Annual SageCon Summit

Lynn Larsen

The SageCon Summit serves as a vital gathering for partners committed to building resilience in Oregon's sagebrush rangelands and the broader Great Basin region. Recognizing that no single agency or organization can address landscape-scale challenges alone, the Summit brings together diverse stakeholders working to create resilience in the sage steppe community.

The Summit's purpose aligns with the SageCon Partnership’s mission to support the ecology, economics, and society of Oregon's desert landscapes. As these regions face mounting pressures from wildfire, invasive annual grasses, and drought, the Summit provides a critical platform to foster the collaborative solutions needed for long-term sustainability.

At the annual Summit, participants:

  • Connect with partners working toward resilient rangelands in southeastern Oregon and across the Great Basin

  • Share information, ideas and resources to leverage collective knowledge

  • Inspire action to work proactively across boundaries and support locally-led collaborative efforts

By creating a supportive, enabling environment for strategic on-the-ground actions, the SageCon Summit embodies the Partnership's belief that the most durable solutions emerge when stakeholders work together across boundaries, combining communication, technical expertise, funding strategies, and shared priorities to build a more resilient future for sagebrush rangelands.

2025 SageCon Summit

Partnership Meeting

October 28 and 29 2025

Four Rivers Cultural Center, Ontario, Oregon

For the 10th annual SageCon Summit, we spent two days in Ontario, Oregon focusing on sagebrush landscapes in Malheur County that burned in the recent 2024 fire season. In the morning of day 1, we heard updates from SageCon and learned about the collaborative work of the Malheur County Rangeland Partnership. In the afternoon, we dove into the science of post-fire restoration and looked at maps of the area we visited in the field tour on day 2 through the lens of threat-based strategic conservation. The field tour took us to a ranch that is managed as a mitigation bank and was partially burned in the Cow Valley fire, where we explored post-fire treatments and fire recovery.

Day 1: SageCon Summit Partnership Meeting

Agenda:

8:30 Grab your coffee and pastries and settle in

9:00 Welcome and introduction to Summit 2025

SageCon Partnership- Who are we and what do we do? (Rachael Davee, SageCon Partnership) [video 00:00]

9:15 Locally Led Collaboration

10:35 Networking Break

11:00 Regional Program Updates in Oregon’s Sagebrush Country

12:00 Lunch - Provided

1:00 Restoration panel: A synthesis of practical information about restoration and post-fire rehabilitation from experts and practitioners, with a focus on strategic invasive annual grass management. (Moderator: Megan Creutzburg, TNC) [video 2:58:00]

  • Why? A case for defending the core - (Anya Tyson, TNC) [video 3:03:33]

  • Where? Threat-based strategic conservation for post-fire planning - (Cameron Duquette, TNC) [video 3:14:56]

  • Interactive activity [video 3:33:45]

  • What?

    Insights on breaking the grass-fire cycle from the 2015 Soda and similar wildfires [video 3:43:53]

    Non-target effects of Invasive annual grass-targeting herbicides in sagebrush steppe rangelands- (Toby Maxwell, Oregon State University) [video 4:21:07]

  • How? Managing for Native Perennial Grasslands in Light of Invasive Annual Grasses A primer… - (Mark Porter, ODA) [video 4:40:31]

  • Panel discussion and more resources [video 5:13:36]

4:15 Creating mitigation credits for development projects in sage-grouse habitat through TerraWest’s mitigation bank property- Andrew Shields of TerraWest Conservancy will discuss the challenges and opportunities of improving ecological conditions and the challenges of creating uplift post-fire.

This discussion will set us up for Wednesday’s field tour by sharing the fire recovery planning that TerraWest did in coordination with neighboring properties. [video 5:31:13]

4:45 Close [video 5:53:07]

5:00 Poster session and happy hour —  presenters will share research and projects that highlight their contributions to our shared understanding of sagebrush ecosystems. Cash bar.

6:00 Dinner - In-person attendees are invited to join us for a catered dinner

Day 2: Field Tour

October 29, 8:00 am- 4 pm Mountain time

This all-day field tour took us to 3 Creeks Ranch, a property held as a mitigation bank by TerraWest Conservancy. They are implementing restoration to improve plant community recovery following the Cow Valley Fire. The tour focused on planning and implementing restoration, understanding burn severity, and the links between range condition and mitigation policy.

Andrew Shields

Previous SageCon Summits

Review past SageCon Summits and the resources below: