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Encompassing over 175 million acres, America’s “Sagebrush Sea” is the largest terrestrial ecosystem in the lower 48 states. A predominately shrubland system, this landscape ranges over deserts, valleys, mountains, and mesas from the Canadian border to our southwestern deserts. The sagebrush ecosystem – the ancestral homeland of many Tribal Nations – supports critical agricultural and recreation economies of western states and provides habitat to 350 native wildlife species including greater sage-grouse, migratory songbirds, and big game herds.
Yet this vital landscape is at significant risk. A 2022 U.S Geological Survey report found an average of 1.3 million acres of sagebrush have been lost or degraded each year over the last 20 years.
The impacts of climate change, wildfire, and invasive annual grasses, coupled with impacts from human activity, threatens the ability of sagebrush landscapes to sustain biological, economic, and cultural values. Loss of sagebrush landscapes, including the loss of important native grasses and forbs, is driven largely by invasive annual grasses and the associated impacts from large wildfires, resulting in landscape scale change that can be difficult to restore. Complex interactions with drought and changing climates and limited native plant material make restoration challenging and requires a strategic approach to ensure the ecosystem can support wildlife, ranching, recreation, and other land uses.
In response to this unprecedented and accelerating decline, the Department of the Interior’s bureaus, in partnership with the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and other partners developed the Sagebrush Conservation Design (SCD), a range-wide, spatially explicit tool to identify the remaining healthy, intact sagebrush core landscapes and opportunities for their growth. The analysis allows for efforts to prioritize, target, and assess strategic investments to ensure restoration actions are working to increase the resilience of the ecosystem at scales meaningful to its long-term sustainability. The 'Defend the Core; Grow the Core' approach, underpinned by the SCD, is at the heart of the Department's efforts to optimize restoration investments in a strategic way across bureaus to arrest the decline of sagebrush landscapes.
The Department's Sagebrush Landscape Collaborative is working across bureaus to guide strategic restoration investments, catalyze coordination, and drive meaningful outcomes to improve resiliency to fire and drought. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Department is implementing a more than $2 billion down payment to restore our nation’s lands and waters. This framework will help ensure that investments from these two laws are focused strategically to solve key conservation challenges and advance climate resilience.
The Sagebrush Landscapes Collaborative worked with partners to identify five Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes across the sagebrush ecosystem for long-term strategic investments to defend and grow sagebrush core habitat. Collectively, these landscapes include about a third of all remaining sagebrush core habitat according to the range-wide analysis of the SCD.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes represent places where the Department can take non-regulatory actions to co-invest funding across its bureaus and offices, building upon existing partnerships to collectively target restoration actions. DOI is seeking to enhance ongoing collaboration with public and private partners and further focus current efforts in these landscapes to address primary threats to sagebrush ecosystem health.
Portions of the Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes overlap with a number of on-going restoration efforts conducted by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), National Park Service (NPS), the Office of Wildland Fire (OWF) and the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) in the Department of Agriculture. These existing efforts can be leveraged to support new, strategic restoration delivery action in these landscapes where they overlap with BLM Restoration Landscapes, NPS units including Craters of the Moon National Monument, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and USFWS National Wildlife Refuges. The USFWS Partners for Fish and Wildlife program and NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife program also help deliver targeted conservation in partnership with private landowners and other stakeholders and play key roles in these geographies.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes were delineated using watershed boundaries with publicly available information to ensure these areas have high ecological value now and durability in the future with respect to climate resilience, and where existing collaborations have capacity to deliver on-the-ground actions. Input was also solicited from federal and state resources agencies and Tribes to refine where restoration priorities existed. Information utilized includes:
Each Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscape is briefly described below:
This landscape is primarily located in southeast Oregon and northwest Nevada and is anchored around the expansive Hart Mountain Antelope and Sheldon National Wildlife Refuges, and the surrounding sagebrush ecosystems that also includes the BLM Restoration Landscape in Southeast Oregon and Nevada Montana Mountains. This landscape includes over 5.4 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape is primarily located in southeast Oregon and northwest Nevada and is anchored around the expansive Hart Mountain Antelope and Sheldon National Wildlife Refuges, and the surrounding sagebrush ecosystems that also includes the BLM Restoration...
This landscape in Idaho and southwestern Montana is anchored around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, stretching west to the Snake River Plain and northeast to Upper Salmon River and Missouri River headwaters sagebrush country in the High Divide region along the Idaho-Montana state line. This landscape includes portions of four BLM Restoration Landscapes and over 6.4 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape in Idaho and southwestern Montana is anchored around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, stretching west to the Snake River Plain and northeast to Upper Salmon River and Missouri River headwaters sagebrush country in the High...
This landscape is located in north central Montana and is anchored around the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and BLM’s ‘Hi-Line Sagebrush Anchor’ Restoration Landscape. This landscape includes over 3.3 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape is located in north central Montana and is anchored around the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and BLM’s ‘Hi-Line Sagebrush Anchor’ Restoration Landscape. This landscape includes over 3.3 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and...
This landscape covers portions of southwest Wyoming and northeast Utah, anchored in the Upper Green River Basin and the Upper Bear River Watershed. The landscape also includes the high elevation Red Desert region of south-central Wyoming and intersects with the BLM’s Muddy Creek, La Barge, and Upper Bear River Restoration Landscapes. This landscape includes over 7.9 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape covers portions of southwest Wyoming and northeast Utah, anchored in the Upper Green River Basin and the Upper Bear River Watershed. The landscape also includes the high elevation Red Desert region of south-central Wyoming and intersects with...
This landscape spans the Gunnison Basin of southwestern Colorado, including Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Curecanti National Recreation Area. This landscape includes more than 400,000 acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape spans the Gunnison Basin of southwestern Colorado, including Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Curecanti National Recreation Area. This landscape includes more than 400,000 acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas...
To access the USGS Data Release, please visit Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes to Support Management Efforts Improving Fire Resiliency and Restoration in the Sagebrush Biome.
For more information about bureau-specific sagebrush conservation and restoration efforts, please visit:
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Layer Sources
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Layer Sources
Encompassing over 175 million acres, America’s “Sagebrush Sea” is the largest terrestrial ecosystem in the lower 48 states. A predominately shrubland system, this landscape ranges over deserts, valleys, mountains, and mesas from the Canadian border to our southwestern deserts. The sagebrush ecosystem – the ancestral homeland of many Tribal Nations – supports critical agricultural and recreation economies of western states and provides habitat to 350 native wildlife species including greater sage-grouse, migratory songbirds, and big game herds.
Yet this vital landscape is at significant risk. A 2022 U.S Geological Survey report found an average of 1.3 million acres of sagebrush have been lost or degraded each year over the last 20 years.
The impacts of climate change, wildfire, and invasive annual grasses, coupled with impacts from human activity, threatens the ability of sagebrush landscapes to sustain biological, economic, and cultural values. Loss of sagebrush landscapes, including the loss of important native grasses and forbs, is driven largely by invasive annual grasses and the associated impacts from large wildfires, resulting in landscape scale change that can be difficult to restore. Complex interactions with drought and changing climates and limited native plant material make restoration challenging and requires a strategic approach to ensure the ecosystem can support wildlife, ranching, recreation, and other land uses.
In response to this unprecedented and accelerating decline, the Department of the Interior’s bureaus, in partnership with the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and other partners developed the Sagebrush Conservation Design (SCD), a range-wide, spatially explicit tool to identify the remaining healthy, intact sagebrush core landscapes and opportunities for their growth. The analysis allows for efforts to prioritize, target, and assess strategic investments to ensure restoration actions are working to increase the resilience of the ecosystem at scales meaningful to its long-term sustainability. The 'Defend the Core; Grow the Core' approach, underpinned by the SCD, is at the heart of the Department's efforts to optimize restoration investments in a strategic way across bureaus to arrest the decline of sagebrush landscapes.
The Department's Sagebrush Landscape Collaborative is working across bureaus to guide strategic restoration investments, catalyze coordination, and drive meaningful outcomes to improve resiliency to fire and drought. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Department is implementing a more than $2 billion down payment to restore our nation’s lands and waters. This framework will help ensure that investments from these two laws are focused strategically to solve key conservation challenges and advance climate resilience.
The Sagebrush Landscapes Collaborative worked with partners to identify five Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes across the sagebrush ecosystem for long-term strategic investments to defend and grow sagebrush core habitat. Collectively, these landscapes include about a third of all remaining sagebrush core habitat according to the range-wide analysis of the SCD.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes represent places where the Department can take non-regulatory actions to co-invest funding across its bureaus and offices, building upon existing partnerships to collectively target restoration actions. DOI is seeking to enhance ongoing collaboration with public and private partners and further focus current efforts in these landscapes to address primary threats to sagebrush ecosystem health.
Portions of the Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes overlap with a number of on-going restoration efforts conducted by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), National Park Service (NPS), the Office of Wildland Fire (OWF) and the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) in the Department of Agriculture. These existing efforts can be leveraged to support new, strategic restoration delivery action in these landscapes where they overlap with BLM Restoration Landscapes, NPS units including Craters of the Moon National Monument, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and USFWS National Wildlife Refuges. The USFWS Partners for Fish and Wildlife program and NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife program also help deliver targeted conservation in partnership with private landowners and other stakeholders and play key roles in these geographies.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes were delineated using watershed boundaries with publicly available information to ensure these areas have high ecological value now and durability in the future with respect to climate resilience, and where existing collaborations have capacity to deliver on-the-ground actions. Input was also solicited from federal and state resources agencies and Tribes to refine where restoration priorities existed. Information utilized includes:
Each Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscape is briefly described below:
This landscape is primarily located in southeast Oregon and northwest Nevada and is anchored around the expansive Hart Mountain Antelope and Sheldon National Wildlife Refuges, and the surrounding sagebrush ecosystems that also includes the BLM Restoration Landscape in Southeast Oregon and Nevada Montana Mountains. This landscape includes over 5.4 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape is primarily located in southeast Oregon and northwest Nevada and is anchored around the expansive Hart Mountain Antelope and Sheldon National Wildlife Refuges, and the surrounding sagebrush ecosystems that also includes the BLM Restoration...
This landscape in Idaho and southwestern Montana is anchored around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, stretching west to the Snake River Plain and northeast to Upper Salmon River and Missouri River headwaters sagebrush country in the High Divide region along the Idaho-Montana state line. This landscape includes portions of four BLM Restoration Landscapes and over 6.4 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape in Idaho and southwestern Montana is anchored around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, stretching west to the Snake River Plain and northeast to Upper Salmon River and Missouri River headwaters sagebrush country in the High...
This landscape is located in north central Montana and is anchored around the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and BLM’s ‘Hi-Line Sagebrush Anchor’ Restoration Landscape. This landscape includes over 3.3 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape is located in north central Montana and is anchored around the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and BLM’s ‘Hi-Line Sagebrush Anchor’ Restoration Landscape. This landscape includes over 3.3 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and...
This landscape covers portions of southwest Wyoming and northeast Utah, anchored in the Upper Green River Basin and the Upper Bear River Watershed. The landscape also includes the high elevation Red Desert region of south-central Wyoming and intersects with the BLM’s Muddy Creek, La Barge, and Upper Bear River Restoration Landscapes. This landscape includes over 7.9 million acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape covers portions of southwest Wyoming and northeast Utah, anchored in the Upper Green River Basin and the Upper Bear River Watershed. The landscape also includes the high elevation Red Desert region of south-central Wyoming and intersects with...
This landscape spans the Gunnison Basin of southwestern Colorado, including Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Curecanti National Recreation Area. This landscape includes more than 400,000 acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome. This landscape spans the Gunnison Basin of southwestern Colorado, including Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Curecanti National Recreation Area. This landscape includes more than 400,000 acres of ‘Core Sagebrush’ and ‘Growth Opportunity’ Areas...
To access the USGS Data Release, please visit Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes to Support Management Efforts Improving Fire Resiliency and Restoration in the Sagebrush Biome.
For more information about bureau-specific sagebrush conservation and restoration efforts, please visit:
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Layer Sources
Sagebrush Collaborative Restoration Landscapes capture over a third of the remaining intact Core Sagebrush Areas across the sagebrush biome.
Layer Sources