Gunnison Sage Grouse

As goes sagebrush, so goes the Gunnison sage grouse. These highly adapted birds rely on this shrubby vegetation for food, camoflage, and nesting material. Sagebrush rangeland also provides the setting for the species' highly unusual mating dance, a succession of struts and popping noises that has long entertained human observers. Indeed, it is thought that the Utes and other American Indians based some of their own dance rituals upon the sage grouse's courtship routine.

When the Utes still reigned here, Gunnison sage grouse ranged over all of southwestern Colorado and into Utah and Arizona, in flocks as dense as the sage itself. But as settlers began clearing the land in the late 1800s, the Gunnison sage grouse's habitat began shrinking, a process that accelerated with the expansion of residential development in the twentieth century. Dove Creek saw its Gunnison sage grouse population dwindle from several thousand in the mid-1800s to about 150 by the 1990s.

Many other species (including elk and deer) use sagebrush for food, but the Gunnison sage grouse truly cannot survive without it. So in recent years wildlife managers have worked cooperatively with landowners to preserve sagebrush habitat, even to reseed the plant on acreage previously cleared of it. These measures have enable Colorado's Gunnison sage grouse population to stabilize on the small pockets of habitat that remain.