If you build it, will sage grouse come? Wyoming is about to find out.

SHIRLEY BASIN-Josh Oakleaf stood where Carbon County miners scoured the earth's surface starting 60-some years ago in search of the uranium that fueled the United States' rise to becoming a nuclear superpower. 

After the mine went bust in the late 1970s, the land - part of the Heward Ranch - would have initially been a moonscape. Federal environmental regulators initiated a partial reclamation effort here in the 1990s, but much bare ground remained and the landscape still didn't support much life, let alone vibrant native flora and fauna. 

By 2021, the same spot was a construction site on its way to a transformation.

Three years later, this swath of the Little Medicine Bow River drainage is a work-in-progress restoration project dominated by young sagebrush, native grasses and forbs that evolved in the Shirley Basin. If all goes according to plan, the area will also be a proving ground for a lofty goal. Specifically, Oakleaf and his counterparts are trying to demonstrate that they can build the bona fide habitat - nesting areas, security cover, lekking grounds, all of it - that struggling sage grouse require to survive. And they're looking to recreate it essentially from nothing. 

"The lek is just the new toy in the sandbox," said Oakleaf, a project manager for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Abandoned Mine Lands Division. "The real value in this is all the surrounding habitat."

At a late October visit to the ranchland turned uranium mine turned habitat restoration site, Oakleaf spoke from what he coined a "lek analog." This would be the place that, hopefully, male sage grouse would one day routinely gather to puff out their chest and strut as part of their elaborate display to attract a mate. 

"Ideally, sage grouse will start using this site [for its] brood-rearing potential in the very near future," Oakleaf said. "Hopefully some immature males will come here and establish this as a lekking site." 

'New toy in the sandbox'

No sagebrush grew at the lek analog. The big birds like to do their little dance in the open, so it was specifically planted with low-growing species. 

The lek analog wasn't plopped onto the landscape arbitrarily. Oakleaf gestured toward an adjacent hillside, strategically built to block the wind and funnel the males' wooshing, popping noises towards their prospective female suitors. Sagebrush growing on that hill and elsewhere would also provide security cover, he said. The hill's manmade contours were even built at an angle that sage grouse prefer, with slopes selected specifically by geomorphologists who've analyzed the species' habitat needs.

A lot of forethought, research and expense went into the endeavor, which was preceded by a 2019 update to Wyoming's sage grouse policy that added habitat restoration and enhancement as a conservation priority. The 100-acre project cost about $2 million, Oakleaf said. Funding came from a present-day coal tax that funds abandoned mine reclamation nationwide. 

Oakleaf's field of dreams was informed by an interdisciplinary group that included scientists with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy. Sage grouse biologist Matt Halloran also played a pivotal role in the lek creation project.

Tried before, sort of

Biologists have attempted before to lure sage grouse away from existing leks towards prospective new leks. 

"There have been various efforts using sound and decoys and things like that, trying to move a lek away from a place that's going to be disturbed or has been disturbed," said Tom Christensen, a retired Wyoming Game and Fish sage grouse coordinator. "I would say [the concept] hasn't been demonstrated - but I don't know that." 

Off the end of the Jackson Hole Airport runway, for example, dozens of grouse once strutted, and they were deemed a safety threat because of periodic strikes with planes inbound and outbound from Jackson Hole. Grand Teton National Park officials sought to draw the remaining birds away by improving habitat elsewhere, though the Jackson Hole News&Guide reported in 2023 that just two strutting grouse remained.

Oakleaf heard of a similar effort near a Decker, Montana, mine as long ago as the 1970s. A lek was going to be dug up for coal production, he said, and so biologists mowed some sagebrush nearby to try to draw away the soon-to-be-displaced birds.  

"They were trying to get those birds to establish on that [new] lek before they destroyed it," he said. "They witnessed birds come over and hang out, but the only thing they did was clear the sage brush." 

The goal in the Shirley Basin is to prove that sage grouse will take to the new manmade lek and stick around. 

There are some factors working in the reclamationists' favor.

For one, the Shirley Basin is an ecologically vibrant landscape that is occupied with sage grouse. There are at least 50 leks in the region and hundreds of thousands of acres of protected "core" habitat, according to the 2007 sage grouse conservation plan for the area.

Locals have also witnessed sage grouse take to reclaimed mine land, just not breed on it. Todd Heward owns and manages the ranchland where the DEQ and its partners are hard at work. Generations ago, he said, there were 10,000 acres of bare dirt in the Shirley Basin from the uranium mines.

"Out of that 10,000 acres, 9,000 acres looks great today," said Heward, who represents agriculture as a member of the Bates Hole/Shirley Basin Sage Grouse Local Working Group. "A bunch of original stuff that my grandfather helped reclaim in the late '50s and '60s, there's sage grouse on that." 

Will it work?

Oakleaf's also seeing encouraging signs on the vegetation front. Sagebrush restoration, which isn't always easy, has gone well at the site - he proudly brushed off snow from some of the more robust 3-year-old plants that sprouted all around him. A survey of the site found 37 distinct plant species, he said, and 32 of them native.

Yet other factors perhaps limit the likelihood that sage grouse actually take to the lek analog. It's a challenging site, the landowner pointed out. 

"It's right by a county road, it's got structures near it, it's got a fence," Heward said. "All of the things that we get beat up over in the sage grouse habitat world exist on this site." 

But the fifth-generation rancher isn't a skeptic of the work, and said he hopes it's successful for sage grouse. Plus, the restoration was happening anyway and the newly reshaped, revegetated landscape is clearly better for erosion, soil, wildlife and livestock, he said. 

"It's just better all the way around," Heward said. "There's no doubt there's more wildlife in the area now."

Christensen, the retired Wyoming sage grouse coordinator, said he sees Oakleaf's work as a "well-intentioned effort" that will yield important lessons - even if they're learned through failure. 

"What's important is not the outputs in terms of time and effort and goodwill, but it's the outcomes," Christensen said. "Did it work? That's the proof in the pudding." 

If Wyoming officials do demonstrate that they can recreate a sage grouse lek, the tactic could be "another arrow in the quiver" to conserve the increasingly rare bird, he said. By one estimate, sage grouse numbers have plummeted from 16 million to somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000.

Only time will tell, but Oakleaf's optimistic that breeding sage grouse will take to the Heward Ranch's reclaimed mine land.

"Saving a dozen sage grouse in the Shirley Basin doesn't add up, but I can share this [template] across the sagebrush steppe," he said. "If it inspires a couple people to use our techniques in other places that support other distinct populations of sage grouse, that's a win."

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