Mostly everything that Pointer said....
Sage Grouse have been declining almost since they began surveying populations, and it's been happening across their entire range.
That kind of decline is almost always habitat related. Livestock grazing, and now exacerbated by this long term drought/Al Gore induced global warming. Here in west-central Colorado, P/J encroachment on sage in many areas have been significant--that points to a absence of fire (interesting in comparision to ranger1's post in the western part of the grouse range). The rate of decline has also increased.
Predators and disease tend to have a much bigger impact on a declining population, whereas in a healthy or growing population those same factors can have relatively little impact (at least what we can measure).
The Gunnison Sage Grouse has shown little improvement despite Colorado DPW range management agreements with the ranching community in the Gunnison Bason.
The biologists involved in Gunnison Grouse management expected a bit better results.
Casey
I agree that it is a habitat issue and your rationale that points to that. Good news, at least in my simple mind, is that it can be improved and the results are often fairly quickly seen. It's just whether or not folks will have the stomach and the funds to get done what needs to get done.
PJ encroachment is a H U G E problem in much of Utah. A prof at Univ. Nevada-Reno estimates that 50K acres of juniper in Utah would have to be killed annually for quite a few years to keep from increasing PJ biomass statewide! Problem is too many folks don't like the tools that it takes (herbicide and chaining) to accomplish that...
Interesting results on the Gunnison's. I thought they were doing okay and were recently either delisted or downgraded in their listing. I would love to shoot one of those!
Sam- I've changed professions a bit, so maybe I took all the common sense with me...
That said, I keep working on my wife to let me get back there to do that. So far no luck...
