Close up of greater sage grouse. Photo by Bob Wick, BLM.

Greater sage-grouse

The BLM manages the largest single share of greater sage-grouse habitat in the United States – nearly 67 million of 145 million acres total. These same lands sustain Western rural economies built on outdoor recreation, ranching, farming, energy development and small businesses, and are critical for more than 350 other wildlife species – including pronghorn, mule deer and the pygmy rabbit. They are also the headwaters for the West's major river systems. 

For decades, federal, state and private land managers have worked to conserve and restore the sagebrush ecosystem, with federal agencies managing habitat on the lands whose surface they administer and states managing and monitoring wildlife populations.
 

Moving forward to conserve habitat 

The greater sage-grouse is in sharp decline. Populations once in the millions now number fewer than 800,000, largely due to habitat loss exacerbated by climate change effects, such as drought, increasing wildfires and the spread of invasive species. 

We have announced a proposal to strengthen greater sage-grouse protections on public lands, informed by the best-available science and input from local, state and federal partners. Alternatives for updating our sage-grouse habitat management plans build on the most successful components of the plans that were adopted in 2015 and revised in 2019. 
 

The draft environmental impact statement which analyzes the potential effects of six proposed alternatives was published on March 15, 2024. We are currently reviewing comments submitted during the 90-day comment period that ended on June 13, 2024. 


Even as we engage in planning, the BLM continues to invest in habitat treatments, to restore critical areas and make remaining habitat more resilient to various stressors and threats. 
 

 

Sagebrush

Sagebrush in autumn

In the fall, sagebrush flowers and goes to seed as temperatures drop and daylight hours shorten. Protein-rich seeds and evergreen sage leaves continue to feed and shield greater sage-grouse.
a greater sage-grouse walking in dry grass late summer sun

Step by step: Sage-grouse in Season

By late summer, sagebrush rangelands have dried out after many weeks without significant rainfall, and broods of sage-grouse are venturing farther afield.
a pinyon jay atop a pinyon pine tree

Two of a kind: Sage-grouse & Pinyon jay habitats

As the BLM and partners work to reverse decline in greater sage-grouse populations, we also recognize that successful conservation requires thinking about how actions to protect one species may in turn affect others.
A young sage-grouse in mixed sage-steppe vegetation

Empty nests: Sage-grouse in Season

Greater sage-grouse hens and their broods of growing chicks spend the long days of summer on walkabouts, continuing to rely on sagebrush and native grasses for food and shelter.

Habitat in Season 

sagebrush in seed under blue skies
In the fall, sagebrush produces seeds which are dispersed by the wind or through the digestive tracts of the animals that eat them.
USFWS / Theo Stein