Description: The 2017 Sage-grouse Habitat Planning Map update incorporates wildfire data and other edits relevant to the 2017 field and fire season as per typical processes used during the past decade. Additional areas of non-habitat, such as paved highways, municipal boundaries, water bodies etc., were also removed. However, the map extent for sage-grouse key habitat and potential restoration areas should be considered provisional, contingent on the final outcome of additional analyses currently underway in association with the national Greater Sage-grouse Conservation Strategy. This data set contains simple, landscape-scale greater sage-grouse habitat types for Idaho and constitutes a current approximation of sage-grouse habitat in the state. The data can be used for general conservation and restoration planning purposes, but additional data or field verification are needed for applications at finer scales. The habitat types include: (1) key sage-grouse habitat areas and (2) four habitat restoration types: (a) R1 - perennial native and non-native grasslands with high restoration potential; (b) R2 - annual grass dominated areas (either shrubland or grassland) with low restoration potential; (c) R3 - conifer encroachment areas with high restoration potential and (d) RB - areas that have recently burned and the type of habitat that is coming back and its restoration potential has not yet been determined. Beginning in 2015, the NA class was included to track areas that were previously identified as habitat but were removed due to vegetation type or terrain (eg. stands of existing timber on North-facing slopes). A new data set will be developed annually to update the planning map and chart landscape-level changes in sage-grouse habitat over time. Edits may also document refinements discovered through inventory, monitoring and modeling. This data covers all of Idaho and a small area in Nevada that is managed by Idaho BLM. Intended scale of use is 1:100,000. This dataset is not synonymous with BLM's "Preliminary Priority Habitat" or "Preliminary General Habitat" mapping efforts, as those incorporate additional habitat and sage-grouse population data or models. For more information contact us at blm_id_stateoffice@blm.gov.
Copyright Text: Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Idaho State Office, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Energy Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Sage-grouse Local Working Groups, and other cooperators/contributors