What’s next for the Greater Sage-Grouse?

The future of the Greater Sage-Grouse, and the health of the broader sagebrush ecosystem, has long been shaped by land-use decisions spread across millions of acres of the American West. In January 2025, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released finalized Resource Management Plans (RMPs) that guide how public lands in Colorado and Oregon would be managed for the grouse. At the end of last year, the BLM further released finalized RMPs for California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. These 2025 grouse plans complete a federal process initiated in 2021, allowing resources to shift from planning to action, and influencing conservation across the West for decades to come. 

These finalized land management plans come in the context of broader long-term pressures on the sagebrush ecosystem, captured by a multi-agency study that determined an annual loss of 1.3 million acres (an area the size of Delaware) of functioning sagebrush habitat. Over the past half-century, these iconic western lands have been steadily fragmented by energy and mineral development, transmission lines, and roads. As these arid lands are fractured by development, sprawling pathways are created for fast-spreading invasive annual grasses like cheatgrass which increase the vulnerability to fire and further crowd out the healthy sagebrush and forbs that are needed to sustain healthy grouse populations. 

Sagebrush landscape declines are reflected in Greater Sage-Grouse populations, which continue to drop across much of their range. In 2020, researchers reported that Greater Sage-Grouse numbers have plummeted by 80 percent since 1965, with half of that decline happening just since 2002. In July 2025, North Dakota wildlife officials confirmed that the last known population of Greater Sage-Grouse in the state had disappeared entirely, marking the species’ effective extirpation there.  

The Bureau of Land Management oversees the largest share of sage-grouse habitat in the United States: some 67 million acres of public land. Management decisions on those lands play a central role in determining the health of the sagebrush landscape and whether remaining sage-grouse populations stabilize or continue to decline. Federal land use plans adopted in 2015 – the product of a lengthy collaborative planning process between state and federal governments, ranchers, Tribes, recreational groups and conservation organizations – established a science-based framework intended to prevent listing under the Endangered Species Act. However, subsequent revisions and uneven implementation limited how those plans functioned on the ground.  

The finalized 2025 RMPs retain the overall structure of habitat prioritization from the original plans but revise how those principles are applied. Earlier plans sought to direct development away from the most intact habitat and to ensure timely responses to documented declines in birds. The amended RMPs reflect a move away from enforceable safeguards towards more flexibility, discretion, and alignment with state priorities. Across the plans, changes finalized in the 2025 plans include: 

• Updated and revised habitat boundaries and classifications; 

• Lessened restrictions allowing for more energy and mineral development and infrastructure in habitat management areas that were previously subject to stricter avoidance standards. Expanded waivers, exceptions and modifications reduce the enforceability of limits on development like disturbance caps and seasonal timing restrictions; 

• Management responses tied to population and habitat-based adaptive management thresholds are less clearly defined and rely more on discretion. This presents the uncertainty of conservation actions being implemented in response to declining population trends. And, while wildfire and invasive species are acknowledged as growing threats to the bird across its range, post-fire responses are less likely to be triggered; 

• More reliance on compensatory mitigation relative to avoidance, and a shift towards voluntary mitigation. 

The finalization of the 2025 plans marks a milestone in this landmark, landscape-scale conservation effort. Greater Sage-Grouse are highly sensitive to incremental habitat loss, and uncertainty around when and how management actions will occur carries ecological risk. As pressure from development, wildfire and climate-driven habitat change continue to affect sagebrush landscapes, the effectiveness of the amended plans will depend on how consistently standards are applied and how adaptive management is implemented in practice.  

These decisions have established the governing framework for millions of acres of public land, with outcomes that will shape the future of a species closely tied to the health of the entire sagebrush ecosystem and the numerous wildlife that depend on them. The following measures will be an indicator of whether the plans succeed, or fail, in implementation: 

• Tracking waivers, exceptions and modifications to the provisions in the plans. How often are exceptions being applied, and why? 

• Ensuring the continued health of the last of the best habitat. Whether and where is development being allowed in grouse habitat (leased, permitted or constructed in priority habitat or PHMA)? 

• Tracking the use of compensatory mitigation to offset any remaining impacts to habitat or grouse after projects have been designed to avoid and minimize impacts. Is mitigation being used, and is so, is it effective? 

• Ensuring that adaptive management actions are taken in response to declining conditions.  Are triggers being tripped, and if so, what management or conservation actions are taken? And is this being applied consistently across the range for those populations that cross state borders? 

Finally, last but not least, restoration of degraded habitat is essential if we want to save this ecosystem. This rehabilitation – a challenge in this fragile ecosystem - can take the form of removing invasive annual grasses, like cheatgrass, and restoring the degradation that is now widespread across the sagebrush landscape.  

Resources and capacity must now shift from planning to implementation.  Going forward, Audubon is committed to continuing to work collaboratively with the Bureau of Land Management, state agencies, industry, ranchers and other private landowners, and NGO partners. Each of us can have a role in ensuring that the grouse RMPs are implemented in good faith, from careful siting of development and effective mitigation to removal of invasives and collaborative restoration of native sagebrush and forbs. As stewards of the land, it is our shared responsibility to ensure that this landscape – the backbone of the West – is passed on to future generations in good condition.