Wyoming Sage Grouse Conservation Management

Introduction

0:00This episode of the Flush Podcast is brought to you by Onyx Hunt, Hoxie Native Seeds, Waltons, the Minnesota Horse and Hunt Club, Marshware Clothing, Ruffland Kennels, Black Gold Dog Food, and by Game Virtual Shooting Simulators. Today, we're taking an in-depth look at sage grouse management and other upland bird populations in the state of Wyoming. Justin Binfett is my guest. He's the Game and Fish Deputy Chief for the great state of Wyoming. We'll discuss his role in the big conservation picture and the news that recently broke about sage grouse work groups

0:33that were dissolved and why they were dissolved. Plus, we'll find out where management is headed for sage grouse and other upland birds in the state of Wyoming, their population trends, what he thinks the future holds for hunting seasons, and how we as hunters can help.

Personal Story

0:57Welcome to another episode of the Flush Podcast. I am your host, Travis Frank, Big Al, as always is our producer. Alex, when I was a kid, I remember having fish fries with friends and families in our neighborhood. We did it pretty regularly, actually. And I was one of the fish wranglers myself. So I really enjoyed having these fish fries because that meant I got to go fishing. The fish wrangler. Yeah, fish wrangler. So last night, we had a fish fry. And it was with the fish that we caught on our

1:33spring break ice fishing trip to Lake of the Woods. The trip that was myself and two other dads with eight of our kids. I know. And then, but we also technically had the elders. That's what our kids named them, which was my buddy, Dusty, his dad, Doug. And then Doug had his brother, Donnie. And then Donnie had his son, which would be older than me. So they were the elders and they were in a fish house. And they stayed well away from the chaos that was our little community of kids. And either

2:06way, we kept enough fish. And last night, we all came together for a big fish fry. And we had our wives join us, all the kids and the parents and my dad. And in total, there were 21 of us. And I just

Tragic News

2:19remember thinking how grateful I was last night to be able to gather and share that meal together. And the fish our kids caught were the centerpiece of the dinner. And everyone brought a couple of dishes to make it just a really big feast. And I just, I want to encourage our listeners that if there are traditions that you remember as a kid, that I really think it's valuable to keep them going today. And to bring your kids into it, there's, there's just so much happening. I feel like in life,

2:49the chaos of it, how fast paced it is today, that when we all got the opportunity to come together again, I'm just thinking to myself, I don't want to miss these times. And I don't want to not do these kinds of things because I haven't done it in such a long time. And, and I, I remember thinking how great it was that we were all together. And I think I'm, you know,

Sentimental Reflection

3:13possibly feeling a little bit sentimental right now, just given the news here, people that listen to this bird hunting podcast are all over the country, but here in Minnesota, there was a tragic death that happened to one of our NHL reporters here, Jesse Pierce, and her three children died in a house fire on Saturday night, Friday night, Saturday morning. Um, it's just the, it's just an awful tragic, uh, just, it's just heartbreaking. Alex, you worked with her and I know this,

3:49this really hit you hard too. Yeah. Um, I was Jesse's producer on the bar down beauties for a couple months. Um, we would do live shows and her and Chris, Chris and Kroll. And then she left, we, we were still friends. Um, we'd keep up, keep in touch, keep up with each other. You know, she was a female reporter in the NHL and in the sports world, especially in the NHL. That's hard to do. And Jesse was one of the hardest working people, loved her kids. Then the fact that she, that you're talking about traditions, the fact that she was at the rink 24 seven, but also made time for

4:24her kids. You know, the day that the day before this happened, she was at the rink in the morning. Um, Michael Russo told me who's another writer for the, for the wild and the NHL that she was talking about how, how happy she was to go to this, this ice cream shop, um, with her kids that night. And then she posted a photo of, of her and her kids after they got that ice cream. Um, so the fact that she still made time for her kids and for work, for work and for time with friends and people, you know, when we would do live shows with Jesse, um, she, her friends would be there,

4:58but she would still make sure somebody like me was a part of the conversation and, and felt like you were there with part of the group, part of the, part of the friend group. So it's just, it's just terrible. And my thoughts go out to her husband, Mike, because I can't imagine being on a work trip and, and I can't imagine the plane ride back knowing everything you own your, your wife, your kids, your dog, and everything else, your house, everything in the house is, is gone. So I'm just, my heart breaks and my heart goes out to everybody in the hockey community right now.

5:32Um, they're all close to, close to us here at Talk North and Run Share Productions. So. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just tragic. And I was listening to the conversations on the, on their podcast. They were just sharing stories about her on the way home last night. And as I was heading to the fish fry, I was listening to that. And I, I just walked into that gathering just with a little bit different perspective that I just want people to remember that every day is just such a gift. And we have the opportunity to do great things every single day and don't miss it.

Guest Introduction

6:04Don't miss it because you just never know. Um, today's guest is Justin Benfit. On a lighter note. Yes. On a lighter note. But I'm really grateful that Justin, that you took the time to join us today. Um, you're the game and fish deputy chief, which that's kind of a mouthful, don't you think? That's a, can you just slim your title down a little bit for the state of Wyoming? That sounds important there. Uh, yeah. So, um, Travis, thanks for having me. So since we last met, I have changed jobs. So

6:38I'm one of our deputy chiefs of the wildlife division. So I was going to say, yeah, cause we hunted together back in 2018 and back then you were a biologist, but my goodness, look how much you've grown since then, Justin. Yeah. I'm five foot six. I'm growing every day. So is Travis. Well, I just love hunting with, with other men that are the same height as me because then I, you know, like if I hunt with Tyler, I mean, I feel like, you know, they're always making short jokes, but we, we see eye to eye literally and figuratively, Justin agreed. So what is

7:15the new role as game and fish deputy chief of wildlife mean? Well, you know, we wear a lot of hats. I would say one of the more prominent roles play now is just, so I, I kind of help oversee, um, our season settings. So just all the management programs within the wildlife division. So within our agency, we have a fish division and wildlife division, fiscal, et cetera. But within the wildlife division, that's kind of where all the wildlife

7:45biologists, the game wardens and the habitat biologists, um, are housed. And so, yeah. Oh, kind of oversee just, just really the, the management of those and then, um, supervise a few of our, our programs like our research program and large carnivore section and our non-game program. But, um, and, and sage grouse is, uh, is, is one of those programs.

Sage Grouse Conservation

8:08Yeah. And we're going to talk in depth into the sage grouse management because there's a recent article that kind of went viral. And our mutual buddy, George Lyle, who says, hi, by the way, he, uh, sent me a link and he's like, look who, um, look who got a new job over there in Wyoming, but also look at the news that's happening over here. This is something that I think we want to learn more about and understand a little bit more. So we're going to, we're going to dive into that.

8:39But, um, why, why did you take this job to begin with? And how does the process work to move up the ranks to now oversee? Uh, I mean, you're, you're kind of the big kahuna over there, right? Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Um, uh, like I said, I'm only five foot six. So, um, you know, you're asking a question and I'm not even sure I know the answer to Travis. Um, it, uh, it's not because I'm now wealthy beyond my wildest dreams or anything like that. It was, you know, the reality

9:11is, is, is I've, I live in Casper, um, which isn't kind of the central part of the state. I've spent the vast majority of my career here in Casper. I've stayed here for personal reasons, but I, I hunt and fish over the entire state of Wyoming. I love Wyoming. I go to every corner and when I'm not doing that, I'm, I'm backpacking or, and I love landscape photography, wildlife photography, that sort of thing. So I literally spend time in every corner of the state and I, I have for a long time and continue to do it. And so really my main motivation for changing jobs was just because

9:48I, I do have a sincere, um, passion and I guess interest in wildlife management all over the entire state. And so this affords me an opportunity to, to have some involvement with, um, with how we manage wildlife across, you know, the ninth largest state in the union. So I really enjoy it. Yeah. And people, and there's a saying, people don't care how much, you know, until they know how much you care, right? You've heard that before. And obviously spending time hunting with you, I got

10:22to learn more about you, but also just to see your knowledge of the land and the wildlife and how much you care about it. And so obviously congratulations to you for, um, your hard work and dedication being rewarded with this new leadership role that you're in. But with that comes a lot of decisions, right? A lot of responsibility. And I, I'm going to read this title here. So this is the article that I was sent from George and which I then saw kind of go sort of viral in the upland bird hunting world.

10:57It said, Wyoming abruptly defunds, dissolves sage grouse conservation groups after 21 year run. And then you were quoting the article explaining the termination of the work groups, which is really why I reached out to have you on the show today. So we can dive into this.

Work Group Dissolution

11:14Wyoming has roughly 40% of the sage grouse left on our planet. Um, that's, that's a big, big chunk of the population, which is why I think people thought when they read this headline, they defund, they dissolve the work groups. Does that mean they're given up on conservation for sage grouse? What is happening over there? Justin, can you help us wrap our head around this a little bit more? Yeah, I sure can. So, you know, um, I certainly have a lot of respect for

11:48the organization that put some of that media out, but you know, I mean, there's always some headlines are, are, are, are meant to garner some attention. Right. And so I, I really think at the end of the day, it was, it, I guess your perspective would be, um, or, or whatever you've heard in your circles would be kind of much ado about nothing. Um, in the reality is, is, is in Wyoming, when we made this

12:19decision to dissolve the local working groups, it was a long time coming. Um, and I can get in the why here in a little bit, but when we actually broke the news to these local working group members themselves, um, for the most part, it was no surprise whatsoever. A lot of folks saw this coming. It was a long time coming. There's a lot of good rationale and reasoning. And in the, the reality is it's not going to really change the landscape of sage grouse conservation in Wyoming at all. Okay. Um, that's kind of what I thought. So I'm in a work group here in Minnesota working with the DNR.

12:54I'm a volunteer. They asked, uh, because I have a care for the resource that I would join one of these work groups. And I don't know what the sage grouse work groups look like, but I have to imagine it's similar. We gather kind of sort of regularly and it's mostly just to listen to what the DNR is working on in fisheries management here in our state. And then we give some ideas about what we think or what we know and how we understand. We ask

13:25questions. We say, yeah, that, that works great. That, that sounds awesome. Let's move forward with that. Yes. I think that's a good idea. No, I don't. But ultimately we're not the ones out there doing a lot of the work. Um, we're just, we're just kind of overseeing the DNR's thoughts on some of the projects and giving our input into it. I will admit that a lot of times we can get pretty sidetracked. There's a lot of opinions and we can sit there for a few hours. And at the end of the day,

13:57I don't know that we necessarily made progress sometimes. Um, you know, so that's just a glimpse into one small work group here in Minnesota. But you know, you guys had these sage grouse groups for a 21 year span, right? Is it something that, where they kind of just, they ran their course? Yeah, they did. And so just to back up a little bit, I mean, I guess if folks really want to understand the reasons for dissolving them, they got to understand the reason why they were

14:29formulated in the first place. And so, so they first, and I want to preface all this by saying, um, I, I can't, I can't, um, articulate strongly enough how valuable the contributions of these working group members were over the past 21 years. I mean, we pulled together a bunch of folks across eight working groups in the state. So in any given time, I think we had over 80 local working group

15:00members, um, spread out across these eight groups. Um, these folks were brought together in, in 2004 and their primary purpose for getting together then was to formulate local conservation plans, um, to address the needs of sage grouse on a more localized level. And these groups were intentionally designed to have a mixture of all the various stakeholders that were important to that local working group areas. So for example, if bentonite mining or coal mining was a, it was a big

15:35landscape use, you would have a representative from the mining industry, oil and gas industry, wind industries, agriculture, um, the, the, the non or, uh, NGO type communities. So Audubon society, folks, that sort of thing, public at large, and those folks with a vested interest in sage grouse hunting management, that sort of thing. So it was really a broad, um, array of stakeholders brought together in each local working group. And then, um, and then those groups were tasked with formulating

16:08these conservation plans because all the while there was this pending potential listing decision under the endangered species act. And in one in across the West, but especially in Wyoming, um, if, if there was a change to list sage grouse as threatened or endangered under the ESA, though, there are major, major land use and economic ramifications for the state of Wyoming. So the governor chart, um, tasked us with, with formulating these groups. Um, they came to be in 2004.

16:42And so not only did they develop these local conservation plans, they were also allotted some money from the Wyoming state legislature to implement conservation practices to benefit sage grouse and sagebrush habitats in those areas. And so that's a model that was in place for a long time. Um, over those 21 years, um, there were 377 different projects that came to fruition, um, that, that they run the gamut of sage grouse conservation, whether it's research projects,

17:16radio collar and birds to identify habitat use selection, those sorts of things, um, or, or sagebrush manipulation projects, uh, water developed, I mean, just a whole host of projects. Um, and so that, that basically what were the two primary tasks of the local working group. Then years later in 2017, the legislature changed the funding model and that model, um, came to the Wyoming game and fish

17:47commissions budget. Those projects continued, um, uh, up until this last year. But the other thing that really changed is that, um, with the pending listing decision, um, the state of Wyoming and the governor at the time developed an executive order, and that basically guided sage grouse policy and management in Wyoming. And with that, they formed a sage grouse implementation team. And this team is comprised of

18:19lots of folks from, from the BLM and mining and oil and gas. And, and again, audible, it's like a broader representation of, of those eight working groups, but come together and they actually, um, serve as an advising body to the governor that actually informed sage grouse policy in Wyoming. So that role basically, um, transitioned away from the local working groups and their conservation plans to, um, a broader policy committee that advises the governor's office. Um, and then, and then since

18:54then, and that started in 2008, since then the primary role of the local working groups got relegated to just funding conservation practices. That has now changed, but I'll, I'll take a pause there. Um,

Habitat Management

19:08cause that's a lot of information. Yeah. No, it's, it's good information to know. I want people to be able to understand that there's a, there's a lot of moving parts when, when we're talking about these, these decisions that are made, right. And, and how you get to where you've gotten in this process. Yeah. And so it, it really, because of the landscape scale nature and, and those implications of a, of a

19:38potential listing decision. Yeah. Those, those policy level decisions need to be made at the highest levels in the state and how, and how that state handles that. But, you know, as those local working groups continued to meet, it just essentially is what it became was, was when they were relegated to more just simply funding projects, it actually resulted in a really, it became an increasingly inefficient way to allocate money because we were still convening these groups a couple of times a

20:10year. In some cases it required travel and things like that. And it was to, to allocate or allocate sums of money that are actually, they, they kind of changed where they got, they're relatively small in the scheme of things. And again, I'm not trying to minimize the contributions of anybody or the contributions of, of the legislature's funding or the game and fish commissions funding. But the reality is, is it, it, it was a program that went from, from just over $500,000 a year to $295,000 a

20:44year. And then we were spreading that out across the entire state. And the thing that I want your listeners to really consider with this is by no means does, does this dissolution of working groups indicate Wyoming is somehow walking away from sage grouse and sagebrush conservation. In fact, the exact opposite is true. There is more work being done in the sagebrush biome in Wyoming than there ever has been really in the history of Wyoming statehood. We now have some major federal funding

21:17sources like through the national fish and wildlife program. Um, uh, the state of Wyoming, um, contributes more money to sagebrush restoration, um, than it ever has in the past. We have things like the Wyoming wildlife natural resource trust fund. Um, just last year that the legislature allocated 49 and a half million dollars for some wildfire restoration. An awful lot of that was focused in some sagebrush habitats that burned in one of our Northeast core areas. Um, the legislature re-upped some additional

21:51funding for, for cheatgrass work again this year. So the bottom line is, is there's actually more work going on in the sagebrush biome than there ever has been in the past. And, and we're just looking for better ways to, um, engage our stakeholders involved with sagebrush conservation without getting them together a couple of times a year to allocate 40 grand at a time for a work. Well, that's why I think it's so valuable to have these kinds of conversations. And we, we have the ability to do

22:21it right now. I mean, you're, you're talking to thousands of bird hunters right now that are from all over the country. And if they just read the headlines of that article, it, it sounds terrible, right? Their opinion would be, Oh my gosh, we're not, what are we doing here? You know, and the article doesn't really dive into necessarily that you guys do have this other group that is kind of, I guess, taking over the job that the work groups originally had, right? So it, was it a redundancy to have two essential work groups going at the same time? I mean, is that a fair way to look at it?

22:57Yeah. And it's also separating, it's separating where the policy level decisions are from, from say conservation and habitat management. So what was the pushback? Did you have pushback then from any of the stakeholders? I mean, there, there, there's, there were folks that, I mean, there were some individuals, um, that dedicated 21 years of their life to these local working groups and, and folks that are extremely vested in, in all wildlife conservation, but with a particular emphasis

23:31on sage grouse. And so, um, we don't ever want to minimize those contributions and certainly want to recognize those. Um, so, but the fact is, is that the local conservation plans that were developed in the early 2000s, those served a very valuable purpose and helped shape, um, sage grouse policy across the entire state. But the reality is when some of the larger policy decisions came on, like the governor's executive order, and that created what are called sage grouse core areas

24:02in Wyoming, which actually served as a model for the entire Western United States. All the Western states and sage grouse range have adopted a version there of, of, of sage grouse core areas where there's, there's a special set of restrictions that go on into land use planning and development within these core areas. They're, they're called different things in different states, like priority habitat areas and things like that. Um, but that, that really helped fundamentally shape sage grouse management across the West. And those are decisions that require stakeholder buy-in,

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28:15Sure. Does this make your job more challenging then? Do you have more that you need to manage now

Cheatgrass Control

28:21because of the way that the model has changed? Well, at the end of the day, Wyoming manages the bird. We manage the population. I should say Wyoming Game and Fish Department, excuse me. We're not the habitat managers. Now, we certainly provide a bunch of time and resources into sagebrush conservation and sage-grouse habitat conservation, but we're not the habitat managers that the landowners are.

28:51And in Wyoming, it's the private property, ag producers, it's the Bureau of Land Management in the state of Wyoming and the Forest Service are the primary players there. So these policy-level decisions, as we're talking about land use planning, involve all of those entities. Gotcha. So the $295,000 that we're being allocated to this, somebody might say, okay, now where does that money go now? First, where does the money come from? Is it hunter dollars,

29:24hunter and angler dollars? And then what are you doing with that 295k? Well, so for years that for most of, you know, whether it was the legislature providing the funding or the Game and Fish Commission, it was $548,000 a year went to these local working groups. It was just in the last year that it got cut to $295,000. And part of that is, is the Game and Fish just assessing all of these programs and seeing where we can just be more efficient with not only

29:59just the dollars, but also the time it takes to administer these programs and get the money actually out on the ground. And so basically is what we did is we folded that into a more of a habitat, just a general habitat budget with a focus on, on invasive annual grasses. So in Wyoming, that's cheatgrass, metnata, some of those things. And an awful lot of that focus gets spent in the sagebrush biome. So sagebrush habitat. How do you fight against the cheatgrass?

30:36That's a big one. I know it's a big one. Time, money, chemical. I mean, it's a challenge. It's, you know, there's, there's a lot of headway being made in the West. Are you winning the fight? You think you're winning it? I, I would say we're far from winning the fight now, but we're making, we're making some really substantial progress and we're making progress really in two arenas. So, you know, the private company has come up, um, private industries come up with some new and improved chemicals. So for years,

31:08you know, plateau is kind of our, our main, um, uh, way to chemically treat cheatgrass, um, now with the chemical rejuvenate coming online. Um, and there's some, there's a lot of work being done to evaluate, um, the proper application of, of rejuvenate. And sometimes it's in concert with the plateau. Um, uh, but anyway, there's, there's a lot of promising signs in the longer term cheatgrass

31:38control where it's applied, but it's also, you know, these applications are incredibly expensive. Um, I, I would say some of the really good news is, is, is in Wyoming, the recognition that invasive annual grasses are a huge problem and a threat to the entire landscape of Wyoming. And whether that's wildlife habitat, sage grouse conservation, or just simple agricultural, um, you know, rangeland health type issues, I think there's a lot of recognition across the state that

32:09we need to allocate more resources. And certainly that, um, is manifesting itself in the way the state of Wyoming is, is funding cheatgrass control across the state. For somebody, let's say in Ohio or even Minnesota here, um, they, they maybe have never seen or hunted in cheatgrass and they might say, well, geez, it's grass, right? Aren't we asking everybody to put more grass on the landscape? Why is it a bad thing? Can you explain the effects that cheatgrass has on the landscape out in the West and what it does to all wildlife species?

32:46Yeah. I mean, it's, cheatgrass is just really insidious. I mean, first and foremost, it dries the country out and it replaces it. It, it, it basically can take over the more desirable rangeland species. So cheatgrass can, it's really competitive. It's Wyoming's grasses, these, these high elevation deserts in the West, the native grass communities, um, are, are perennial grasses. A lot of them are bunch grass communities, say like a blue bunch of wheat grass or things like that. Um, you know,

33:18they have been replaced with some Western wheat grass over, over the last century in a lot of places, but that even still is a perennial grass. Cheatgrass is an annual grass. It can come in, it can germinate really, really early. It can outcompete. It can utilize moisture before some of the perennial grasses have the chance. And then it just dries out and it cures out really quickly. And as it expands, it can choke out some of the things that are really valuable. Say if we're talking about sage grouse, um, but really for all things, mule deer, pronghorn, you name it,

33:49a host of grassland bird species that require insects, things like that, as it replaces some of these, these herbaceous components like flowering for communities, um, things like that. It just dries the country out. And, and then the other kind of even more insidious thing, and this is especially an issue in, in the great basin states like Nevada, where it can then return, it can cause a fire cycle interval to shorten, and you can have more wildfire in low elevation basin country that burns sagebrush.

34:25Cheatgrass then comes back in over top of it, and it becomes that much harder for sagebrush to rest. So it's dominant, huh? Yeah. And in a lot of these systems, like the fire, the natural fire interval is greater than a hundred years. And in some of these places where cheatgrass has taken over, it leads to a much more frequent fire cycle, which can then make it, it can, you can just wipe out entire stands of sagebrush. And ultimately that's not good for anything. Right. Well, before we turn the microphones on, you were just talking about how dry it is out there

34:57right now. Did you guys have snow this winter at all? And, you know, you're off to just a historically dry start to this spring, aren't you? Yeah. We've, you know, we've had a handful of really dry years in the past 25 years, really since the turn of the century, but this, this seems to be unprecedented, just the overall lack of precipitation in all winter long and in the spring in much of the state with, um, unseasonably hot conditions. I mean, daffodils coming up in my yard in January. Um,

35:33my wife's honeybees were out trying to find, find, uh, some pollen in, in early January, just never seen anything like that. It's been really hot, been really dry. And unfortunately not a whole lot of moisture on the horizon. And it's, it's affecting the majority of the state. We had some decent snowpack and some of the higher mountain ranges in Western Wyoming, but for the most part, yeah, it's, it's pretty scary out there right now. So as, as the, as a leader in your state that you are, what does that mean for you? I mean, do you feel like it's unprecedented? You said the word, right?

36:08But you have a job to do and how does this weather affect your ability to do your job and change where you need to focus your efforts and what can you even do?

36:23Well, we can continue to do what we can when it comes to, to the good work that we are doing in collaboration with a lot of our partners, whether that's BLM, forest service, private, you know, the agricultural community, um, nonprofits, et cetera. We can continue to do the good conservation work that we're doing. We certainly, you know, when you get the dry aired West of a lot of work you do tends to focus around, you know, these music riparian areas, that's where you get a lot

36:55of bang for your buck with putting conservation dollars on the ground. That, that type of emphasis is going to be all the more important in these really dry years. So we'll, we'll continue to do what we can from a habitat, habitat conservation standpoint, but you know, a lot of it, yeah, it's in mother nature's hands and all we can do is really prepare for the, the potential, I guess the potentially bad things that could come down the horizon. I mean, you know, in Fort,

37:27you know, fortunately we have a lot of spring left, you know, it was fairly dry last winter and then we really turned a corner in April and May. Um, but we can't just pin our, our hopes on that. So yeah, we have to, I mean, as we're entering our, our big game season setting right now, those, you know, this dry winter and potentially really dry growing season is something in the back of our minds and how we prep for potentially more wildlife conflict on an irrigated fields and things like that. But especially as it, as it pretends for, um, fawn production for deer and antelope populations,

38:03like things like that, and certainly nesting cover for all of our upland game birds, it's, those are all things that concern us. And so it's something we're, we're keeping an eye on for sure. Just curious, big, big game dominates the West, big game dominates deer dominate all over the country. What amount of your time do you spend on say big game management versus sage grouse and upland bird management? Well, it depends on what you mean by management. So if we're talking about just how

38:33we allocate hunting opportunities and how we actually manage the populations, you know, Wyoming, we don't spend a ton of time on our upland game populations. We, you know, we tend to set our, our hunting seasons to be able to accommodate the highs and the lows of population swings. So we feel like we're not going to over harvest our, our bird numbers when populations take a dip, but we're also still going to provide plenty of opportunity when populations are on the upswing or near the top. Um, you know, some populations like sage grouse tend to really cycle on fairly

39:08regular intervals. So we try to, to manage for that, you know, kind of somewhere in between big games is something that we, you know, have a lot more management emphasis on in terms of collecting survey data, you know, aerial, um, helicopter based surveys, um, uh, you know, with as far as like marking animals and understanding seasonal movements and migration corridor, like things like that, you know, certainly big game get a lot more emphasis than, than the other

39:41species. But when it comes to, to habitat management, it's, it's a much more holistic approach that we take.

Sage Grouse Population Trends

39:48So considering that you have roughly 40% of the sage grouse left on the planet, um, you know, I think, I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but we have seen a drastic decline overall across North America in the sage grouse population. Um, that's a long range trend. Where is it at today? And have you seen any signs of growth or are we still on a decline and how is

40:18that affecting the big picture and the management and what hunters can expect moving forward?

40:25Well, so there's, there's a couple of things to unpack there. So as in the state as a whole, like I, I kind of was just referencing sage grouse populations are, there really are cyclic, cyclical. Um, they tend to cycle on about, on a roughly 10 year timeframe. So in Wyoming, um, we had a really, really big peak in sage grouse numbers. And when, when we say sage grouse numbers, the way we estimate sage grouse population, we don't estimate population like abundance,

40:56so to speak, in terms of, we don't provide an estimate of number of birds in the state, but we estimate trends and we base that based on, um, how many males are attending Lex across the state. So we have an extremely robust surveillance program. When we were talking about just a little bit ago about big game, maybe get, um, more time and money is spent on big game. Um, I need to correct myself a little bit because, um, Wyoming, we do a phenomenal job of monitoring sage grouse

41:27Lex across the state. We monitor over 90% of our Lex on average across the state, which is a huge effort, um, that, uh, most other Western States don't get anywhere near 90%. So it's a huge surveillance effort. And so we will take the average number of males per, per active Lex that we check, and then basically use that to, to infer population trend over time. So getting back to what I was starting to say, we had a big peak in male LEC attendance in 2006. Then we had it again in 16 and then,

42:01and then, and then since, and then it kind of took a dip through that 2021 timeframe. And then the past four years, we've really built numbers back up. 2025 was the best year since 2021. Um, well, and really it got back to near those near peak levels of 2016. And so we think we're at our next peak. And we're either going to see a few more birds this, this coming spring, or we're going to start to probably cycle back down again. But, um, if you ask me again in another month, I'll, I'll have some

42:36better numbers. We might have to check back in. Yeah. Yeah. The LECing season is just getting underway in earnest, um, late March through that first week of May or kind of the peak LECing times across the state. So the other thing I guess I want to say though, is what, what that means for sage grouse hunters is it's also a mixed bag because while there's been some good news, we've grown a lot of birds in the past four or five years. We've, it's been a good mix of, um, uh, chick production and good chick survival. Um, but in Northeast Wyoming, things are still trending

43:11pretty poorly. And so that's actually resulted in some changes. We've, you know, um, starting a few years back, we actually closed all of Northeast Wyoming to hunting. Unfortunately, we're not seeing this, that the same relative rebound in sage grouse numbers there that we are in the rest of the state. And that's why you're kind of getting on the edge of, of sage grouse range while there are sage grouse populations in Eastern Montana and the Dakotas, you're starting to get on the edge of

43:44sage grouse range and sage brush habitat is just much more. It's much more of a mixed mosaic. It's not these vast expanses of, of just giant seas of sage brush, like you see in the rest of Wyoming's basin country. And so as you, as you, because you have a more mixed mosaic of habitat, they're that much more sensitive to disturbances and, and population fluctuations and things like that. So there's a lot going on on the landscape there. That's, that's likely contributed to it, but

44:18those populations were smaller to begin with. And, you know, like the, the fires we had just last year talking about the cheek grass spring and that sort of thing, or two years ago, I should say, I mean, you know, that was just another, you know, one of those cuts, you know, death by a thousand cuts thing. And, and it, it took out a lot of really, really important sage brush habitat. And so we've seen that unfortunately play out over the years in Northeast Wyoming. Is there any hope for a rebound in that habitat in that part of the state? I mean, what, what can we do?

44:51Well, we're trying, you know, that's where we're focused in a lot of our invasive annual grass efforts. Um, but we've done some, a lot of sagebrush restoration work, some of that in partnership with like, say the oil and gas industry and the mining industry and things like that. But there's been a lot of work that our folks have focused on not only us, but BLM and forest service with the national grasslands. Um, that, you know, whether it's sagebrush seedling transplants or sagebrush seeding efforts, we actually tried a big aerial seeding effort,

45:25um, just this last year, well, in 2025. Um, so there's a, there's a lot of work going on to try to restore sagebrush where we can in that part of the state and really in other parts of the state as well. Can you explain to somebody who doesn't understand sagebrush, just how hard it is and how long it takes to grow that? I mean, we have listeners in the Southeast or East that maybe have never walked in it and can't wrap their head around that. I mean, just how much time does

45:56it really take? Yeah, it's, it's really a challenge and it, I mean, it depends, you know, so there's eight different subspecies of sagebrush in Wyoming. A lot of folks don't really realize that some are, um, more readily respond to disturbances such as fire than others. So for example, like mountain big sagebrush actually responds fairly readily. Um, uh, um, but most of Wyoming in, in terms of where the, where sage grouse habitat is, aside from some of our higher elevate and elevation

46:30mountain ranges where we have some migratory populations, most of Wyoming is Wyoming big sagebrush stands and Wyoming big sagebrush is really slow to respond to disturbances, especially in these drier areas. So it, it kind of almost takes, you know, the planets aligning just right to get sagebrush to Germany. Sagebrush seed itself is really expensive to collect. So that's also a limiting factor when we're talking about seeding projects, but you need just kind of the perfect

47:01climate or climate regime based on temperatures and moisture and timing of moisture to really get sagebrush to germinate. So that's why our efforts have focused on things like not only aerial seeding, ground seeding, but also in some places, just sagebrush seedling transplants, you know, with seedlings that are grown or germinated, like say in a greenhouse somewhere. So, um, it's, it's, it's, it's challenged and it's, it's expensive. Um, but it's worth it where it works.

47:34Well, absolutely. Uh, we want to continue the fight because I mean, there's, there's been some people that I talked to and I remember this, even when you and I hunted together before I left here, I was talking to some people. I said, I'm going sage grouse hunting. They said, enjoy it. You might never be able to do it again. And I was like, you think so? And they're like, yeah, I bet in our lifetime they're going to close sage grouse hunting out West. Do you think that's the case, Justin? Do you think in our lifetime we might see sage grouse hunting seasons closed?

48:08Well, I never, you never want to say never, right? So certainly sage grouse seasons, I have closed in places around the West when opportunity has really been curtailed in places. Um, I have, to be honest with you, I haven't even kept up in, in the past couple of years with where some of the other states have gone, but, um, yeah, uh, sage grouse hunting opportunity really has been curtailed. It's certainly, it's been more and more restricted in Wyoming. I mean, like I was just saying, we'd

48:40closed all of sage grouse hunting in Northeast Wyoming. It, it, you know, the first closure was in Southeast Wyoming and then parts of Northeast Wyoming, it got expanded there. We've closed opportunity or hunting clear over in, in the Jackson area where we have a small little island population of birds, but Wyoming has fought really hard to maintain the hunting opportunity because we strongly believe, well, we know that we still have robust enough populations in, in central and,

49:11in Western, Southwestern Wyoming to, to maintain a conservative hunting season. So that's our plan for the foreseeable future. Um, we've, we also feel like, you know, in Wyoming, if we get to the point where we have 40% of the world's population, like you've talked about Travis, and if we get to the point where we can't allow a hunting season for a bird that's been managed as a game bird for the better part of a century, then maybe it is time to list the birds, but we're still a long ways

49:47from that, at least here in Wyoming. But I also want to be respectful of, of what some of the other Western states are dealing with because they don't have the vast expanses of sage grouse habitat like we do and the number of birds that we do. And the fact is, is that hunting in certain places can be what biologists refer to as an additive source of mortality. So is it compensatory? Are we shooting just some birds that would die anyways? And, um, we can provide that opportunity on a sustainable basis, but

50:17decades ago, there was research that came out that basically highlighted that if populations get small enough and fragmented enough, hunting and hunter harvest can be an additive source of mortality, meaning you're removing birds from that population that wouldn't have otherwise been removed due to natural processes like weather predation, things like that. So when the hunt is on your dog's performance matters, every step, every sprint, every retrieve,

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53:30Well, I think our role as hunters, and anybody listening to this right now, we really have to take a moment and think about our impact out on the land, and particularly when it comes to non-resident bird hunters. Now, hunters in the upland world, we move around. We never stop. We

54:01don't sit and wait for a deer to come to us. We're always on the move. We travel. We go hunt in different places in different states, but I've been thinking about this. There is somebody, when I leave Minnesota and I go hunt and I walk, I step foot on the ground, there's somebody managing that place that lives there in that area, and it's their job to protect it and manage it. When I show up, I have an effect on what they need to do to protect it. Everybody listening right now has an impact on

54:39the land and the wildlife that live there when they go hunt somewhere. And right now in the state of Montana, this season, there's a 10-day window where non-residents cannot hunt state or state-managed lands for upland birds. And a lot of hunters are mad about that. They're like, what are we going to do? We got to change this. And in my mind, I'm like, hunters cause this. There are people that have to

55:13manage the resources and things that have happened on the ground by bird hunters have forced local managers to make a change. So you can get mad at them for making the change, right? We can get mad at the fish and game chief in Montana or the legislator for making these changes, but the changes were caused by hunters and their actions and the effects of what happened on the landscape, right? At some point,

55:44we all have to take a look at ourselves and say, we all play a role in this, right? And I'm not going to get mad at you, Justin, if you have to make a change because your job is to protect the resource, right? I want to enjoy the resource. I want to come out and see it, experience it. I want my kids to be able to say someday that they saw a sage grouse fly out of a sagebrush flat, but I can't get mad at you if you change laws to protect those birds because hunters have had an effect on it, right? I mean,

56:15you guys aren't looking to change laws right now, but other states are, and we all need to take a big look at our impact that we're having when we leave and go somewhere else because somebody else has to manage that. Well, yeah, and I certainly don't want to comment on things in other states, but you know, it's something that we're constantly monitoring and some of that's through data we collect and some of it's just through observation and just how things play out in the public sphere

56:50of wildlife management, right? So, for example, one of the changes that we implemented just two years ago, and this was a long time coming, was in Wyoming now to hunt sage grouse, you have to have a sage grouse permit. It's a free permit, but we admittedly had, did not do the best job of tracking sage grouse harvest data over time. And that's because in Wyoming, you only need to possess an

57:21upland bird license. But we have other things like partridge seasons that go through the end of January. We've got waterfowl seasons that go even later than that. And so we would, we got to a point where we were surveying hunters like clear into March about what their sage grouse harvest was back in September. And it just wasn't the best way to do things. So now we have this permit and that's allowing us to track hunter effort and harvest. And you ask, what can hunters do? Like, that's an

57:53example of it. Like, fill out your darn harvest survey. I mean, you almost got a bleep out of me. I almost even cussed here, Travis. It's so frustrating as a wildlife manager. Like, we rely on that kind of information so much to manage the wildlife populations that all your listeners care so much about. So we do need to track sage grouse hunter participation because sage grouse, unlike a lot of species, a lot of upland bird species like partridge and things like that, I mean, yeah,

58:26locally you can hunt, you can hunt a chucker population out a little bit. You're not going to kill them all. You're going to make them unhuntable after a while. If you have too much pressure, I leave it to you to decide how that works with the rough grouse in the Minnesota woods or something like that. But sage grouse are something that at a local level, you can actually exert an undue amount of, of harvest pressure. And that's because sage grouse, unlike most bird species, I mean, you know, similar to let's say like a sharp tail or a prairie chicken, but especially with

58:57sage grouse, they are so hardwired. They exhibit so much what we call sight fidelity to every aspect of their life. These, these birds winter in the same areas, they raise their chicks in the same areas. I mean, I personally have had collared birds where I had a hen that nested 19 miles away from the lek in which she bred at. She nested under the exact same sagebrush plant year after year, 19 miles away. That is how hardwired these birds are to every aspect of their life throughout the entire year.

59:30And so when you have hunters that show up and hunt the same birds year in and year out and, and, or, and we have a relatively short season. And again, we feel like our seasons are sustainable, but if hunters are localized and just hunting these same birds and then they're eating birds each night to stay under their possession limit and things like that, um, at a local level at even at the lek level or local subpopulation level, you can't have an impact. And so it's like spread that out over time. Um, maybe

1:00:01think about some other things, uh, you know, there was a, there was a one year stint where a change was made at our commission to extend our chukar and Hungarian partridge seasons clear through the end of February. And that got a lot of traction in the bird hunting world. Um, that resulted in a lot of calls, a lot of interest. We click quickly pulled that back. Um, I, that was one of the things I, I really pushed pulling that back to the end of January and I made some folks upset by doing it, but there was a lot of motivations behind that, whether it's hunting paired birds, they're,

1:00:33they're starting to form pair bonds in early part of February, but, but also things like we got, and I'm one of those guys, right? I'm out chukar hunting every weekend through the end of January. I'm a diehard, but here I am out there yelling at my dog or torching off shotgun rounds in crucial mule deer winter age. The chukars share a lot of habitat with wintering mule deer. And so need to be cognizant of all that. Do we need folks going out all through February? That was actually a part of the impetus behind pulling that back beside what we thought was best for, for those bird species.

1:01:06So it's that bigger picture thing that you touched on. And I guess there's my, there's my ramble for you on that. Yeah, no, I appreciate your perspective. I think a lot of people need to hear that and understand why decisions are being made. I mean, I know, uh, working with the DNR here, I mean, there's so many decisions made on the legislative level, you know, you might have an idea of what you think is best, but ultimately you have to enforce decisions that are made by legislators and that's out of your control in a lot of, a lot of ways. Right. Um, do you feel good

1:01:39about where things are moving right now? I mean, are you optimistic about the team that you have in place and the current sage grouse, um, management tools at your hands? I am. I mean, certainly it's fair to say that with just the increasing pressures of, of humans on this planet, I mean, wildlife habitat seems to get compromised little by little day in and day out. Um, so, you know, that's kind of the

1:02:14doom and gloom piece of it and whether it's changing climate and, um, things like that, development pressures, um, invasive annual grasses there, I, I would be doing my profession a disservice if I didn't acknowledge that the stressors on the landscape and wildlife populations and their habitats are only increasing, um, day in and day out and year after year and over time. And so that certainly concerns me a great deal, but I would also say within Wyoming, we're, we're really

1:02:47blessed in Wyoming. We still have, I think we're the ninth largest state, like I said earlier, but we still have the lowest human population in the state. We still have vast expanses of, of untouched, intact, pristine wildlife habitat across the state. Um, and we also have a, uh, you know, you, you mentioned the state legislature in your question, you know, we also have, um, a governor, uh, this is our, our, our third governor in a row now who has taken sage grouse conservation extremely seriously

1:03:23has continued these executive orders, has continued these sage grouse implementation team meetings, um, that involved some of the highest level policymakers and or, um, players in industry and conservation and developed a, a plan to manage sage grouse habitats across the state that has served as a model for the West. And while it's not perfect, no plan is, um, uh, I think it's, I think there's, there's so much foresight and thought and, and really commitment that's gone into managing, um,

1:03:59sage grouse habitat for the foreseeable future that I think Wyoming stands to be in a good place for a long time to come. Well, that's positive news. Let's switch real quick before we wrap this up.

Other Bird Species

1:04:10You have more than just sage grouse out there. And I, I think people ask me pretty regularly, what's the most underrated state or area to upland bird hunt? And, and I feel like, I don't know, Idaho is up there. Um, but Wyoming is very near the top. When I start talking about places that I've had the fortune of hunting just because of the variety of species that you guys have and the different terrain types. I mean, you can go into the forest and hunt rough grouse. You can go up in the mountains and chase blues and go on the flats. I mean, you do have pheasants,

1:04:45you do have sharp tails, you do have sage grouse. Um, what are the, and Hungarian partridge, what are some of the success stories right now? And the, the state of other birds in your state, or I should say the population numbers, you know, are they stable? Are they trending up down? I mean, is it just a constant fluctuation because of the weather and habitat changes overall looking at the other bird species? Um, how do you feel about them in particular?

1:05:19Well, yeah, it's, I, I always squirm when folks like you ask me a question like this, because I'm a diehard bird hunter, right? I know you want to be, I always want to be honest with the public and let them know about Wyoming opportunities, but I'm the first guy to squirm if I see someone else in my checkers. So I never want to over inflate it, but, um, no, in all seriousness, you know, um, Wyoming is underrated from that standpoint in terms of, there is a lot of opportunity that, you know, at least in the past has gone under the radar. I think things are

1:05:52changing. Um, there's certainly been a lot more interest in bird hunting in Wyoming in recent years. And whether that was like the get out period during COVID and, and that sort of thing, you know, social media, um, you know, uh, uh, folks such as yourself, Travis, I mean, there's, you know, it's in Wyoming has been written about a little bit more in some of the bird hunting magazines and that sort of thing. Um, there, there is a lot of opportunity, but really the thing that drives, um, most of our bird populations is, I mean, it's just weather. Um, and you could say that

1:06:27for anywhere, right? That's, that's not an original thought by any stretch, but habitat and weather habitat and what? And so, you know, Wyoming went through a period where it was like a perfect combination of, of pretty good wet springs and reasonably wet summers by Wyoming standards with kind of some mild winters, uh, aside from that 22, 23 winter, which was the worst winter in Wyoming's recorded history, essentially, at least Western Wyoming's. But it resulted in like really,

1:07:00since you came out in 2018, we actually really grew a lot of birds. So what, and that's everything from Hungarian partridge to turkeys and everything in between. And so we had, um, we had by Wyoming standards, really, really good years of, um, chuckers, huns, uh, sharp tails, uh, um, forest grouse, species. So blue rough grouse all did really, really well, um, up through 2024. And then things

1:07:30took a turn this past year. And with the mountain grouse species, that's a little bit more of a mixed bag. Their population fluctuations are not as easily to pin down necessarily what drives that. Um, I've seen them do really good in some really dry years and also do really good in some wet years. And the converse is true. Um, but with, with some of those other populations, yeah, we, we really had some good years. And then last year, um, I, it's tough to put a finger on it because we still had a

1:08:01decent spring. We still had a good, we didn't have overly cold, wet conditions during like peak of hatch periods and things like that. But then the summer just got extraordinarily dry. We had a, we saw a lot of ephemeral drainages that hadn't been dry in recent years go dry. Um, reservoirs, things like that, smaller stock ponds, like that sort of thing go dry and the spigots shut off. And it was, it was hot and dried for the most of last summer. And, um, we, it resulted in, especially like with, with

1:08:33huns and chuckers, like almost no chick production or chick survival, I should say. For example, I mean, I, I bet I only killed between huns and chuckers. I bet I only personally harvested 30 some birds this year. And, um, and it was, uh, I didn't kill a single young of the year bird. Yeah. That's, that's been kind of the theme from Nevada and, you know, even all the way through Montana and different, different chucker strongholds. Um, you know, the year prior was so

1:09:05good and it looked like ideal nesting conditions, but then come hunting season, the young of the year birds were not there. Everybody was hunting last year's birds and you know, it's to, to be seen what's going to happen heading into this year. We don't really know. Um, we can sit here and talk about it. Uh, your job is to manage it. Justin, we sure appreciate you and your efforts. I know how much you care. And I appreciate you making time today to give us a glimpse into decisions that

1:09:40are being made out there and help us to kind of understand what goes into it and see the big picture. Um, we, we just hope that you guys will continue the management and the birds will continue to sustain and hunting seasons will continue for generations to come. But I think the big picture is we all have an impact on the land and the birds that we love so much. And we can't take that lightly. And if the opportunities come to be a difference maker of some kind, don't pass it up,

1:10:11right? Don't pass up the opportunity. Uh, Justin, any parting thoughts before we sign off?

1:10:19No, I, I'd really appreciate the time and the interest and I, well, I guess maybe, yeah, maybe, um, when it comes to those things, like, you know, you, you talked about the original impetus for this podcast and, and the headlines that garnered people's attention and the concern that that evoked. And I tell folks, if you really want to find out, just ask, just call one of us up and ask, and we'll, we'll talk folks through it too. Um, we, uh, we don't make any wildlife management decisions lightly. The decision to dissolve these local working groups after 21 years was not made

1:10:54lightly, but it was done for, for good reason and legitimate reason. And the last thing the Wyoming game of fish is ever going to do is turn our backs on sage cross conservation. So, um, yeah, just come talk to us. We appreciate that. Thanks for being willing and able and answering when people do call. I mean, that's all I did. And you said, sure, let's, let's talk about this. Um, big Al, I appreciate all of your work today. I have a parting thought. Uh-oh. When this post, it's my birthday. Well, happy birthday. You knew that. Oh my God. You forgot. I forgot a lot. I got four other kids

1:11:29to take care of. I can't always get track of you. You're the oldest and most difficult one that I have to deal with. Happy birthday, young man. Hey, thanks. Technically it's not my birthday right now, but we'll pretend it is. You've been, you've been dragging this on for a month just so you know, you're very dramatic. In my new car, I can put like people's birthdays in there. So I have my birthday and my girlfriend's birthday and everything. In your car? Yeah. I can. So every time I turn my car on it, it lets you know when it gets close to the birthday. Come on. Does it talk to you? Good morning, Alex. No, I wish. But I, I, the one thing I didn't realize is it, it tells you

1:12:01for three weeks straight before that birthday. So, so three weeks before my girlfriend's birthday, every time I got in on my big screen, it would say McKenna's birthday on February 10th. And now mine for the past three weeks has been telling me every time I turn it on, my birthday is on Thursday. Oh my goodness, Justin, the next generation. I'm scared of them. I am scared of them. I'll put your birthday in my car. There you go. Hey, Alex, happy, happy birthday. Any day you want it, pal. Yes. It's actually my birthday month is what I like to say. Yeah. It will celebrate. Big cake, big cake coming here on Thursday. All right. Uh, Justin,

1:12:35thanks again for your time. Thanks again to all the sponsors that make this show possible. Thanks to all the bird hunters that listen and care so deeply about our wildlife and our wild places. We'll be back next week with another episode of The Flush Podcast. Bye.