Sage Brush-Grasslands -- One Of Montana's Rich Habitats

Diane Tipton, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Statewide Information Officer

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Habitat is where we live, the collection of features we know as home. For wildlife, too, habitat provides the food, water, shelter and open space they need to live.

Though Montana’s habitats are easily visible—they are our local scenery—most of us rarely stop to see them for what they truly are—eons old mixes of soils, springs, rivers, grasses, brush, trees and rocks that sustain us.

Like us, the state’s creatures depend on healthy habitats of sufficient size. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has identified six main eco-types in the state: montane forest, intermountain grassland, riparian, shrub-grassland, prairie forest and prairie grassland.

One of the most aromatic examples is the shrub or sagebrush grasslands. The uninitiated might think of sagebrush prairies as wastelands or good settings for TV westerns. But, sagebrush habitat is so much more—both to creatures including sage grouse, deer, elk and antelope and to people for thousands of years.

People of the Northern Great Basin—roughly Nevada, western Utah and southeastern Oregon—made sandals of sagebrush 10,000 years ago. Researchers in Oregon have found remnants of the sandals preserved in caves. People from this area later migrated north to Montana about 9,000 years ago, and likely brought their uses of sagebrush with them. Montana’s Indian tribes today also know of and honor long-time medicinal, spiritual and other uses for sagebrush and the smaller forb known as medicine sage.

For at least as long, antelope have favored sagebrush, especially in the winter months, and deer and elk rely on it, too. Three types: mountain big sagebrush, Wyoming big sagebrush and basin big sagebrush contain high levels of protein and are highly digestible. All are well above the 7.5 percent crude protein required by deer based on studies done in the Gallatin National Forest near Gardiner by Montana State University. The winter crude protein available from sagebrush is about 12.4 percent, compared to 3.7 percent for dormant grass.

Sagebrush also makes up more than 60 percent of the yearlong diet of sage grouse and 100 percent of their winter diet.

Other species that rely on sagebrush include the pygmy rabbit, burrowing owl, spotted bat, white-tailed prairie dog and great basin pocket mouse. In total, nearly 100 birds and another 100 mammals rely on sagebrush habitat. There are 16 different types of sagebrush shrubs and about 11 non-woody types in Montana.

Sagebrush occurs across Montana, mainly in valleys and some low- to mid-elevation mountain slopes of southwestern Montana and the plains of eastern Montana. When you aren’t speeding by at 70 mph, shrub grassland habitat’s rugged beauty blankets the landscape, a patchwork quilt of sea green, silver, corn silk and olive colored shrubs, grasses and forbs.

Legislation in 1987 created the Habitat Montana Program enabling FWP to work with landowners to conserve prime examples of sagebrush grasslands in the state including the 18,173-acre South Ranch in Valley County and the 13,440-acre Bice Ranch in Custer County.   In total, 70,000 acres of sagebrush grasslands are now conserved through the Habitat Montana Program.

FWP is also currently working on a plan that aims to assess the broad range of   Montana’s wildlife and associated habitats, and sagebrush grasslands emerged as among the state’s most important. Opportunities to participate and comment will begin this summer.

Whether you are interested in Western scenery, or concerned about the state’s wildlife, sagebrush grasslands are a rich heritage of this beautiful state we call home.

Bice Ranch is on the Tongue River 30 miles south of Miles City. South Ranch is about 35 miles southwest of Glasgow.