SageCon Summit 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

• Local Implementation Teams: The Foundational Network of SageCon [video 21:30]

  • Highlights from the Malheur Rangeland Partnership -  (Nicole Sullivan, Gallagher Fencing) [video 15:21]

  • Responding to the Cow Valley Fire (Steve Meyer, ODF, and Derek Bruckhart, Vale and Ironside RFPAs) [video 27:49]

  • Lessons from Locally-Based Emergent Partnerships - (Katie Wollstein, OSU Extension) [video 42:40]

• Conservation on Oregon’s Private Lands SWCDs and USFWS- (Jenifer Boisvert, Powder Basin Watershed Council) [video 1:03:30]

• The 5 coolest things in the SageCon Landscape Planning Tool- (Megan Creutzburg, The Nature Conservancy) [video 1:23:25]

10:35 Networking Break

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

• Mitigation

  • A west-wide perspective on mitigation policy and opportunities for restoration tied to mitigation. (Lee Davis, The Nature Conservancy) [video 1:37:26]

  • Oregon’s Sage-Grouse Mitigation Program - (Greg Jackle, ODFW) [video 1:51:15]

• Sage-Grouse Population Trends and the Updated ODFW Assessment and Strategy - (Skyler Vold, ODFW) [video 2:08:47]

• Sage Steppe Native Seed Strategy Development - (Rachael Davee, SageCon) [video 2:27:00]

• Rangeland Fire Protection Associations - (Allison Rayburn, Oregon Department of Forestry) [video 2:40:08]

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 (Matt Germino) [video 3:43:53]

  Soda Fire recovery at 10 years: an unparalleled learning opportunity for breaking the cheatgrass-fire cycle - (Toby Maxwell, Oregon State University) [video 4:21:07]

• How? Best practices for operationalizing invasive annual grass restoration - (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