sage grouse

noun

|Updated on: 9 Jun 2018

Definition of sage grouse

: either of two large grouses (Centrocercus urophasianus and C. minimus) of the dry sagebrush plains of western North America that have mottled gray and buff plumage above with a contrasting black belly

Recent Examples of sage grouse from the Web

The report noted that sage grouse once occupied about 463,000 square miles (1.2 million square kilometers), but that's now down to about 260,000 square miles (670,000 square kilometers).

— keith ridler, idahostatesman, "Breeding ground 'hubs' help keep sage grouse healthy. In Idaho, 1 sits near CJ Strike," 6 June 2018
Habitat degradation has cut the sage grouse’s numbers from 16 million to around 200,000.

— matt simon, WIRED, "Why Scientists Turned This Taxidermy Bird Into a Robot," 1 June 2018
If herds have exhausted the land, everything else suffers: native wildflowers and lizards, sage grouse and butterflies — as well as ranchers who rely on the same range and hunters who want to see thriving populations of deer and bighorn sheep.

— New York Times, "Let Mountain Lions Eat Horses," 12 May 2018
Under former President Barack Obama, the Interior Department delayed lease sales on millions of acres of public lands largely because of sage grouse worries.

— matthew brown, The Christian Science Monitor, "Lawsuits target oil and gas leases in fight for imperiled sage grouse," 1 May 2018
Last month, environmental groups cried foul over a Trump administration memo summarizing public comments on its reassessment of an Obama-era sage grouse conservation plan, which advocates say omitted almost 100,000 comments.

— Bloomberg.com, "The Newest Weapons Against Unions Are Employees," 2 Apr. 2018
Under an existing plan that has been heralded as an example of multistate, bipartisan cooperation balancing conservation and development, officials are working to safeguard and improve the land sage grouse need to flourish.

— darryl fears, idahostatesman, "It’s been a rough 2018 for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke — and it’s still January," 29 Jan. 2018
Interior is planning to auction hundreds of thousands of acres to the oil industry for leases on Wyoming land that is protected to conserve the greater sage grouse, a bird resembling a chicken that only exists in the western United States.

— darryl fears, idahostatesman, "It’s been a rough 2018 for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke — and it’s still January," 29 Jan. 2018
Interior for several years pondered protecting the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act but chose to roll out federal land plans that were even more restrictive.

— the editorial board, WSJ, "Washington’s Wild Grouse Chase," 11 Aug. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'sage grouse.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.