A new tool from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) will identify and rank 114 clusters of sage grouse based on population trends.

The tool, called sage grouse cluster ordering by unified trend assessment or SCOUT, draws from population and abundance data spanning 25 years. Clusters represent sage grouse “neighborhoods.” They’re organized by leks, which are grouse breeding grounds.

Nyssa Whitford is the sage grouse biologist with WGFD. She said the rankings will help focus conservation efforts.

“We’re ranking every cluster, so we’ll know how they stack up against each other,” said Whitford. “We’re going to be focusing on those opportunity clusters. These are areas where we feel that we can move the needle.”

Whitford said the tool is part of Wyoming’s adaptive management strategy with sage grouse, which was reiterated through an executive order signed by Gov. Mark Gordon last year and a new Bureau of Land Management plan. Whitford said this approach tracks sage grouse populations and habitats for early intervention.

“The goal of adaptive management is when something starts to kind of go sideways, we can quickly pull it back to where it needs to be,” said Whitford.

Sage grouse live their entire lives in the sagebrush sea: The plant is an important food source and habitat. They are especially vulnerable to the threat of habitat fragmentation.

“Anything that’s kind of inhibiting that life cycle, they just do not respond favorably to it,” said Whitford. “They need the intact sagebrush sea to survive.”

Whitford explained that unbroken, quiet tracts of sagebrush are also critical to the springtime mating displays of sage grouse, called “lekking.”

“It’s a very visual and acoustic display,” said Whitford. “It’s very quiet out there, and so you can really get to hear all the pieces of the mating display. There’s like these pops and the swishing of the wings.”

The best time to observe lekking across Wyoming is in April.

The output from the SCOUT tool will be used to create a report that addresses questions about clusters of concern.

Whitford provided examples of potential questions: “What does the habitat look like in that cluster? Has it changed? Is it more fragmented? Has there been new development? Has there been a wildfire recently?”

The output and report will be shared with a working group made up of representatives from different agencies and industries, who will use the findings to guide conservation efforts.

Whitford said WGFD has been monitoring leks since the 1940s and codified those efforts in the 1990s, but SCOUT offers a new and more consistent way to study all the data.

“Wyoming cares deeply about its sage grouse populations and really wants to make sure all the entities involved, whether they’re managing the landscape or they’re managing the population, are on the same page and moving forward in the same direction,” said Whitford.

WYOMING, Mich. — Tryston Crain has been mowing lawns since he was a kid. He started with a couple of houses in his neighborhood, before turning it into a full fledged business.

Now, rising fuel prices are threatening to squeeze his small landscaping business — and potentially his customer’s wallets, too.

Crain started Crain Lawn and Landscape in high school, at the age of 16. Today, he serves more than 60 clients every week in the Wyoming area.

“I’m an owner operator with a couple guys that work with me on bigger projects, but primarily just myself,” Crain said.

With dozens of clients to serve, Crain and his crew make frequent trips to the gas pump — filling up trucks two to three times a week, on top of fueling their four mowers.

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I asked Crain what kind of impact rising fuel prices have had on his business.

“When you jump up $1 a gallon, that’s 30 gallons, three times a week. That’s $100 a week just for the truck, $400 a month, and you got the mowers on top of that. So, at this rate it’s almost $1,000 extra a month,” Crain said.

WATCH: Rising fuel costs are squeezing a Wyoming landscaping business — and customers could feel it soon

Rising fuel costs are squeezing a Wyoming landscaping business — and customers could feel it soon

That added cost is forcing Crain to pull money away from growing his business just to keep up with daily operations.

“When we go into budget, with what we want to spend on, you know, X, Y and Z, and we have to take out money that we would usually put into reinvesting, growing the business back into just our daily operations. It hurts us,” Crain said.

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Crain said he does not want to pass those costs on to his customers — but may have no choice if prices stay high.

“When they’re struggling with all their rising prices, you know, groceries on top of everything else, rent, gas, everything’s going up. So it’s just not something that I want to put on to them. But if it gets to a point where it keeps going up or stays this high for a while, it’s something that you might have to think about,” Crain said.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

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