Rasters representing Greater Sage-grouse space use, habitat selection, and survival to inform habitat management

We expanded developed methodology to incorporate habitat selection and survival during reproductive life stages and specific seasons with updated greater sage-grouse location and known fate datasets. We included brood-rearing areas that are understood to be threatened and important for population persistence. We combined predictive habitat map surfaces for each life stage and season with updated information on current occupancy patterns to classify habitat based on its suitability and probability of occupancy. We performed additional steps to delineate example habitat management areas, specifically: (1) incorporated corridors connecting key nesting and brood-rearing habitat; (2) corrected outputs for pre-wildfire habitat conditions within areas burned in the last 16 years; and (3) masked out areas of anthropogenic development. Our example of deriving habitat management areas helps inform conservation and management of sage-grouse by BLM and other land managers. Predictive maps provide updated, detailed, and comprehensive information about the status of habitats and can be useful to partner agencies in their efforts to designate and rank habitats for greater sage-grouse of high conservation concern in Nevada and California, with full recognition that on-the-ground field data and local sources of information and expertise should be used in conjunction with inferences from these models.