Declining Sagebrush

With more members, we could do more – more projects, more for education, more to inform politicians and agencies, and more to support collaborating agencies and individuals with projects to keep habitats resilient.   We need volunteers to plant shrubs next spring and donations or memberships to support the restoration of critical winter habitat for deer and other sagebrush dependent critters. 

     Your membership or donation is critically needed now so we can begin restoring our sagebrush habitat. Our next project is to assist the Bureau of Land Management with an emergency rehabilitation of last summers Red Rock Fire north of Reno. We need funding to provide seed and plants for this critical winter deer range and home to some antelope and sage-grouse*.

     Your donation will provide immediate funding to buy native seed and plants for wildlife. The Columbus Day rain has provided a jump start to an expected successful fall seeding.  We will follow-up next spring by funding the purchase of bitterbrush plants. At that time we will need volunteers to put these plants in the ground. Your membership and or donation will be put to good work now and you can volunteer to help plant bitterbrush this spring. Please donate and/or volunteer to help. Provide your phone number and email address and we will contact you when a date has been setup.

Working for Wildlife,

Robert Gaudet,

President

Sagebrush The State Flower

Sagebrush is the State Flower of the Silver State.  Dozens of wildlife species have adapted to use its habitat, sage grouse, sage and brewers sparrows, various reptiles and small mammals, up to big game including mule deer and antelope.  These species became abundant as sage brush grew in abundance as land management agencies began to actually manage Nevada rangelands.  In fact, sagebrush became so abundant, it became a major focus for many range improvement projects to control it. The problem is that it competes for water with grasses and wildflowers. While many of the projects were done for livestock, certain wildlife species preferred herbaceous plants and the grassland birds prospered just as they had after wildfires down through the ages.

Today we recognize the value of various sagebrush species and important subspecies. There are about twenty in Nevada.  Sagebrush is often planted after fire to provide habitat and various ecological services.  Interest in sagebrush is growing.  It has become a bit of a celebrity. For some it is a crusade and they call the sagebrush ecosystem one of the most endangered in the US.  Millions of dollars are being spent on research.  Perhaps the biggest threat is the growing influence of cheatgrass, a non-native annual that creates fine fuels and frequent sagebrush-killing fires.  In the last decade fires have burned six million acres of Nevada.  Cheatgrass is so competitive with the seedlings of native grasses that cheatgrass replaces them on many sites at the dry end of the sagebrush zone.

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