Conserving Sagebrush Steppe Across National Parks and Larger Landscapes

City of Rocks National Reserve, Idaho, where sagebrush steppe makes up about 70% of the land and plays a major role in supporting native plant diversity and providing wildlife habitat.

NPS photo

Sagebrush steppe is one of the most threatened ecosystems in North America. Significant portions of sagebrush steppe have been converted to agriculture and grazed rangeland, and remaining steppe is being invaded by invasive plants and altered by increasingly frequent, large fires.

To make decision-making across the National Park Service (NPS) easier and more effective with regards to sagebrush steppe conservation, we assembled geodatabases (databases containing geographical and spatial data) for individual parks. The geodatabases include information from previous work, such as inventories, monitoring, and assessments, for mapping of sagebrush steppe. The maps are developed with ecosystem resilience to fire and resistance to annual grass invasion in mind. The goal of the work is to facilitate collaborative sagebrush steppe conservation across national park lands and larger steppe landscapes.

We also synthesized this information into updated park management plans for the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (in a Focused Condition Assessment report). The report is accompanied by the steppe geodatabase for the park that provides guidance on where park management activities are likely to be most effective. This level of support is planned for each of the parks in the region that contain sagebrush steppe ecosystems:

• Big Hole National Battlefield
• City of Rocks National Reserve
• Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve
• Great Basin National Park
• Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument
• John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
• Lava Beds National Monument
• Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area
• Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument.

In addition to the resource brief and report (links provided above), you can also view a journal article and webinar on the subject.

Great news!

This work is now part of the National Park Service’s NPSage conservation initiative, which builds on a model of collaborative and strategic conservation actions coordinated across sagebrush steppe and shrubland landscapes in and around Western parks and protected areas. These efforts, along with the National Seed Strategy, which gained support from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, will amplify actions to conserve and restore sagegrass steppe ecosystems.