Key Science

• Sage grouse avoid otherwise suitable nesting and breeding habitat when surrounded by just a few trees per acre (Baruch-Mordo et al. 2013, Severson et al. 2016), and suffer lower survival rates when forced to traverse encroached sites (Coates et al. 2017).
• Strategic conifer removal has been shown to improve sage grouse habitat availability, fitness, and population growth rates (Severson et al. 2017, Sandford et al. 2017, Olsen et al. 2021).
• Abundance and population performance of sagebrush-obligate songbirds including, Brewer’s sparrow, sage thrashers, and Vesper sparrows, have been shown to improve following conifer removal (Holmes et al. 2017, Zarri et al. 2024).
• Defending core sagebrush areas maintains sage grouse and sagebrush-obligate songbird populations (Prochazka et al. 2024, Kumar et al. 2024).
• Mule deer can benefit from conifer removal, particularly on winter range treatments have been shown to improve overwinter survival of fawns (Bergman et al. 2014).
• Pronghorn population productivity can be negatively impacted by tree encroachment on the landscape (Donovan et al. 2024).
• Considering potential tradeoffs for woodland-obligate species is as important as considering benefits to sagebrush-obligate species. Optimization models that balance pinyon-juniper and sagebrush habitat, for example, provide critical insights for conifer management where pinyon jays and sagebrush-obligate species overlap (Reinhardt et al. 2024).