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There Is No Hope Without Change: A Perspective on How We Conserve the Sagebrush Biome

Published Article

United States

Publication date: October 14, 2024

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The sagebrush biome is rapidly declining, losing over a million acres yearly. This perspective calls for shifting management toward defending intact areas, restoring what’s still viable, and embracing both urgency and hope. It argues that real progress depends on clear priorities, funding, and social capacity to save the sagebrush sea.

Subject Tags

  • Ecosystem management
  • Habitat restoration
  • Grassland

Abstract

This is not a typical journal article in tone or style. As part of a special issue focused on the Sagebrush Conservation Design and Strategic Conservation, this paper highlights how we need to change our management of the sagebrush biome with a perspective of why that change matters. Sagebrush ecosystems are in steep decline, losing more than 1 million acres annually for decades from biome-altering threats of invasive annual grasses, conifer expansion, catastrophic wildfire, and climate change. As illustrated by the other papers in this special issue, management of the sagebrush biome needs to drastically change, focusing prevention and restoration on intact landscapes while accepting we cannot bring back the biome where it is already lost. Imbedded in this choice to change how we manage the biome is why that change matters. In this paper I include a series of personal anecdotes, observations, and connections that I hope helps you, the reader, understand the content of this special issue not only as an integrated body of science, but also an embrace of how we relate to the future of the biome. I embrace that future by applying the Defend and Grow the Core framework around Sagebrush Conservation Design Core and Growth Areas, and by layering in the tenants of the Resist, Accept, Direct model. The biggest gaps for ecosystem management are not from lack of knowledge, but from lack of clear administration priorities and funding, and robust social capacity to restore and steward our last geographies of hope. By using both a pessimist's and optimist's perspective on the plight of the range, I hope you deeply sense the opportunity and the urgency we face, making hard choices of what we do and where, building a long-term commitment to a restoration economy, and supporting people to save the sagebrush sea.

Citation

Cahill, M., 2024. There is no hope without change: a perspective on how we conserve the sagebrush biome. Rangeland Ecology & Management, 97, pp.209-214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2024.08.004

TNC Authors