When sage-grouse were elevated to an ESA candidate species, the conservation partners in Eastern Oregon knew they needed to work together if they were going to keep the sage-grouse from being listed. There was fear that a listing would result in an economic crisis that would end a way of life on the range. The fear stemmed from recent memories of the spotted owl listing and the Dwyer’s injunction that halted timber harvests across the state. However, a very different story emerged.  

The candidate species status created an opportunity to create a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances through the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This program is designed to prevent a candidate species from being listed by developing voluntary conservation tools to address threats to the species and improve their habitat.

The first CCAAs were agreements between a landowner and the USFWS, but in Harney County people were thinking bigger.  What emerged was a social-ecological innovation that used the federally recognized CCAA framework and adapted it to their local needs. This network of county, state, and federal conservation agents, ranchers, and county commissioners worked for three years, drawing on lessons from CCAAs in Idaho, Gunnison, and Wyoming. The result was a permit that could be applied to over a million acres of private sage-grouse habitat in Harney County.  

Over the next year, four more agreements for sage-grouse emerged across private land in Oregon, utilizing the robust conservation networks that exist in each county. This shift from state-led CCAAs with a top-down approach to a locally driven program created a level of buy-in that can create landscape-scale ecological uplift. Soil and Water Conservation Districts emerged as a bridge between the landowners and the Fish and Wildlife Service.  The collaborative, place-based approach, is more resilient because there are multiple permits across the state that work toward the same goals. The group meets quarterly to talk to each other about planning, monitoring, and funding, as well as data management and technical skills training.

Photos by Alex Dohman

During the last species status review in 2020, a sage-grouse listing was determined to be not warranted and the rationale was based on Oregon’s innovative programs, in particular the voluntary conservation efforts, of the CCAA program demonstrated that ranchers were committed to enrolling 1.1 million acres in this program. However, interest and momentum in the program waned because the progress was slow and the threat of an ESA listing decreased. The Oregon CCAA program was difficult to scale up because while there was a huge demand there was no model for how to plan at this detail over such a large area with so few staff. These challenges caused significant reorganization for these local conservation groups as they strained under the new workload.

Creating a conservation plan for a ranch is complex because of the variability between properties. You can’t copy and paste information about lands in this diverse ecosystem. Ranches range in size from hundreds of acres to hundreds of thousands of acres and in some cases, the plans take years to assemble.

Landowners appreciate having a plan that combines all of their conservation efforts into one place and allows them to maximize their efforts because the SWCD or Watershed Council serves as a liaison that brings data-driven decisions about where to work and where to find funding for restoration. The planning process is extensive and through the detailed analysis of all the threats that exist for sage-grouse, a landowner develops a deeper understanding of how their operations influence ecosystem function.  Each year the monitoring interviews evolve and the conversations dig deeper as the experiences of the previous year inform their further action.  The benefits are multiplied across the landscape because these same people are managing their herds on millions of acres of public land grazing allotments where their stewardship and knowledge are being incorporated into those grazing plans.

This field season marks an important leap forward for the CCAA programs across the state. Every county is fully staffed with nine people working full-time building conservation plans. USFWS has three staff that assist with the planning process and is in the process of hiring another in the LaGrande field office. This capacity is at an all-time high and is addressing the huge backlog of acres that are waiting in the queue.

The orange area on the map above is the 4.4 Million acres of private land in sage-grouse habitat in Oregon.

In Lake County, the Lakeview SWCD is implementing work on 15 active CCAA plans, that cover almost 100,000 acres. This spring they were awarded a $496,571 OWEB restoration grant that will fund thousands of acres of habitat improvements to benefit sage-grouse, mule deer, and the Warner Sucker. This work is strategic because it crosses the Warner Mountains and takes in acres from multiple ownerships, including public land on the BLM. The combination of targeted treatments and detailed monitoring attracts funders who are looking for work that enhances the plan’s ability to respond well after wildfires and support robust plant and animal communities. We look forward to highlighting more of this work when we see you in Lakeview for the 2023 SageCon Summit!