Time may be running out for company trying to raise sage grouse
Time may be running out for company trying to raise sage grouse
By Mark Davis
Powell Tribune
Via Wyoming News Exchange
POWELL — Diamond Wings Upland Game Birds has once again been certified by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to raise greater sage grouse from wild eggs. But without a change to the Wyoming law that allows the game farm to try raising a broodstock of the imperiled western birds, this could be the last year of the private enterprise’s experiment.
The company won’t be gathering eggs this year due to the uncertain future of the law, but the certification also allows the company to continue to raise a broodstock from wild eggs collected in 2021. As the grouse’s breeding season starts this month, typically continuing through mid-May, Diamond Wings could be the first U.S. entity to breed the species in captivity.
In 2017 the Wyoming Legislature passed controversial legislation authorizing Wyoming bird farms to attempt to raise sage grouse. Diamond Wings, the largest game bird farm in the region, was the only company to apply.
Despite being certified to harvest eggs in each of the past five years — and despite extensive efforts that included using a drone with thermal imaging technology to search for occupied nests — Diamond Wings struck out the first four years.
Last year, the Western States Sage Grouse Recovery Foundation purchased 25 remote collars to track hens as a way to identify nest locations. The effort was successful and the team gathered 133 eggs in the spring; the species can lay up to 12 eggs per nest.
“The eggs were successfully transported to the bird farm, incubated, hatched and reared, with only 19 eggs not hatching,” said Diemer True, the creator of the grouse foundation and a former owner of the Diamond Wings game bird farm.
Several of the unhatched eggs were taken from a nest that had been trampled by elk and abandoned by a hen, said Karl Bear, manager and a prior owner of Diamond Wings. The bird farm suffered some mor- tality of the chicks and ended up with about 80 healthy grouse. Bear, the only person certified by the state to raise the grouse in captivity due to his extensive experience raising game birds, has worked day and night to raise and protect the birds.
The Calgary Zoo, in Canada, has a captive breeding program at its Devonian Wildlife Con- servation Centre and was the first ever to achieve breeding in captivity. Yet, their program is funded by millions of dollars and has a team of scientists working on the program. Bear is working with the birds mostly on his own.
“It’s just me here,” he said while putting out supplemental sagebrush — the species’ main food source — in the bird pens west of Powell.
The “biggest test” to date starts this month, Bear said, when wild sage grouse begin to breed. Sage grouse are a species that typically require isolation for their breeding, naturally choosing vast tracts of land in Wyoming’s sagebrush steppe.
But Bear is confident his birds will mate in their three flight pens.
“I’ve been working on this since 2004,” he said, including several years of research.
Bear has raised many species of game birds, some very difficult to figure out. He has confidence he can succeed with grouse and said there are many people in the sage grouse research community who have come forward with help and encouragement.
Politicians in Idaho are looking into the possibility of introducing legislation similar to Wyoming’s effort. A draft bill seeks to raise grouse in captivity with the goal of increasing populations. The bill has not gone to print and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game has not briefed its commission on the proposal at this point; until the bill is published, the department can’t comment on it, said Jim Fredericks, deputy director of the department.
Even with a head start of more than a decade, Diamond Wings isn’t convinced their experiment will lead to the increase in wild populations.
“I don’t think it’s reasonable to think that raising a captive population would be a material augmentation to wild populations,” True said in the company’s first year being certified.
“What we’re trying to do is have one additional arrow in the quiver that would help avoid having the listing of the bird as endangered,” he said.
Bear mentioned several benefits of birds reared in captivity, including the possibility of researchers using farmed-raised grouse for experiments, rather than capturing wild birds at a time the populations are falling. But many members of the scientific community have come out against the Diamond Wings project.
“First they thought we couldn’t do it. Now that we have seen some success, they are saying we shouldn’t do it,” Bear said.
Several scientists and conservation organizations issued statements that captive breeding wouldn’t work when then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke touted the idea as a way to mitigate the loss of crucial habitat to the mineral extractions industry.
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, who led conservation efforts in the state, allowed the legislation giving private companies the right to apply to raise the birds pass without his signature. Mead said he thought continuing core habitat preservation was more important. Wyoming has more habitat than any of the 10 or 11 states in the West with viable populations of the sage grouse.
The grouse — which the federal government has come close to listing as a threatened spe- cies in the past — is considered a keystone for the entire ecosystem; conservation efforts for the bird would potentially protect an additional 350 species of wildlife as well as the habitat.
It’s a time of species in Wyoming and across the West.
It’s a time of concern for the species in Wyoming and across the West.
Hunter-submitted sage grouse wings from 2021 showed a ratio of 0.8 chicks per hen. Sage grouse need at least 1.5 chicks per hen for a stable population, said Leslie Schreiber, former Game and Fish sage grouse program manager.
Schreiber told WyoFile she anticipates the count of strut- ting males on breeding ground leks to be lower this year and that the data is concerning; she said the species are heading back to population levels in the mid-90s that started the debate about the species needing protections.
The news across the West follows a similar storyline. According to a March study by the U.S. Geological Survey, greater sage grouse populations have declined significantly over the past six decades, with an 80% decline across their range since 1965 and half of that drop com- ing since 2002.
The Western States Sage Grouse Recovery Foundation and Diamond Wings leaders hope Wyoming lawmakers will extend the current program.
This story was published on Feb. 3.