When you think of Idaho’s most famous plants, you probably think of Russet potatoes. But second, you probably — or at least I think you should — think of sagebrush.
There are more than a dozen species of sagebrush, and far more subspecies. They’ve shaped the landscapes of western North America for millenia, providing sanctuary and food for hundreds of species of animals. The sagebrush steppe in the western U.S. is also one of the world’s most endangered ecosystems.
This tool from The Nature Conservancy allows you to slide the bar from side to side, showing the historic loss of sagebrush habitat in recent centuries. (The Nature Conservancy)
The basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) goes by many names, but is the largest subspecies of the shrubs, and can reach heights of 13 feet and can live almost up to a century.
Having adapted to these lands and the climate, they’re fire-resistant to a degree, and use wind for their primary pollination rather than insects. They’re uniquely equipped to thrive at a range of elevations in the dry lands east of the coastal mountains that catch much of the precipitation that comes over from the Pacific Ocean.
But being finely-attuned to our climate isn’t a surefire protection. According to some estimates, over half of the sagebrush ecosystem has been lost since European colonization began.
Direct development and clearing of sagebrush is partly to blame. But the most devastating impacts come indirectly.
Fast-growing cheatgrass and other invasive species choke out native species like sagebrush after a burn. And because of our warming climate, our increasingly frequent and extreme wildfires mean that burned areas that previously would have bounced back from fires are often completely covered in invasive species just one growing season later.
While that is pretty grim, more people are working to steward the land and sagebrush ecosystems, alarmed by habitat loss.
Across the western U.S., different regions are dominated by different species of sagebrush. In Idaho, most of ours is basin big sagebrush, or just big sagebrush. (Danielle D. Hughson / Getty)
A Boise State researcher made national headlines last year when he successfully sequenced the basin big sagebrush genome, which is 2.3 times larger than the human genome given its variability. That information, he says, can be a “gateway” to understanding how the plant can adapt to its changing climate.
And with increased reseeding efforts in recent years, there’s a chance we can slow and reverse the loss of one of the most important plants in the western U.S.
