Missoulian OpEd: "New Rebellion in
the West: Sage grouse, not sagebrush"

New York Times Urges Protection for the Sagebrush Sea

Ecopolitical Regions:

Branding the Tree-Free Landscapes of the American West

by Mark Salvo and Andy Kerr

Marketers have long used "branding" to advertise and sell products and services. A brand is defined as a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer, a distinctive category, or a particular kind of item. 1 Like our corporate counterparts, conservationists often "brand" ecosystems to sell the public and decisionmakers on their protection. In this article we seek to brand America's tree-free (but mostly livestock-laden) landscapes to increase their visibility and promote their conservation (while avoiding the old West's traditional definition of branding: "a mark indicating identity or ownership, burned on the hide of an animal with a hot iron."2)

Conservationists have successfully branded landscapes in the past, particularly in Alaska and forested landscapes. Consider:

• Alaska
• The Arctic (National Wildlife Refuge)
• The Tongass (National Forest)
• The Westside Forests (Washington, Oregon and Northern California, a.k.a. "northern spotted owl forests")
• The Eastside Forests (Washington, Oregon and California)
• The Sierras (Sierra Nevada of California and Nevada)
• The Northern Rockies (Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, northeastern Oregon)
• The Central Rockies (Colorado)
• The Southern Rockies (Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico)
• The Sky Islands (northern Arizona and New Mexico)
• The Heartwood Forests (Indiana and Ohio)
• The North Woods (a.k.a. Northern Forest (Maine))
• The Southern Appalachians
• The Chesapeake Bay
• The Everglades

Such branding is intended to market landscapes on a national scale. Successful conservation, protection and restoration often depend upon expressions of national concern for a regional landscape. These marketed landscapes are "ecopolitical regions." While each area exhibits common ecological traits, physiographic features and other attributes (such as habitat for one or more charismatic species like the spotted owl, caribou, or sage grouse), they are fundamentally political brand names. In some cases, subparts of major ecopolitical regions are further branded to promote local conservation efforts. Consider:

• Siskiyou Wild Rivers, subpart of the Westside Forests;
• Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, subpart of the Northern Rockies;
• California Desert, subpart of the Mojave Desert; or
• North Cascades, subpart of the Westside Forests.

The branding and marketing of tree-free landscapes of the American West is generally not as well developed as other (tree-full [or formerly full of trees]) landscapes. We offer the following categories and subcategories of ecopolitical regions for these important landscapes, as well as descriptions for each.

Tallgrass Prairie
Mixed Prairie
Shortgrass Prairie
California Grassland

Palouse Grassland
Oregon Desert
Owyhee Canyonlands
Great Basin
West Desert
Red Desert

Mojave
Sonoran
Chihuahuan

America's grasslands and deserts are as diverse and magnificent as her forested landscapes. From east to west, the Great Plains "grasslands" consist of tallgrass prairie (western Minnesota, Iowa, northwestern Missouri, and the eastern fringes of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma); mixed prairie (North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and central Texas); and shortgrass prairie (central and eastern Montana, the western parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, and the eastern quarters of Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico). Before European American settlement, these grasslands were the "buffalo commons," home to millions of bison and prairie dogs, nourished by wide, flat rivers like the Little Missouri, Arkansas, and the Platte. A few examples of untrammeled grasslands are preserved in scattered national parks. A larger system of "national grasslands" are managed by the Forest Service in accordance with multiple use principles (livestock grazing is the major ecological irritant in these reservations). An isolated and unique grasslands ecosystem also exists in the Central Valley and the foothills of the Coast Range in California.

Intertwined, and alternately invading and ceding territory to the Great Plains grasslands is America's sagebrush steppe or "Sagebrush Sea." As described by writer Elizabeth Grossman,

The heart of the Sagebrush Sea is shaped by the Columbia River, the Snake River, the Great Basin and the Wyoming Plateau. It extends from the east side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington, Oregon and California, across the Snake River Plain in Idaho, east to western and central Wyoming, southwestern Montana, and the western edge of the Dakota grasslands and south into western Colorado, northern New Mexico and Arizona. Sagebrush habitat covers northeastern California, northern and central Nevada where it transitions into the Mojave Desert, and the high plateau country in Utah west of the Wasatch Range. The sagebrush steppe is high desert country - much of it over 4000 feet in elevation with mountains rising 5000 to 6000 feet or higher above the desert floor. It is basin and range country where long, steep ridges of volcanic uplift and fault-block mountains flank broad basins and valleys. 3

Some have described overlapping portions of the Sagebrush Sea as "Great Basin" (type) desert, 4 "intermountain grasslands," 5 "intermountain sagebrush steppe," 6 or "Great Basin-Colorado plateau sagebrush semi-desert." 7 It is also known as a "cold" desert, as opposed to the "hot" or true deserts of the Southwest (Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan).

Although it occupies 150 million acres in the West, the Sagebrush Sea is a much abused, little-known landscape. It is fragmented and degraded by livestock grazing, agricultural and urban development, mining, oil and gas development, off-road vehicle use, application of pesticides and herbicides, and the placement and construction of roads, fences and utility corridors. Most of this expansive landscape, home to pronghorn (North America's fastest mammal) and the charismatic sage grouse, is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Due to the vastness of the Sagebrush Sea, conservationists often brand and market it in major subparts. With sagebrush as their common feature, these areas include the Palouse Grassland of Washington (a branded subset is the "Hanford Reach"); the Oregon Desert; the Red Desert of Wyoming; the Owyhee Canyonlands of Idaho, Nevada and Oregon; and the Great Basin of California, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah (the Utah portion is often called the "West Desert" to distinguish it from the Canyonlands of southern Utah.) The Sagebrush Sea can be divided into even smaller subparts not listed here, and a few, such as the Missouri Breaks 8 in Montana and the Black Rock Desert 9 in Nevada, have already won protection as national monuments or Bureau of Land Management Wilderness areas.

The Colorado Plateau contains America's red rock country. It is an upland region situated in northern Arizona, southern Utah, southwestern Colorado, and northwestern New Mexico. A favorite ecosystem of recreationists, it includes spectacular canyons, high plateaus, and rugged mountains. Some of its most notable natural features are preserved in the Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Petrified Forest National Parks. The Bureau of Land Management manages what is not preserved in National Park Service units. Grazing, hydroelectric dams and natural gas development are major threats in the region.

America's "hot" deserts are found in the Southwest, where there are three types. The Mojave Desert covers much of southern California, southern Nevada, and the western edge of Arizona. It is defined by the creosote shrub, dotted with prickly joshua trees and is home to the ever-popular desert tortoise. The Sonoran Desert borders the Mojave at the south, and extends southward across southern tip of California and southern Arizona, into mainland Mexico and the Baja Peninsula. The stately saguaro cactus symbolizes the Sonoran Desert; the best examples of this desert type are found in Saguaro National Park. The Chihuahuan Desert is the largest desert in North America, but only the northern reaches extend into the United States in New Mexico and Texas. The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for managing large parts of all three of America's hot desert types, each of which are stressed by development and domestic livestock grazing.

Ecopolitical regions are not purely ecologically based. 10 They are not purely politically based (if they were they would follow state boundaries). They are not mutually exclusive. On the edges in particular they may overlap. Since their purpose is political marketing to advance conservation, protection and restoration, the fuzzy boundaries are appropriate for an often fuzzy political landscape.

1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 1996. 3rd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
2. Ibid.
3. The Sagebrush Sea (booklet). Portland, OR: American Lands.
4. MacMahon, J. A. 1997. DESERTS. New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 24-25.
5. Brown, L. 1997. GRASSLANDS. New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 21.
6. West, N. E. 1983. Western intermountain sagebrush steppe. Pages 351-397 in N. E. West (ed.). ECOSYSTEMS OF THE WORLD 5: TEMPERATE DESERTS AND SEMI-DESERTS. Sussex, UK: Elsevier Scientific Publ., Ltd.
7. West, N. E. 1983. Great Basin - Colorado plateau sagebrush semi-desert. Pages 331-349 in N. E. West (ed.). ECOSYSTEMS OF THE WORLD 5: TEMPERATE DESERTS AND SEMI-DESERTS. Sussex, UK: Elsevier Scientific Publ., Ltd.
8. Establishment of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, Proc. 7398, Fed. Reg. 66-7359-7363.
9. Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. Pub. L. 106-554. Making Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2001. Conference Report to Accompany (H.R. 4577). Dec. 15, 2000. 106th Cong. 2nd House of Representatives. Rep. 106-1033.
10. See Kuchler, A. W. 1970. Potential natural vegetation of the conterminous United States. Pages 90-91 in A. C. Gerlach (ed.). THE NATIONAL ATLAS OF THE USA. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.