Over the last 125 years or so, approximately 80% of Washington’s original shrub-steppe habitat has been lost, fragmented, and/or degraded to one extent or another. The impacts to bird species that depend on it have been substantial. Knowing this, a few years ago, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Audubon Washington, North Central Washington Audubon Society, and other Audubon chapters in Central and Eastern Washington completed a 6-year Sagebrush Songbird Survey on the Columbia Basin. The data the survey generated, plus detailed habitat mapping and current applicable science, provide a solid foundation for making a concerted long-term effort to preserve and restore healthy shrub-steppe habitat in Washington.
With this in mind, in 2021 Audubon Washington and Central and Eastern Washington Audubon Chapters launched the Shrub-steppe Conservation Committee (Committee). It is tasked with implementing its Sagelands Program for protecting and restoring healthy shrub-steppe habitat capable of supporting the continued presence of shrub-steppe obligate birds and other wildlife in Washington.
The causes of this long term decline in shrub-steppe habitat in Washington are complex. Major contributors include extensive conversion for agriculture, community and infrastructure development, wildfire, overgrazing, and fragmented landscape ownership patterns. The set of solutions required to turn the situation around are equally complicated.
The Committee’s primary strategy seeks to identify and protect the best of what’s left, while also enhancing its functionality for wildlife via habitat linkages and buffers. Substantial work has gone into mapping the remaining large tracts of healthy habitat, identification of potential linkages between them, and documenting the current occurrence of species of greatest concern. With this information in hand, developing and implementing strategies for protecting them must address the factors of decline mentioned above.
The most specific issue the Committee is currently addressing is that posed by the recent avalanche of proposed solar projects in Central Washington. As of early 2024, at least 40 are in the works, 2 of which propose to locate on areas we seek to protect. Audubon is a strong supporter of clean energy and wants to see its capacity expanded as quickly as possible. Fortunately, there’s plenty of room for doing so without needlessly sacrificing important remaining shrub-steppe areas and the wildlife they support.
To address this issue more broadly, the Committee has engaged with the Least Conflict Solar Siting Project, which seeks to identify areas where solar projects can be located while posing the least negative consequences for agricultural interests and shrub-steppe habitat. Associated with the overarching clean energy facility siting issue, in October 2023 AW submitted scoping comments regarding the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements (PEISs) on Utility-Scale Solar and Onshore Wind Energy Facilities in Washington State.
To address the even broader question of how best to protect shrub-steppe habitat on a landscape scale, the Committee is also actively involved with the Arid Lands Initiative, which seeks “to achieve a shared vision of a viable, well-connected system of eastern Washington’s arid lands and related freshwater habitats, that sustain native plant and animal communities, and that support compatible local economies and communities.”
This issue is a bit unusual in that there is no real end point. To the extent that we’re successful, we’ll achieve incremental successes that will better assure that shrub-steppe habitat, and the wildlife it supports, remains functionally relevant in Washington State.
