Pioneers traveling along the Oregon Trail from western Nebraska, through Wyoming and southern Idaho and into eastern Oregon, referred to their travel as an 800 mile journey through a sea of sagebrush, mainly big sagebrush ( Artemisia tridentata). Today approximately 50 percent of the sagebrush sea has given way to agriculture, cities and towns, and other human developments. What remains is further fragmented by range management practices, creeping expansion of woodlands, alien weed species, and the historic view that big sagebrush is a worthless plant. Two ideas are promoted in this report: (1) big sagebrush is a nursing mother to a host of organisms that range from microscopic fungi to large mammals, and (2) many range management practices applied to big sagebrush ecosystems are not science based.

In recent years, the importance of sagebrush to shrub-steppe ecosystems and associated plant and animal species has been recognized. The historical removal of herbaceous species by excessive and uncontrolled livestock grazing on many of our sagebrush ecosystems has resulted in a stagnant state where dense, competitive stands of sagebrush prevent herbaceous species from recovering. Most early research on sagebrush control was directed toward eradication to increase herbaceous forage for livestock production, rather than sagebrush thinning to improve shrub vigor and understory production for wildlife habitat and community diversity. Mechanical treatments have the ability to retain shrub and herbaceous components, while improving diversity within degraded sagebrush communities. This study evaluated the effects of 6 mechanical treatments and revegetation of a Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis) community in northern Utah that were treated in the fall of 2001 and spring of 2002 (aerator only). Disking and imprinting killed 98% of the sagebrush and significantly (p