However, restoring the vast expanses of sagebrush shrublands required to support the grouse is not a simple process. Millions of acres of the best potential habitat are in private hands, and much of it has been converted to farmland, overgrazed, mined, or subdivided. On both private and public lands, however, the most serious threat is cheatgrass, an exotic annual that takes over and eventually eliminates the sagebrush and native grasses. Cheatgrass apparently arrived in the inland West with domestic livestock in the late 1800s. It found a niche in soils bared by overgrazing.
Cheatgrass greens up quickly, forming a thick carpet that looks deceptively lush.
But within a few weeks, the plants dry out. And dry cheatgrass is perfect tinder. When lightning ignites it, the fire races across the landscape, often killing the sagebrush and native perennials. In August 1999, for instance, firestorms in northern Nevada burned 1 million acres, most of which were sagebrush shrublands. The huge wildfires of 2000 were mostly forest fires, but they did torch hundreds of thousands of acres of sagebrush in Idaho, Wyoming, Washington, and seven other states.