For the birds: Restoration project at Swanson Lakes aimed at helping struggling sharp-tailed grouse population

LINCOLN COUNTY – Not far from the shores of Z Lake, amid the tan grasslands of the Swanson Lakes Wildlife Area, there’s an enclosure that looks out of place.

A tall fence surrounds about 22,500 square feet of the state-owned property. Inside, plants grow in rows, each one poking through a hole in black matting.

In all, there are 700 plants. There are aspen and birch trees, and a medley of berries – snow, elder, buffalo. They’ve been growing here for a little more than five months, the result of a restoration project in May led by the Spokane Audubon Society and the local Pheasants Forever chapter.

The plot is meant to become habitat and forage for the wildlife of the scablands, including a scant population of sharp-tailed grouse.

That will take years. The fence is there to make sure deer and elk and other species don’t eat the shrubs and trees before they have a chance to grow. Eventually, it will be able to come down, and the plot will be able to provide food and shelter for the grouse and other wildlife through the winter.

For now, though, things look good. Mike Finch, who manages the wildlife area for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, walked through the plot earlier this month and marveled at just how many of the plants made it through the hot, dry summer – it seemed like almost none of them had died.

“For survival, this plot is something else,” Finch said. “You just don’t see this kind of survival, especially all summer with no rain.”

Finch would know. He’s been working for WDFW in the area since 1994, and since then, both WDFW and the Bureau of Land Management have worked hard to restore native grasses and plants in the Lake Creek drainage south of Creston.

He has a binder that details all of them – old agricultural fields returned to native grass mixes, wetlands that have been brought back, other plots of trees and shrubs. The projects cover about 3,300 acres, and there’s still more to come.

The work helps all of the scablands fauna, but that small, ground-dwelling bird remains the driving force behind it.

“It all comes back to the sharp-tailed grouse,” said Jason Lowe, the BLM biologist for the area.

Downward trend

Sharp-tailed grouse are small birds known for their performative mating rituals. They’re are wildly abundant in some places, to the point that they become a prized quarry for hunters.

That was once the case in Washington, but the birds suffered a steep decline and are now barely hanging on. Now, they’re protected as endangered under state law, and WDFW estimates fewer than 1,000 birds exist statewide across seven populations in Douglas, Okanogan and Lincoln counties.

Habitat loss and fragmentation are the main culprits behind the decline. Intact shrub-steppe landscapes are key. Changes to agricultural practices and a decline in land enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program combined to carve up some of the places the birds rely on.

Fire doesn’t help either, and the population in Lincoln County took a major hit after the Whitney Fire of 2020. The blaze was one of several in Washington that took off on Labor Day that year, and it torched more than 120,000 acres.

At the 21,000-acre Swanson Lakes Wildlife Area, it charred all but about 200 acres, Finch said.

It remade the landscape. Before, the place was a sea of sagebrush. Now, the pockets of sage are few and far between.

That was hard on the prairie grouse that called the area home. A population of sage grouse that had been reintroduced dropped to single digits after the fire and finally blinked out this year, said Kim Thorburn, a member of the Spokane Audubon Society who has helped monitor grouse in the area for years.

Sharp-tailed grouse numbers dropped dramatically, too. Thorburn said the population in Lincoln County was estimated at about 130 before the fire, and had held steady for a while.

An early estimate for this year put the total at 36, which Thorburn said is about where it’s been since the fire.

Grouse have been hauled into Washington from elsewhere to boost the remaining sharptail populations for years. Since 1998, more than 600 grouse have been brought into the state. This year, 60 birds from British Columbia were released in Lincoln and Douglas counties.

“The augmentation is really what kind of keeps it going in almost all the populations,” she said.

Restoring habitat

The Lake Creek drainage is a series of springs and small lakes south of Creston, comprising the upper portion of the Crab Creek watershed. It begins at Z Lake and goes downstream, through Twin Lakes and Coffeepot Lake.

Lowe, the BLM biologist, said both his agency and WDFW acquired their public lands in the area were acquired relatively recently and after a long history of the land being used for agriculture. That meant there was a lot of habitat that needed restored.

Grainfields have been restored to native grasses. Lowe knows of at least one alfalfa field that became a wetland, with help from Ducks Unlimited. He’s also planted a fair number of birch trees – in the winter, sharp-tailed grouse eat the catkins that grow on birch.

Look across the dry, desolate drainage and it’s hard to imagine that restoring a piece of the habitat has a major impact. But Lowe and Finch have proof of concept.

A little more than a decade ago, they overlaid data from tracking devices on grouse to see where they were spending their time. It showed that both sage and sharp-tailed grouse were using the restored areas. It also showed that they preferred ones with more variety.

Winter habitat, however, has always seemed like a problem in the drainage to Finch. There aren’t many places for upland birds to get out of the weather, and not many food sources for them.

BLM had done well planting some shrub and tree plots, so Finch started dreaming up a project for WDFW property. He found the site near Z Lake, which sits below a small bluff with a spring.

He found a site just east of Z Lake below a small bluff with a spring. Once it got the final OK, Finch started making moves. Thorburn and the Audubon Society got some grant money to help fund the project and buy all the plants.

The local Pheasants Forever chapter got involved. The group bought stakes and T-posts. Mike Gruenke, the chapter’s habitat chairman, marshaled a massive volunteer force that included people from Spokane and even a few from the other side of the Cascades.

They all descended on Swanson Lakes on a day in May to put up the fence and get the plants in the ground. One Pheasants Forever made everyone a hearty turkey dinner.

With the work done, all they could do was hope the plants lived.

So far, so good. Usually, with projects like this one, they expect maybe 5% to 10% of the plants to live. The opposite seems to have happened here – it doesn’t seem like even 10% of the plants died.

Weeds are growing here and there, but not too many are growing right on top of their intended plants, which is a good sign.

“I think we’re off to a great start,” Gruenke said.

The fence is staying up for now. When it’s ready to come down, though, this will be a sight to see.

“This is going to be an interesting spot in 10 years,” Finch said.