Successful development and implementation and persistence of the Oregon sage-grouse CCAA program depended on numerous sociological and ecological factors, many of which are translatable to other complex natural resource management challenges. The pending (at the time) decision on whether to grant threatened or endangered status to the Greater Sage-Grouse in 2015 stimulated a critical mass of diverse stakeholders, including local, state and federal officials and scientists, private landowners, and non-governmental organizations, to engage proactively in advance of the listing decision.� Commitment to participate, despite very high uncertainty about the eventual outcomes, did not wane throughout a >3-year development phase, as public employees were empowered to participate by their supervisors and private individuals donated thousands of hours of time and travel. This diverse coalition forced participants to wrestle with critical questions necessary to advance, such as how to integrate rigorous science necessary to grapple with complex ecological questions into a management framework that addresses sage-grouse habitat needs and facilitates communication and trust with wary landowners. Initial implementation of the Oregon CCAA management framework was empowered by several policy actions, adequate agency funding and staff support, and high landowner participation in enrollment. The framework is also being bolstered by adoption into related programs, such as the State of Oregon�s Habitat Quantification Calculator for planning and mitigation in Sage-Grouse habitat and use by BLM for project prioritization and planning in several districts. Additional programmatic needs for persistence include continuing education for new participants as principle authors retire or relocate and collaborative processes for potential unforeseen disputes. Successful adaptive management, as some initial on-the-ground actions fail to address complex ecological threats, such as invasive annual grasses, will be paramount and most effective if the diverse coalition that built this management framework continue to be fully engaged.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.