Abstract
Increasing energy and housing demands are impacting wildlife populations throughout western North America. Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), a species known for its sensitivity to landscape-scale disturbance, inhabits the same low elevation sage-steppe in which much of this development is occurring. Wyoming has committed to maintain sage-grouse populations through conservation easements and policy changes that conserves high bird abundance “core” habitat and encourages development in less sensitive landscapes. In this study, we built new predictive models of oil and gas, wind, and residential development and applied build-out scenarios to simulate future development and measure the efficacy of conservation actions for maintaining sage-grouse populations. Our approach predicts sage-grouse population losses averted through conservation action and quantifies return on investment for different conservation strategies. We estimate that without conservation, sage-grouse populations in Wyoming will decrease under our long-term scenario by 14–29% (95% CI: 4–46%). However, a conservation strategy that includes the “core area” policy and $250 million in targeted easements could reduce these losses to 9–15% (95% CI: 3–32%), cutting anticipated losses by roughly half statewide and nearly two-thirds within sage-grouse core breeding areas. Core area policy is the single most important component, and targeted easements are complementary to the overall strategy. There is considerable uncertainty around the magnitude of our estimates; however, the relative benefit of different conservation scenarios remains comparable because potential biases and assumptions are consistently applied regardless of the strategy. There is early evidence based on a 40% reduction in leased hectares inside core areas that Wyoming policy is reducing potential for future fragmentation inside core areas. Our framework using build-out scenarios to anticipate species declines provides estimates that could be used by decision makers to determine if expected population losses warrant ESA listing.
Highlights
Land use change is rapidly occurring throughout the western United States (US) due in part to both rising energy demand and interest in domestic energy production related to national security concerns
Our research addressed the following questions: (1) Can our models reliably predict future oil and gas, wind and residential development? (2) How much sage-grouse population loss can be averted by conservation easements and the sage-grouse core area policy? (3) Where are the greatest population losses expected, and how can conservation be targeted spatially to maximally benefit sage-grouse? And lastly, (4) Did the amount of land leased for oil and gas exploration and development decline inside core areas following policy enactment? Such a decline would provide early evidence that industry activities are being modified to make this strategy viable and that Wyoming policy is changing the course of future fragmentation inside core areas
We estimate that the core area strategy alone reduces these declines statewide to 9–15% and 6–9% within core areas
Summary
Land use change is rapidly occurring throughout the western United States (US) due in part to both rising energy demand and interest in domestic energy production related to national security concerns. Rural areas with desirable natural amenities and recreational opportunities have experienced a surge in rural development since the 1970s [3], with growth in the Intermountain West during the 1990s occurring faster than any other region of the country [4]. When human developments fragment sagebrush habitats, sage-grouse populations are negatively affected either directly or indirectly [8,9,10]. Indirect impacts can result from changes in habitat quality, predation, noise, or disease [1,11,12]. Both types of fragmentation can result in population loss, limiting habitat fragmentation is assumed to be an important strategy for the long-term maintenance of sage-grouse populations (Fish and Wildlife Service 2010)
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