spokeswoman Meaghan Vibbert. Besides, "it's not clear the other location would have been approved" because of the birds.

And that's in the state with the smallest sage-grouse population, where public-land grazing and mineral development are a fraction of what they are in Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and southern Oregon.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, has been worried for several years about a mega-clash between conservationists and resource industries over the birds.

His state 18 months ago set aside core areas for the birds and tries to steer oil and gas development to other places in hopes that would avoid an endangered listing.

But the federal Bureau of Land Management over the years has allowed many exceptions to its own wildlife protections, allowing drilling to proceed even where it harms grouse.

"We think we're doing all that we can," said Ryan Lance, deputy chief of staff for Wyoming's governor. "A decision outright to list the species would be very problematic for us."

No one expects the federal government to decide to protect the bird rangewide, but there's no telling how much — or how little — protection they'll recommend. "And there is absolutely every indication and every assurance that there will be litigation either way," Lance said.

Some environmentalists see the sage grouse as a way to achieve their long-standing goal of driving cows and sheep off public lands. And if the administration recommends widespread protections, industry groups have promised to appeal to Congress to intervene.

The problem for the grouse is simple: Half the sagebrush habitat in the West is gone.

"These birds need a pretty big landscape," said Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Derek Stinson. "They depend on sage brush, and lots and lots of it."

Before dawn Thursday, as he does almost every day this time of year, Schroeder, the biologist, piloted his truck down unmarked dirt roads. His eyes danced in the dark as he scanned empty wheat fields for strutting grouse.

With the windows down he heard them almost as soon as he spied them, the males puffing out their chests and rolling their feathers and issuing what sounded like monstrous burps. The morning spring ritual is how they compete with one another to try to attract a female to mate.

Adult females weigh about 2 pounds, males up to 7 pounds. Chowing for eight months out of the year on scratch-dry sagebrush needles, grouse are plump, skittish birds that often range 20 miles between their leks — their strutting grounds — and where they nest. But they are sensitive to noise and easily driven off by farms and roads. Tall structures like power lines, wind turbines and oil derricks on treeless grasslands offer new perches for predators — golden eagles, gyrfalcons and other raptors — that might swipe grouse for lunch.

They once occupied desert that is now the Tri-Cities. The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project filed their lands with water. The wild brush fires that once drove grouse to new areas now squeeze them into smaller and smaller pockets.

Like spotted owls, the grouse are considered a keystone species — a means to judge the health of an entire landscape. And the landscape they represent is one of the West's largest. Based on how grouse are faring, Schroeder said the Western grasslands could use some help.

"It seems like almost everything humans do out here sooner or later gets in their way," he said, not bothering to drop the binoculars from his head.

He watched the birds for several hours until precisely 7:45 a.m. when each male grouse, apparently tired, suddenly stopped strutting and squatted down. Over the next 10 minutes they flew away one by one, to munch on sage and rest up for the next dawn's dance.

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com