Columbian sharp-tailed grouse. The present distribution of 

 Columbian sharptails coincides with Kuchler's (1964) sagebrush 

 steppe type and the fescue-wheatgrass type (Miller and Graul 1980). 

 Brown (1971) noted fragmentary populations persisted where major 

 remnant stands of bunch grass and shrubs of the native prairie 

 remain. Sharp-tailed grouse rely primarily on vegetation for food 

 (Pefper 1972) with bud and fruits of deciduous trees used heavily 

 in the winter (Ziegler 1979). Bown (1980) determined a remnant 

 population of Columbian sharp-tailed grouse was still using the 

 grasslands of the Tobacco Plains area north of Eureka. 



3) Populaticai Status 



No quantitative data were available for the mountain grouse 

 populations along the Kootenai River drainage. The U.S. Forest 

 Service An^iual Wildlife Reports (U.S. Dept. Agric. 1938, 1948, 

 1958) stated ruffed grouse were common and more plentiful than the 

 other two species of mountain grouse. Blue grouse were next in 

 abundance and were listed as scarce to common, while the spruce 

 grouse was listed as rare to scarce. The population of Columbian 

 sharp-tailed grouse has been decreasing and exists as a remanant 

 population (Bown 1980). Because of habitat limitations in north- 

 western Montana, Brown (1971) felt the Columbian sharptail was an 

 endangered (non-legal status) species. 



4) Assessment of Impacts 



Ruffed grouse. An unknown quantity of year-round habitat for 

 ruffed grouse was lost to inundation. This species was likely to 

 have occurred throughout the bottomland and bench areas along the 

 Kootenai River and its tributaries. The 4,051 acres of riparian 

 habitat, 159 acres of upland shrub, and a portion of the 14,959 

 acres of coniferous habitat (Table 1) provided the year-round 

 habitat components needed to sustain a ruffed grouse population. 



Blue grouse. Breeding habitat for blue grouse, in the form of 

 open coniferous forests on lower slopes and benches, was lost to 

 inundation. Loss of permanent or "persistent" display sites - 

 located in optimal habitat, generally occupied by older males, and 

 competed for (Lewis and Zwickel 1981) - may have affected the 

 overall pro-ductivity of the local blue grouse population. Tliese 

 persistent display sites are typically downed logs, stumps or rocks 

 in areas where thickets of conifer trees are interspersed with low 

 shrub cover, on lower elevation portions of breeding habitat 

 (Martinka 1972, Lewis and Zwickel 1981). Suboptimal or "tran- 

 sient" display sites are found in less suitable habitats higher in 

 the breeding range, and are frequently vacant (Lewis and Zwickel 

 1981). The fact there are typically surplus males in blue grouse 

 populations in spite of vacant "transient" display sites, empha- 

 sizes the importance of persistent sites to breeding success in 

 this species. If many such sites were lost to inundation, produc- 

 tivity of the blue grouse population may have been reduced when 

 males v/ere forced to utilize transient, suboptimal sites. Loss of 



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