It is estimated that nearly 50% of Idaho is sagebrush steppe rangeland/high desert. Mule deer, elk, and antelope depend upon it for protection and concealment, and coyotes and mountain lions find it ideal for stalking stealthily through. Hawks and eagles battle with the squirrels and rabbits continually, and the battlefield is that sagebrush covered high desert.
It is important habitat for a lot of reasons. Besides that, it is beautiful. I was born in the wet rainforests of Western Oregon, and whenever we would cross over the Cascades to visit the dry side, I was engulfed with the vast sea of sagebrush - a mysterious place, where over any rim-rocked plateau might stand a dozen mule deer, their white nose bridges staring back.
Nothing got my heart racing like a little excursion and adventure to the high desert. And I still feel the same way. But conservation of the things we love does take work, at least from time to time. It was hard for me to ever believe that there could be a shortage of sagebrush. I have traveled everywhere in the U.S. where it exists, and the impression I got was that sagebrush was the noxious weed. I thought nothing could stop it or threaten it, and I had pictures of the Great Basin to prove it.
But in Idaho, there are some things that do threaten the sagebrush that holds important habitat, namely fires and real noxious weeds. The battle with noxious weeds is continual, and it unfortunately takes a great deal of public resources to fight. Fires are generally speaking an act of God. There's not much that can be done when dry lightning strikes the dry Southern Idaho deserts.
Great efforts go into re-seeding burnt areas, or areas that are deficient of the sagebrush that they should have. But this is hard work. There's no grand commercial sagebrush seed farms. Most of the seed comes from volunteers who go out into the desert and hand-harvest the seed.
With fires that devastated large tracts of critical mule deer habitat this past year in South Idaho, a lot of seed is needed. If you're interested in volunteering, or in just finding out more about the issue, here's a couple of links that will lead you to some good reading:
From the Idaho Statesman, and then this one from Boise State Radio.
