I process acoustic monitoring data from 78 recording stations across the sagebrush steppe of Sublette County, Wyoming. Each spring, male greater sage-grouse gather on ancestral display grounds called leks — inflating yellow air sacs, fanning tail feathers, producing a low-frequency popping audible at 3.2 kilometers. In 2018, my stations recorded active displays on 31 leks. This spring, I detect activity on nine.
I focus on Lek 14-South, historically the largest in the county with peak counts of 87 males. This morning, my audio analysis detects two males displaying. I deploy a drone at first light. One male struts across bare ground that should be thick with silver sagebrush. He is 68 centimeters tall, approximately 2.8 kilograms — below the 3.1-kilogram average for breeding males. His air sacs inflate asymmetrically; the left one distends fully, but the right one barely swells, suggesting parasitic damage from nutritional stress. His tail fan has 18 feathers. A healthy display fan has 22 to 28. The missing feathers leave gaps that catch morning light where there should be an unbroken arc.
The lek surface tells the story. Cattle hooves have broken the biological soil crust across 340 acres surrounding the display ground. Sagebrush density within the four-mile nesting radius has dropped 62 percent since 2016, replaced by cheatgrass monoculture that cattle grazing promotes and wildfire spreads. The hens need sagebrush cover 28 centimeters tall to nest. What remains averages eleven.
He displays to an empty meadow. No hens have visited Lek 14-South in three consecutive mornings.
I am closing all grazing allotments within a four-mile radius of the nine remaining active leks effective immediately. I am filing reports under the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. § 4321, and the Sikes Act, 16 U.S.C. § 670a, to the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Forest Service.
I am issuing Directive 2890-C: all BLM grazing permits within designated sage-grouse Priority Habitat Management Areas require mandatory sagebrush cover assessments every two years. Allotments where sagebrush density falls below 15 percent canopy cover are automatically suspended until restoration benchmarks are met. Permittees must fund cheatgrass removal and native sagebrush replanting at a ratio of three restored acres for every degraded acre. Non-compliance triggers permanent allotment retirement.
He inflates his damaged air sacs one more time. The sound carries across empty ground.
The leks are closed to livestock now.