An Interactive Tool to Promote Stepping Down the Sagebrush Conservation Design to Local Conservation Planning

Abstract

Conservation efforts for the sagebrush biome in the western United States have been significant, but habitat loss and degradation are currently outpacing collective conservation efforts. The Sagebrush Conservation Design (SCD), cocreated by scientists and managers working across the biome, issues an urgent call to action to radically reprioritize conservation efforts to save the biome. At the heart of SCD is the “defend and grow the core” strategy, which means prioritizing conservation in intact sagebrush areas with native understories and low levels of threats, as opposed to the business-as-usual approach of treating all threats or focusing on areas with the most severe threats. However, SCD applications are limited by the capacity of land managers to integrate maps of rangeland conditions and threats into planning processes for their management area. To increase the integration of spatial data and help managers and planners step down SCD to local-scale conservation planning, we developed a web application that provides a user-friendly interface. Here, we lay out a guide for web application users, which we hope will empower land managers to make strategic conservation decisions that best protect the sagebrush biome.