Description: The ODFW's Greater Sage-grouse Conservation Assessment and Strategy (April 2011, hereafter referred to as the Conservation Strategy) identified essential habitats which were modified in public meetings with Local Implementation Teams (LITs) and the general public. These areas are referred to as "core habitat" in the 2011 Conservation Strategy and are equivalent to the USFWS Priority Areas for Conservation (PACs) as documented in the 2013 Conservation Objectives Team report as well as BLM Preliminary Priority Habitat (PPH). This dataset of Oregon PACs builds on past efforts by grouping and naming the core areas developed for the 2011 Conservation Strategy to link to Action Areas identified by the LITs to have similar issues for sage-grouse-conservation. The new Oregon PAC dataset is based on Core Area maps and data developed as one component of the 2011 Conservation Strategy for sage-grouse in Oregon. Specifically, these data provide information about habitat location for planning as well as identifying appropriate mitigation in the event of human development in sage-grouse habitats. These maps will assist in making recommendations for habitat categorization under ODFW Mitigation Policy (OAR 635-415-0000) and/or new policies that result from the 2013-2015 planning process in preparation for the USFWS 2015 listing decsion for sage-grouse. [new paragraph] The core areas were given names to easily identify them based on their corresponding sage-grouse Action Areas, and small areas of core habitat with similar habitat were combined. Sage-grouse Action Areas are areas with similar issues for conserving sage-grouse. Core area habitat occuring in the Trout Creeks and Louse Canyon Action Areas was divided into two PACs using the Action Area boundaries. Leks associated with PACs are grouped and analyzed within populations and WAFWA management zones as much as possible. [new paragraph] ODFW developed Core Areas for the Conservation Strategy (2011) using lek density strata, winter habitat use (from telemetry data), and connectivity corridors. Detailed methods used to develop the Core Areas are described in the Conservation Strategy (2011). The goal of the Core Area maps and data was to identify essential habitats to meet habitat and population objectives identified in the 2011 Conservation Strategy using a landscape approach that was based on biological information to identify the most important breeding areas, referred to as core areas (Doherty et al. 2011). The landscape approach prioritized habitats based on measures that assessed sage-grouse population and habitat relative abundance, bringing focus to land area that was likely to support a minimum of 75% of the population. A limitation of the approach was that it focused on breeding abundances; for sage-grouse, the relative abundance data was drawn from spring lek counts of males. Male lek attendance data ("lek counts") have limitations including variable sampling effort (both spatially and temporally) and detection probabilities have not been estimated for ground or aerial counts. Notwithstanding, these are the best data available for mapping sage-grouse distributions. Data collection methods: Lek surveys, radio telemetry, and modeling
Copyright Text: This is a modification of ODFW Sage-Grouse Core Areas https://nrimp.dfw.state.or.us/DataClearinghouse/default.aspx?p=202&XMLname=944.xml