Ruffling Feathers

The greater sage-grouse. Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Pacific Southwest Region

By Sam Levenhagen

In between the Sierra Nevada and Wasatch Mountains, a war is raging, cloaked in unassuming shades of gentle brown and green. Gnarled, shrunken trees line the perimeter of the basin, limbs outstretched in attack. Tough, short grasses, dotting the open landscape like stubble, stand stoutly in defense. At the forefront of the fight are two reluctant generals: the bastion of the sagebrush, the greater sage-grouse, and the hero of the encroaching trees, the pinyon jay. It’s a habitat-vs-habitat crusade. The pinyon-juniper woodlands at the fringe of the expanse are trying desperately to expand inwards, sending legions of stocky pines to the frontlines, while the sagebrush sea is struggling to keep its open range from shrinking any further. It’s a losing battle for both sides. The populations of the pinyon jay and greater sage-grouse are in decline, making the need for a truce all the more imperative — the lives of legions of unique birds depend on it. If the warring habitats fail to strike a balance, the pinyon jay and greater sage-grouse both risk extinction.

Resembling a portly general, the greater sage-grouse is a rather strange looking bird. Wispy feathers, like an old man’s hair, cap its small, dark head. Combine that with a round body and sharp, fanned tail feathers, and you have a bird that certainly makes an impression — that is, if you can spot it. Its dull, brown color is the perfect camouflage, matching the hues of the sagebrush environment it calls home. The sage-grouse relies on this shrubland habitat, which stretches across 11 states in the Western U.S., for food and shelter. During the spring and summer, the low-elevation basin offers insects and soft plants for the birds, while in winter, their diet consists almost entirely of sagebrush (unlike other grouse, their stomachs cannot digest nuts and seeds). To accommodate their seasonal changes in diet, the birds — who live in social groups that usually consist of 20 to 30 individuals — often travel several miles between winter and summer nesting sites. They are creatures of habit, preferring to return to the same nesting locations year after year.

Pinyon jays perched in a pinyon pine. Credit: Alan Schmierer via Flickr

In stark contrast to the greater sage-grouse, the pinyon jay wears no camouflage. With blue-grey feathers and bright, beady eyes, the jay stands out against the brown and green backdrop of its home. The white undersides of their wings and quick, darting movements between sky, tree, and ground are eye-catching, especially as dozens or even hundreds of the birds flock together. Their war cry, a loud, shrill call that is a clear marker of a flock’s presence, also lacks subtlety. The bravery of these birds is in large part due to the environment in which they make their home: pinyon-juniper woodlands. These woodlands are a transitional zone lying between the low elevation shrubland of the greater sage-grouse and higher elevation montane environments, such as ponderosa pine forests.

This pinyon-juniper transition zone is at the heart of the greater sage-grouse and pinyon jay’s war. Both the sage-grouse and the jay are inching closer to endangered species status, ringing alarm bells for conservationists across the Great Basin and surrounding areas. Many regions have enacted species protection plans for each bird. However, the expansion of pinyon-juniper woodlands into sagebrush environments is throwing a wrench into these conservation strategies. The conifers of the pinyon-juniper environment are an obstacle for the greater sage-grouse, whose sagebrush home is rapidly shrinking, but a necessity for the pinyon jay, whose livelihood depends on the trees.

A pinyon pine in Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah, United States. Credit: Larry D. Moore via Wikimedia Commons

The Tree of Life

The pinyon pine isn’t what most people think of when you say the words “pine tree.” Rather than the Christmas-tree look of conifers like the Douglas fir or white pine, the pinyon pine has a long, bare trunk. Its branches are twisted and brimming with needles. Its pinecones look like a roasted head of garlic that has burst open with the edible pinyon nuts, oblong and white, resembling the cloves.

For most of its 20,000 years of existence, the scraggly pine was content to occupy the edge of the western sagebrush environment. Nuts, bark, and other components of the tree were significant to the indigenous peoples who lived on the land; they carefully stewarded the groves, helping to keep the tree’s population steady. Naturally occurring wildfires restricted the trees to rocky, mid-elevation ridges. The shift in range for the pinyon pine began in the 1860s with the movement of Euro-American settlers through the West. The settlers converted much of the land of the Great Basin into grazing space for livestock, discouraging once-routine wildfires. The pinyon pines, encouraged by this reduction in fires as well as several seasons of above-average rainfall in the late 1800s and early 1900s, began their expansion across the West. It is estimated that the eager little tree’s population has grown somewhere between twofold to sixfold since the 1850s; its range now extends hundreds of miles across the Great Basin. While scientists are unclear as to what exactly is causing the continued expansion — be it fire reduction, grazing, climate change, or some other reason entirely — what is clear is that the shifting range of the pinyon pine is affecting a wide variety of plants and animals, including the pinyon jay and greater sage-grouse.

It comes as little surprise to learn that the pinyon pine and pinyon jay rely on each other — they share a name, after all. For the pine tree, the jay is its assurance of reproduction. Every few years, pinyon pines produce a massive crop of pinecones. Within weeks, pinyon jays will collect millions of these nuts, hiding them away for the winter. However, the birds will forget the location of about 10% of these stashed nuts, which will then grow into the next generation of pine trees. In return, the pine offers the pinyon jay not only food, but an important sheltering place for their large flocks. The jay nests in the boughs of the trees, returning to the same nesting site each year. However, due to myriad problems including deforestation and climate change, the symbiosis between the jay and the pine is beginning to unravel. Pinyon pines are producing fewer seeds and smaller trees, meaning the jays have less food and shelter, while deforestation destroys the jays’ nesting sites, stunting population growth. As a result, the population of pinyon jays has decreased (despite the increase in pinyon pines), making consistent nesting locations all the more imperative in ensuring survival of the species.

The new pinyon pine regime likewise poses a problem for the greater sage-grouse. The rotund birds, who much prefer the ground over the skies, build their nests in the low-lying shrubbery of the sagebrush. Scientists have found that if even a few trees invade the sage-grouse’s living space, the birds will relocate. In fact, the Bureau of Land Management finds that as little as 4% encroachment into the bird’s habitat can lead to a decrease in sage-grouse population in the area, likely due to the multitude of issues trees create for the species. The conifers replace native plants and drive away insects, both important parts of the sage-grouse’s diet. The pinyon pines hide predators such as ravens and coyotes, who think the sage-grouse makes a tasty treat. These trees also create perfect conditions for larger and hotter wildfires, sucking up precious groundwater from the already-dry environment.

It is here, in the needled boughs of the lanky pinyon pine, that we arrive at the heart of our avian conflict. Two bird populations, both in decline, have opposing needs surrounding this tree. The pinyon jay is fighting for the tree to retain its stronghold, dependent upon the food and shelter it provides. Meanwhile, the greater sage-grouse, try as it may to resist the pinyon pine’s expansion, has been forced to flee, pushing its population into the parcels of remaining sagebrush steppe. And even these parcels will soon be threatened, if the march of the pinyon pine is allowed to continue.

This situation facing the jay and the grouse is a classic conservation conundrum, sometimes called a “wicked problem,” whereby helping one species involves disadvantaging another. Conservationists are no stranger to wicked problems, however. Dedicated workers are even now negotiating what they hope will be a lasting truce in the life-and-death struggle between these two wonderful birds.

The Complexity of Conservation

Amy Seglund, a species conservation coordinator for the state of Colorado, is striving for solutions to the problem. Seglund is one of dozens of researchers compiling their findings for the jay and grouse, fostering the development of more comprehensive conservation strategies for each bird. Her latest research involves mapping the nesting sites of pinyon jay colonies across the state. She hopes that recording these sites and examining the nesting habits of the flocks will give clues toward a sustainable management strategy for the species.

Seglund explains that there is no all-encompassing or national conservation strategy for the pinyon jay or the greater sage-grouse. This means that researchers often focus on creating solutions to be implemented on a local or regional scale. For example, Seglund’s research offers data specific to the state of Colorado. However, the patterns found in small-scale data are often applicable beyond regional or state boundaries. This, Seglund notes, is where the importance of  communication and research sharing comes into play. She and many other conservationists believe that information dissemination is one of the key components to creating a strategy that is compatible for multiple species sharing a habitat.

One of the places where Seglund shares her research is the Pinyon Jay Working Group, a collaborative effort between hundreds of agencies and individuals across the Western U.S. dedicated to protecting the blue-gray bird. The working group is a hub of information, with data being shared from all regions the jay calls home — from Seglund’s office in Colorado to areas across the Great Basin, from Utah to Arizona. The same type of information dissemination is taking place among researchers of the greater sage-grouse. The grouse also boasts a cross-state working group dedicated to sharing research and creating useful management strategies for the squat little bird. The species-specific strategies that emerge from these working groups are an important piece in solving the wicked problem facing the sage-grouse and pinyon jay.

So, what exactly are these strategies? Well, for the greater sage-grouse, it’s all about battling the intrusive trees taking hold of the sagebrush environment. Seglund, though focused mostly on the pinyon jay, is no stranger to this task. In northwestern Colorado, she’s overseen treatments designed to reopen sagebrush environments swamped by trees. “A lot of the push has been to remove encroaching pinyon and juniper trees,” she notes. This is no easy job: Since 2001, more than 1.1 million acres of new pinyon-juniper forests have taken root in the northern Great Basin alone, eradicating swathes of land the sage-grouse once called home. But the consistent efforts of land managers like Seglund and her team are paying off. Populations of sage-grouse have grown an average of 12% more quickly in areas where pinyon-junipers have been removed. These encouraging results, coming less than 10 years after initial tree removal began, seem to show that the act of ridding the sagebrush steppe of pinyon-juniper woodlands has an immediate and rapid impact on the greater sage-grouse. To put it simply, Seglund says with a smile, “It’s going really well.”

Though the answer for conserving the sage-grouse is pretty clear-cut, the path toward reestablishing a healthy pinyon jay population is not so obvious. Seglund notes that research on the decline of the pinyon jay is far less developed than that of the greater sage-grouse. This is why Seglund’s work is so important. Prior to 2019, not a single breeding site for the charismatic birds had been mapped in the entire state of Colorado. Now, with roughly a hundred nesting locations mapped, Seglund is finding a potential cause for the jay’s plight.

“It’s been really important to identify exactly where the pinyon jays’ nests are,” Seglund remarks. “It’s really fortunate that we’re mapping them out, because they’re in areas where treatments are occurring.” These treatments that Seglund references are the very same treatments meant to benefit the greater sage-grouse: the clearing of pinyon-juniper woodlands. Pinyon pines containing the jay’s nests are being mowed down, hindering the bird’s ability to reproduce and raise its young. In one instance, Seglund’s team set out to map a nesting site, only to find the entire breeding area — which had likely held dozens of nests — had been turned into mulch just prior to their arrival. “It was a wake-up call for me,” Seglund noted gravely. These nest-destroying treatments offer an explanation as to why the pinyon jay population is decreasing despite the expansion of pinyon-juniper woodlands.

Seglund’s research shows that one of the keys to recreating a healthy pinyon jay population is to assure the proliferation of the pinyon pines that contain the bird’s nests. At the same time, she also knows that those same pinyon pines can be damaging to the population of the greater sage-grouse. However, Seglund and her team have found a way to bridge the gap between the jay and grouse’s needs: selectivity.

“We can definitely make winners for both the jays and the sage-grouse,” Seglund says. Selective management is a strategy in which thin, encroaching stands of pinyon-juniper woodlands are removed, opening up sagebrush environment for the greater sage-grouse. Importantly, trees with pinyon jay nests and colonies are left untouched. As it turns out, pinyon jays are not necessarily opposed to the clearing of pinyon-juniper woodlands. The removal of trees via controlled burns creates the perfect buffet for the birds, exposing insects and understory that the forager jays will gladly chow down on. As long as the trees containing their nests are left intact, the jays will readily adapt to the removal of other pinyon pines.

Getting rid of the thin, fringe pinyon-juniper woodland that is choking out the sage-grouse restores the sagebrush habitat the bird so desperately needs. Both the jay and grouse benefit from the food sources created by clearing the trees. The pinyon jay retains its nesting sites. It’s the win-win solution scientists have been looking for in the dilemma facing these two bird species.

With this potential solution in hand, Seglund knows that the next path of action is to raise awareness. Management agencies and landowners in the range of the sage-grouse and pinyon jay need to know which trees to avoid, and which to cultivate. Parkgoers and average citizens who enjoy seeing the birds can also play a part in advocating for the protection of both species.

Seglund is hopeful for the future of the pinyon jay and the greater sage-grouse. “We’re on the right track,” she says. Though researchers and management both still have much to do to protect these birds, the successes she’s seen both in her work in Colorado and her working group colleagues across the Great Basin and Western U.S. are encouraging. “It’s always hard to tease out the specific mechanism that’s driving things. But I’m hopeful because of the interest, the dedication that people are showing will help conserve this bird.” If the good work continues, the long-fought, mutually destructive battle between the pinyon jay and greater sage-grouse may finally be declared over. No longer will the birds be forced to compete, but instead will live in harmony in what Seglund describes as a “mosaic of habitats.” There’s growing hope that the pinyon jay and sage-grouse will not only survive, but flourish — winning examples of how to restore natural balance and bring peace to ravaged ecosystems for all their native species.

About the Author …

Sam Levenhagen is a junior who hails from San Antonio, Tex. She is studying Geology and Political Science with a minor in Earth, Society, and Environmental Sustainability. Sam is pursuing a career in paleoclimatology, with current research focusing on using climate proxies to determine past changes in global wind circulation.

This piece was written for ESE 477, Advanced Environmental Writing, in Fall 2024.