A male sage grouse in the Warner Mountains. Photo: Jeremy Roberts
The Warner Mountains Project
For eight years, WLFW (through SGI) and partners conducted a long-term conifer removal project in the Warner Mountains in SE Oregon. In addition to removing encroaching trees, university researchers studied how the removal affected sage grouse.
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- Aerial view of conifer encroachment and restored sagebrush rangeland. Jeremy Roberts.
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- The Warner Mountains are a working landscape where conservation benefits both landowners and sage grouse. Jeremy Roberts
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- Rancher John O’Keeffe was a key part of the success of the Warner Mountains project. Jeremy Roberts.
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- Co-produced research was an integral part of the Warner Mountains project. Jeremy Roberts
Background: The rugged and remote Warner Mountains run from northern California into southeastern Oregon. Like many regions in the West, the Warners are comprised of public and private lands, and grazing plays an important role in the economies of the small towns that dot the landscape. Unfortunately, decades of woody plant encroachment had degraded much of this landscape, pushing out sagebrush-dependent wildlife, reducing livestock forage, and depleting precious water supplies.
In 2011, the USDA-NRCS’s Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI) partnered with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and local landowners to begin a large-scale conifer removal project in the southeast Oregon portion of the Warner range. Additionally, the partners invited university scientists to study how sage grouse responded to the conifer removal treatments.
Over the next eight years, the partners strategically removed conifer trees on more than 100,000 acres of this landscape while leaving trees in place on an 82,000-acre “control” portion of the area.
Learn more about this project, the research it produced, and the stories of the people involved below.
