Fig 1.
Assessment region, encompassing eleven states and two provinces stratified as seven management zones, and the extant range of both the greater and Gunnison sage-grouse.
Population names were defined in USFWS listing documents [4, 5].
Fig 2.
Greater and Gunnison sage-grouse hunt units in the United States and Canada in 1995, 1999, 2003, 2012, 2015, and 2018 within the 1995–2019 study period.
Closure types are indicated as follows: small or peripheral populations (grey striped), closures due to federal listing of Gunnison sage grouse (green), experimental closures (pink), closures due to fire (dotted red) and closures related to West Nile Virus (yellow striped).
Table 1.
Area-weighted average daily bag (Bag) and possession (Poss) limits for states and provinces open to hunting greater sage-grouse between 1995–2018.
Blank cells indicate closures in given years. Where bag or possession limits varied within a state, minimum and maximum values are presented in parentheses.
Fig 3.
Timeline depicting the harvest history of sage-grouse from 1870s–2019 stratified by sage-grouse Management Zone and greater and Gunnison sage-grouse populations.
Information obtained from state and provincial management agencies and 14,35,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54. All populations that crossed state or provincial boundaries were sub-stratified by those legal boundaries. Green depicts years when a population stratified by state was essentially fully open to hunting, yellow depicts partial closures (>50% open but some closure), orange depicted partial closures (<50% open but some legal hunting), red depicted essentially full hunting closures, and grey with NA indicates years where no data was available. This information is also available in Excel format via S1 Table.
Fig 4.
Change in total harvest area for greater sage-grouse across 11 western states and 2 Canadian provinces from 1995–2018, represented by total administrative boundaries (solid) and area within 8 km of known leks (dashed).
Fig 5.
Change over time in average bag limits (A) and possession limits (B) of greater sage-grouse, 1995–2018. The solid line represents averaged season length within 8 km of all active greater sage-grouse leks, and the dashed line represents averaged season length within 8 km of active leks with direct exposure to legal harvest in a given year.
Fig 6.
Bag limits, possession limits, and total hunt area for greater sage-grouse in 1995, 2005, 2014, and 2018.
Fig 7.
Change over time in season length calculated as total hunt days for greater sage-grouse, 1995–2018.
The solid line represents averaged season length within 8 km of all active greater sage-grouse leks within the range of the species, whereas the dashed line represents averaged season length within 8 km of active leks with direct exposure to legal harvest in a given year across the range of greater sage-grouse.
Fig 8.
Estimated number of hunters (A–C) and harvest (D–F) grouped by relative abundance of greater sage-grouse among states from 1995–2018. Data were obtained from state wildlife management agencies.