18 May 2015
For those of us who live among forests and fields, the western sagebrush country seems empty and lifeless … but it isn’t.
Stretching across 11 western states, it’s a high cold desert that’s home to pronghorn deer, golden eagles, hawks, prairie dogs, and a beautiful, fascinating bird — the greater sage-grouse — that lives nowhere else on earth.
Most of the year greater sage-grouse are hard to find but in the spring they gather in leks (courtship grounds) where the males strut and call to attract the females. The ladies are so picky that nearly all of them mate with only one or two of the males, then nest hidden in the sagebrush and raise their precocial chicks in the harsh environment.
But humans are changing the sagebrush sea. The greater sage-grouse population has declined 90% since European settlement and soon may be on the brink of extinction. Will the greater sage-grouse be snuffed out?
Watch PBS NATURE‘s season finale, The Sagebrush Sea, on Wednesday May 20 at 8:00pm EDT. In Pittsburgh it’s on WQED.
p.s. The show was filmed and produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Click here for their program website or here for the Facebook page.
(The Sagebrush Sea trailer from PBS NATURE)
“Empty and lifeless” unless you manage to hit those brief but glorious times in Spring and Fall when the wildflowers bloom, which to a flower child like me looks like heaven.