Juniper Removal

Juniper Removal

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Dave Naugle is Professor of Large Scale Wildlife Ecology at the University of Montana and tells a fascinating story about efforts to reduce conifers on the ranches of many landowners. The canopy produced by these conifers reduces grazing opportunity. "We are using Google Earth engine at a new website called map@Sagegrouseinitiative.com and we worked with Michael Falkowski at Colorado State University and he mapped 100,000,000 acres to show tree canopy cover across seven Western states. Encroaching conifer is an issue for sage grouse in these states. Historically we have always had conifer in the West but with changes from natural fire regime's and climate influences, these trees are now expanding into native sagebrush ecosystems where they have never been before and when they come into these native systems, they shade out sagebrush and native bunch grasses and act as tall structures that Sage grouse and other wildlife do not like. We created this new digital information and we put it on our website as an interactive map tool as an effort to bridge the science to implementation gap. We make all of these cool science tools but there is a gap there were the people that are cutting conifer to benefit native range lands and the Sage brush ecosystem, if they don't have access to them, they can't do their job as well. None of this happens without the goodwill and willingness of private landowners to engage in this.
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