9th Annual SageCon Summit

Thank you speakers and participants for another great gathering!

Sept 24-25th 2024

SageCon Summit 2024

Day 1: SageCon Summit Meeting

September 24, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Carey Foster Hall, 590 SE Lynn Blvd, Prineville, Oregon

Agenda Overview and links to presentation files

8:30  Welcome and introduction to SageCon

  • Welcome from local and regional hosts

  • What is SageCon and how is it evolving?

9:00  Sagebrush and sage-grouse conservation from the Prineville Local Implementation Team -

Highlights of the collaborative work from around the Local Implementation Team’s geography and discussions about the benefit of coordinated projects.

10:00  Break

10:30  Status and trends in Oregon’s sagebrush country - Partners from state and federal agencies managing sagebrush in Oregon gave an overview of populations, planning efforts and mitigation siting process with an eye toward responses to this year’s rangeland fires.

12:00  Lunch (provided)

1:00 Tools you can use for planning and prioritizing work across big landscapes - After lunch we highlighted a curated set of technical resources, including geospatial datasets in the SageCon Landscape Planning Tool, Threat-Based Strategic Conservation workshops to develop a local spatial strategy to ‘defend and grow the core’, strategic post-fire planning, a workflow for mesic prioritization, and the Invasive Annual Grass Tech Transfer Partnership.

2:45  Break

3:15 Actionable science from the SageSTEP network - We wrapped up the day with presentations from the Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP), offering insights about restoration from over a decade of data collection at research sites across the Great Basin. We heard about major findings from the research, site-specific considerations for planning treatments and scaling up findings from the plot to landscape scale.

4:45  Closing remarks - Revisit our Summit themes and what’s next for SageCon. Rachael Davee, SageCon Partnership; Megan Creutzburg, INR

6:00 Social (no host) - Join us for a get-together at Wild Ride Brewery for dinner on your own from a variety of food carts and a chance to spend time with partners from other geographies

Day 2: Field Tour

September 25, 8:00 am- 4 pm Pacific time

This all-day field tour will highlight the work that our partners in Crook and Deschutes Counties have been doing and help us to understand the opportunities and challenges that land managers face as they restore habitats and increase resiliency against fire, annual grass invasion, and conifer encroachment. Sack lunches will be provided.

8:00- Meet at Carey Foster Hall, 590 SE Lynn Blvd, Prineville, OR 97754

We will gather in the parking lot and consolidate vehicles or buses and then begin our loop, heading south along the western edge of sage-grouse habitat. We will drive between the Brothers and Twelvemile sage-grouse priority habitat areas and note the contrasts in soils and restoration potential. The tour will feature soil scientists who will interpret the complex soils of this diverse area.

4:00 - Return to Prineville

Previous SageCon Summits

Review past SageCon Summits and the resources below: