ORNITHOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
655 
Farm Bill. Thus, there has been no real progress in 
restoring sagebrush rangelands despite continued 
loss of these lands. One can conclude that 
restoration is a failure and the long-term prognosis 
is grim as restoration takes a long time (30+ years, 
if it is possible). Federal agencies are very good at 
destroying and encouraging destruction of native 
sagebrush shrubsteppe but their record of restora¬ 
tion is abysmal. One needs to keep in mind that 
about 50% of all rangelands once occupied by 
Sage-Grouse are public lands managed by the 
Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest 
Service. 1 know of no areas where Sage-Grouse 
have re-established their distribution over signif¬ 
icant areas of former habitat. 
The importance of sagebrush is recognized 
throughout the book and several chapters cover 
sagebrush in depth. Chapter 10 by Miller ct al. 
discusses the characteristics of sagebrush habitats 
and Chapter II by W. L. Baker discusses the 
important effects of fire on sagebrush stands. 
There are some differences of opinion about fire 
and how useful older stands of sagebrush might 
he. One view is that all taller, mature and 
overmature (or decadent, to some people) sage¬ 
brush should be managed with fire or other means 
to push succession to younger age classes. The 
other view is that fire is generally bad for Sage- 
Grouse (there are many examples with the Snake 
River Plain in Idaho being really eye-opening) 
and wild fire should be vigorously suppressed, 
especially in low precipitation zones. Further, the 
evidence is clear that controlled hums are 
negative for Sage-Grouse. The knowledge that 
most subspecies of big sagebrush do not resprout 
after fire should be indicative of the effects of fire 
on Sage-Grouse use of burned areas (other than 
the edges). 
There are multiple chapters on factors that affect 
Greater Sage-Grouse ranging from the effects of 
wild horses and burros, predation, parasites, 
diseases, potential for genetic problems, harvest, 
land uses, the human footprint, energy develop¬ 
ment. and environmental and anthropogenic issues. 
Some of these chapters were clearly encouraged by 
toe listing agency (USFWS). Several of these are 
explicitly important. Chapter 9 by Walker and 
Naugle about West Nile virus effects on Sage- 
Grouse is important as this virus seems to be 
uniformly fatal to Sage-Grouse that are exposed to 
it- Fortunately, despite incidences of mortalities in 
multiple locations across the range of the species, 
toe overall impact presently seems to be localized 
and less than expected. Energy development 
(Chapters 20 by Naugle et al. and 21 by Doherty 
et al.) is not localized, and is widespread and 
increasing throughout the occupied distribution of 
Sage-Grouse. There has been a rush to develop 
energy resources on Federal lands in the last 
25 years (considering coal, oil, gas, and wind 
energy) without adequate consideration being 
given to reasonably predictable and actual impacts 
on Sage-Grouse Formerly occupied Sage-Grouse 
habitats have been industrialized with easily 
predictable effects on all wildlife including Sage- 
Grouse. The two chapters on this topic are less than 
candid and appear to support further parceling of 
the habitats without fully understanding the need 
for winter habitat and corridors. Protection of 
’core' areas alone is not sufficient. It is obvious that 
large-scale energy production in sagebrush steppe 
is extremely negative for Sage-Grouse. 
This brings one to a logical discussion of 
population status and dynamics of Greater Sage- 
Grouse. No one agrees as to how many Sage- 
Grouse remain (or were present historically) even 
though 1 published the first review of what might 
be left in 1998. This was not popular at the time 
and remains very contentious. Chapter 15 by 
Gallon et al. takes a look at and analyzes the 
‘data” based on counts of males on leks. Male 
Sage-Grouse conveniently display in spring at 
traditional sites and biologists have counted males 
on leks dating back to the late 1940s. Unfortu¬ 
nately. all used lek sites arc rarely known, all 
known leks are not counted each spring, and it is 
not known what proportion of the males come to 
leks to display or, if present, can even be seen to 
be counted. The sex ratio in populations is skewed 
to females (they live longer than males), but there 
is no agreement as to the actual sex ratios. Further, 
useful long-term (20+ years of uninterupted 
counts of males attending leks) data sets are 
lacking in most areas where Sage-Grouse occur. 
Uniformity of procedures to count males, espe¬ 
cially timing and number of counts of each lek 
spaced over time) was less than desired for many 
years. Improvements were made after 1998 when 
it became clear that petitions for Federal listing 
would materialize and there was a surge in 
number of leks counted and number of counts 
per lek. Garton et al. have tried to make sense of 
all of this material, even though there was a lot of 
'noise* in the data sets. Once can argue if it would 
be better to use a 3- or 5-year average fpr models 
but it may not be useful to do so given the other 
