This assessment outlines an enhanced planning approach for West Coast estuaries that incorporates an evaluation of the regional context for estuarine conservation and recommends an approach to site-scale planning with more focus on ecological processes and functions.
Trends in greater sage-grouse breeding populations are typically indexed by determining the peak number of males attending a lek in a lekking season. Numerous studies have estimated negative trends in sage-grouse breeding populations over time via data collected for the last 50 years. However, the inherent bias in data collection...
The Arapaho Ranch is an interesting study regarding the relationship between good land stewardship and the implementation of the current CCX range protocol. The Arapaho Ranch appears to be a model of the ways in which sustainable rangeland management and economic diversification, including profitable niche marketing and payment for ecosystem...
Ecologically sound practices often cost landowners more than less environmentally friendly tactics. However, some consumers are willing to pay more for the assurance of production practices they value. Third-party certification is a way to acknowledge sustainable production practices beyond what is required by law.
The market for such products is...
Coos Watershed Association (CoosWA) and the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve (SSNERR) are interested in forming a community stakeholder group as the foundation of the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds project. CoosWA and SSNERR have engaged Oregon Consensus to conduct a neutral assessment of issues related to the convening of...
The Partnership Steering Committee has developed a set of vision statements or desired conditions for the future of the project area (20-25 years). The community vision describes desired future conditions we want to see in 20 years in our quality of life, environment and economy. We will work toward attaining...
Salmon recovery requires restoration of spawning habitat to improve egg-to-smolt survival. Private lands play a crucial role. Funds for restoration are available from both federal appropriations and legal settlements for dam mitigation. Federal agencies responsible for recovery are often limited in their ability to work on private lands however, not...
The Coos Estuary Inventory Project, an in-depth assessment of environmental and socio-economic status and trends, is part of Phase 2 of the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds. The project began in January 2013 and is focused on the larger Coos estuary and its direct tributaries.
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Against the backdrop of growing concern about dead zones, rare and endangered sea mammals, depletion of Oregon’s once‐abundant fish stocks, acidification threatening coastal molluscs, and proposals for marine reserves along Oregon’s coastline, a multidisciplinary group of scientists was called together in 2008 to discuss what is known about Oregon’s coastal...
This report is laid out as a progressive exploration of how the economics of ES production interacts with finance, broadly construed, in actual credit transactions. The inquiry proceeds in several steps. First, the economics of ecosystem services production is explored to provide critical context for potential financing approaches. This section...
Western EcoSystems Technology, Inc. and Wyoming Wildlife Consultants, LLC initiated a greater sage-grouse radio-telemetry study at an existing wind energy development in southeastern Wyoming in 2009. The University of Wyoming joined this collaborative effort in January 2010, and the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative joined the effort in March 2011. The...
Senate Bill 100 (1973) and the Oregon Land Conservation and Development
Commission’s (LCDC) goals (1975) required:
- Cities to adopt urban growth boundaries (UGBs) to contain sprawl, and
- Counties to use zoning to limit 15.6 million acres of farmland to farm use, and 8.0
million acres of forest land...
Ecosystem services markets represent potential revenue streams for small- and medium-scale rural agricultural and forest producers, many of whom have faced significant economic downturns over the past several decades. Demand for ecosystem services (ES) in the form of investments by public agencies, mitigation funds from regulated entities, and voluntary payments...
Twelve years ago I was new to the Oregon coast and eager to learn about the natural setting. Field guides were available to birds, marine mammals, tide pools, seaweeds, and forest plants. Not so geology. I looked at a field guide to rocks and minerals, but it was hard to...
This report delineates reasonable objectives, based upon the best scientific and commercial data available at the time of its release, for the conservation and survival of greater sage-grouse. Individual team members contributed by providing technical information and data, participating in critical discussions, providing critical reviews and edits, or authoring sections...
Greater sage-grouse Centrocercus urophasianus populations across North America have been declining due to degradation and fragmentation of sagebrush habitat. As part of a study quantifying greater sage-grouse demographics prior to construction of a wind energy facility, we estimated apparent net nest productivity and survival rate of chicks associated with radio-equipped...
Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) were once found in most grassland and sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) habitats east of the Cascades in Oregon. European settlement and conversion of sagebrush steppe into agricultural production led to extirpation of the species in the Columbia Basin by the early part of the 1900s, but sagebrush...
The condition of the sagebrush ecosystem has been declining in the Western United States, and greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), a sagebrush-obligate species, has experienced concurrent decreases in distribution and population numbers. This has prompted substantial research and management over the past two decades to improve the understanding of sage-grouse and...
Counts of males attending leks in the spring have been the primary means employed by states to monitor status of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophansianus) populations for over 75 years. Despite limitations and potential biases, lek count data remain the only long-term, range-wide dataset available for evaluating trends in sage-grouse populations....
The purpose of this document (Framework) is to communicate some of the factors the Service is likely to consider in evaluating the efficacy of mitigation practices and programs in reducing threats to sage-grouse. The recommendations provided here are consistent with the information and conservation objectives provided in the 2013 Conservation...
Prior to settlement in the 19th century, greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter referred to as ‘sage-grouse’) inhabited 13 western States and three Canadian provinces, and their potential habitat covered over 1,200,483 square kilometers (km) (463,509 square miles (mi)). Sage-grouse have declined across their range due to a variety of causes...
The Guano and Thousand-Virgin Sub-basins occupy over 1.8 million acres in Harney and Lake Counties in Oregon. The portions of the sub-basins in Nevada are not assessed in this document. Harney County Watershed Council (HCWC) watershed assessments focus on summarizing data from existing research, resource inventories, and management plans. This...
This Instruction Memorandum (IM) provides policy on how to assess habitat for Gunnison and Greater Sage-Grouse, including the Bi-State Distinct Population Segment, (hereafter referred to as "sage-grouse") and under what circumstances the habitat assessment is required.
The video "Harold Otley AV-Oral History 362" was filmed by Dorothea Purdy & Barbara Lofgren at the Harney County Library on June the 8th, 1994, in Burns, Oregon. A copy of the transcript is included.
This oral history is part of the Claire McGill Luce Western History Room at the...
This paper details the historical coastal evolution of the Columbia River littoral cell in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Geological data from A.D. 1700 and records leading up to the late 1800s provide insights to the natural system dynamics prior to significant human intervention, most notably jetty construction...
This Instruction Memorandum (IM) provides guidance on prioritizing implementation decisions for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas leasing and development, to be consistent with the Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments for the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin GRSG Regions and nine Approved Resource Management Plans in the Rocky...
This white paper outlines interim guidance for development of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat mitigation recommendations associated with renewable energy development and associated infrastructure or other landscape scale industrial-commercial developments in greater sage-grouse habitat in Oregon. This guidance is interim until empirical data are available that quantify the...
This Instruction Memorandum (IM) provides guidance for incorporating and analyzing thresholds and responses, as appropriate, into terms and conditions of grazing permits and the associated National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis within designated Greater Sage-Grouse (GRSG) Habitat as described in the Records of Decision for the Approved Resource Management Plan...
The Integrated Landscape Assessment Project (ILAP) was a multi-year effort to produce information, maps, and models to help land managers, policy-makers, and others conduct mid- to broad-scale (e.g., watersheds to states and larger areas) prioritization of land management actions, perform landscape assessments, and estimate cumulative effects of management actions for...
In 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Conservation
Objectives Team (COT) identified wildfire and the associated
conversion of low- to mid-elevation sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)
habitats to invasive annual grass-dominated vegetation communities
as the two primary threats to the sustainability of Greater sage-grouse
(Centrocercus urophasianus, hereafter GRSG) in the...
The Lakes Basin Bibliography consists of over 600 references relating to the natural resources of Oregon’s Lakes Basin. Forty percent of the items listed are available to anyone online though not all links are persistent. The remaining sixty percent are held in at least one library either in print or...
It is unlikely all male sage-grouse are detected during lek counts, which could complicate the use of lek counts as an index to population abundance. Understanding factors that influence detection probabilities will allow managers to more accurately estimate the number of males present on leks. We fitted 410 males with...
A major goal in greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus, hereafter ‘sage-grouse’) conservation is to spend limited resources efficiently by conserving large and functioning populations. We used maximum count data from leks (n = 4,885) to delineate high abundance population centers that contain 25, 50, 75, and 100% of the known breeding...
Declines in Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus, hereafter sage-grouse) populations could be attributed to low chick survival, which may be influenced by the availability of food and cover at sites used by females rearing broods. Habitat attributes important to broods may vary regionally; thus, it is necessary to understand factors affecting...
This report is intended for citizen advocates. The goal is to provide a concise summary of current issues and problems for native salmonids in the Upper Deschutes and describe the actions needed to resolve those problems. It is based on information from all federal and Oregon agencies involved in the...
This report describes results of baseline monitoring at the Ni-les’tun tidal wetland restoration site, Bandon National Wildlife Refuge, Coquille River estuary of Oregon. Baseline monitoring provides a basis for comparison to post-restoration conditions, allowing future determination of project effectiveness. The report focuses on 2010-2011 baseline data, but it also includes...
During the 2017 greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) breeding season, 1,580 aerial and ground lek surveys were conducted at 674 individual lek sites comprising 429 lek complexes. Surveys were conducted at 58.0% of known lek sites in the state. Survey effort during 2017 declined -17.1%, -12.2%, and 14.5% from 2016 levels,...
During the 2016 greater sage-grouse breeding season, 1,908 aerial and ground lek surveys were conducted at 768 individual lek sites comprising 501 lek complexes. Surveys were conducted at 66.0% of known lek sites in the state, which was the greatest proportion of leks ever surveyed in Oregon. Survey effort during...
In March 2007, Craig Cornu (South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve), with the assistance of Laura Brophy (Green Point Consulting/Estuary Technical Group, Institute for Applied Ecology), John Bragg (South Slough NERR) and Derek Sowers (former South Slough NERR), developed the Pacific Northwest Estuarine Wetland Restoration Information Gaps Survey using the...
Padlock Ranch is a large, family owned ranch that has experimented with a carbon sequestration program and is waiting to see how it all turns out. The ranch is located in Ranchester, Wyoming in the northern part of the state in the ecotone between the Big Horn Mountains and the...
Partnership for Coastal Watersheds (PCW) Phase 2 projects are aligned with the following three objectives to be pursued in parallel: Coos Estuary Inventory Project, Coos Estuary Monitoring Tools, and Phase 1 PCW Action Plan Implementation, Partnership for Coastal Watersheds, [2012].
This document is a companion to the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds State of the Watersheds assessment (also accessible from the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds web site) which is a summation of newly collected and existing data which describe the environmental and socioeconomic conditions in the South Slough and Coastal Frontal...
Fish recovery in rivers depends on sufficient instream flows to maintain water quality and habitat. In many areas, water rights for agriculture present direct competition for these flows, and “use it or lose it” water rights provide little flexibility to landowners who may be able to contribute unneeded rights.
An...
This Instruction Memorandum (Instruction Memorandum No. 2016-139) provides guidance on the use of terrestrial and aquatic objectives and quantitative data to determine Resource Management Plan effectiveness. Additionally, for RMPs that include Greater Sage-Grouse (GRSG) habitat, this IM provides guidance for tracking and reporting on the implementation of decisions using the...
This Instruction Memorandum (IM) directs the implementation of the land use plan adaptive management process to evaluate and apply hard and soft triggers and responses, as detailed in the Greater Sage-Grouse (GRSG) Approved Resource Management Plans and Amendments (GRSG Plans), Great Basin and Rocky Mountain GRSG Regional Records of Decision...
This fact sheet series highlights innovative ways that family forest and ranch owners are prospering from protecting and enhancing ecosystem services on their land. Ecosystem services are the benefits people receive from nature like water quality, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration.
Landowners who want to restore and improve their land may be unsure of how to navigate the programs that are available to help them reach their goals. A ranch family in southern Oregon has tackled these barriers and successfully combined multiple projects, partners, and funding sources to improve ecological and...
Green Point Consulting created a GIS layer of current and likely former tidal wetlands in the Yaquina and Alsea estuaries, working from the National Wetland Inventory (NWI) mapping and applied their field knowledge of the estuaries, as well as newly available data such as LiDAR and recent aerial orthophotos. They...
This report summarizes the presentations and discussions at the Regional Gravel Initiative Workshop. The Workshop was designed and conducted by the Institute for Natural Resources (INR) and Oregon Sea Grant (Sea Grant) on behalf of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE), the Oregon Department of State Lands (DSL) and...
This document provides the latest science and best biological judgment to assist in making management decisions. Fortunately, recent emphasis on sage-grouse conservation has resulted in a substantial number of publications dealing with a variety of aspects of sage-grouse ecology and management, summarized in the 2010 listing petition (75 FR 13910),...
The greater sage-grouse, an iconic ground-dwelling bird of the West, has experienced significant population declines during the past 50 years from habitat loss. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) designated sage grouse in 2010 as a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
In September 2015, the...
The metric is encompassed in two documents, the Sagebrush/Sage Grouse Habitat Metric User’s Guide and a Sagebrush/Sage Grouse Habitat Metric Calculator.
We have applied a normalized difference algorithm to 8 day composite chlorophyll-a (CHL) and fluorescence line height (FLH) imagery obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Aqua spacecraft in order to detect and monitor phytoplankton blooms in the Oregon coastal region. The resulting bloom products, termed CHL[subscript rel]...
In recent years the Sage Grouse Initiative, led by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, has worked with many partners to accelerate the mechanical removal of invading conifer trees, primarily junipers, to restore sagebrush habitats in and around sage grouse strongholds across the West. Replicated studies from public and private...
Research evaluating effects of livestock grazing on greater sage-grouse nest survival suggests that a variety of locally-appropriate range management strategies support grouse populations. A new Montana study comparing effects of specialized grazing systems on ranches enrolled in the NRCS-led Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI) to ranches not enrolled in SGI grazing...
In the arid West, life follows water. Habitats near water – streamsides, wet meadows and wetlands — support the greatest variety of animal and plant life, and attract wildlife during their daily and seasonal movements. In a water-scarce landscape, these lush habitats are also where people have naturally settled. A...
In the northeast part of sage grouse range, 70% of the best habitat is privately owned – and the single greatest threat in this region is cultivation of native sagebrush grazing lands. Scientists assessed lands in eastern Montana, the western Dakotas, and northeast Wyoming to evaluate potential impacts to sage...
Two new studies revealed unknown long-distance dispersal and migration movements in sage grouse that offer fresh insights for conservation. Using DNA from feathers dropped at leks, scientists discovered that some grouse (about 1% of populations) travel long distances to explore breeding areas up to 120 miles away—movements that can potentially...
The purpose of this memorandum is to clarify the Service's perspective on the relationship between livestock grazing and the conservation of sagebrush ecosystems on private lands occurring within the range of greater sage-grouse. This document provides more specific guidance to Service staff as they carry out their conservation mission in...
This Instruction Memorandum (IM) provides guidance for prioritizing the review and processing of grazing permits and leases (permits) in Greater Sage-Grouse (GRSG) habitat as described in the Records of Decision for the Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments or the Great Basin and Rocky Mountain GRSG Regions and nine Approved Resource...
This report documents and summarizes several decades of work on sage-grouse populations, sagebrush as habitat, and sagebrush community and ecosystem functions based on the recent assessment and findings of the USFWS under consideration of the Endangered Species Act. As reflected here, some of these topics receive a greater depth of...
The Sun Ranch, located in the Upper Madison Valley, served as the pilot project for the Chicago Climate Exchange’s (CCX) Rangeland Soil Carbon Sequestration Offset Program, launched in 2007. The protocol for the new offset program was developed by a CCX Technical Review Team in consultation with former Sun Ranch...
Strongly bimodal, basalt-rhyolite volcanism of the High Lava Plains Province of Oregon followed the Middle Miocene flood basalts of the Pacific Northwest and extends to recent time. During the 8 m.y. of volcanism recorded in the central High Lava Plains, in western Harney Basin, three distinct mafic magmatic trends originate...
On Feb. 24, 2011, thirty-one people met at the Charleston Power Squadron building in Charleston, Oregon, to develop a foundation for a Partnership for Coastal Watersheds (PCW) Collaboration Compact. This document outlines the commitment of Partnership members and the practice of ―collaboration‖ as a central feature of the PCW. On...
The Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative (SOFRC), the Model Forest Policy Program (MFPP) and the Rogue River-Siskiyou Forest Service (RRSFS) have a shared vision to enhance the resiliency of our communities and forests. In 2012, the Collaborative took the leadership role to engage in the Climate Solution’s University (CSU) Plan...
This Instruction Memorandum (IM) provides the policy on tracking and reporting surface disturbance and reclamation within and outside of Greater Sage-grouse (GRSG) Priority Habitat Management Areas (PHMA). The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments for the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin GRSG Regions and Nine Approved Resource Management Plans in the...
This report provides a strategic approach developed by a Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies interagency working group for conservation of sagebrush ecosystems, Greater sage-grouse, and Gunnison sage-grouse. It uses information on (1) factors that influence sagebrush ecosystem resilience to disturbance and resistance to nonnative invasive annual grasses and...
This comprehensive bibliography is collection of refereed research related to climate change, wetlands and wetland restoration published before January 1, 2008.