Landscape Collaborative Grazing and Greater Sage Grouse Survival

View the project final report

• 2014 annual report
• 2015 annual report

Commodities

• Animals: bovine

Practices

• Animal Production: free-range, grazing management, grazing - multispecies, range improvement, stocking rate
• Education and Training: extension, on-farm/ranch research
• Natural Resources/Environment: habitat enhancement, wildlife
• Production Systems: holistic management

We have combined three years of information for most of this report.  Average nesting success for three years was 34%.  Cattle in our study area are not grazing in sagebrush habitats frequently during the sage-grouse nesting season.  Nesting success was greatest in mountain big sagebrush (45%), less in three-tip sagebrush (30%), and lowest in basin big sagebrush (16%).  The presence of fences was the only infrastructure associated with grazing that had an effect on nest success.  Avian predators may use them as perches or mammals may use them as search corridors.  Successful nests were 250 meters further from fence lines than unsuccessful nests.  Cattle grazing appears to have little to no effect on grass utilization and sage-grouse home range size in the brood rearing stage.  Information collected over the last three years suggests management practices which maintain unfragmented blocks of mountain big sagebrush and three-tip sagebrush habitat types appear to have the greatest potential to maintain sage-grouse populations in the Centennial Valley, MT.

Objective 1: Expand capture design to include more birds

Objective 2: Estimate cattle grazing influences on sage-grouse nesting

Objective 3: Estimate influence of habitat type on nesting success

Objective 4: Estimate grazing influences on sage-grouse brood home range size

Objective 5: Estimate the effects of grazing infrastructure on brood survival (2014-2016)