| Delineating and prioritizing seasonal habitats for wildlife is critical for successful conservation and management of at-risk populations. Many local populations of greater sage-grouse face continuing habitat loss and degradation associated with increasing energy development. In such populations, wildlife managers need accurate fine-scale maps of important seasonal habitats, guidelines for managing habitat at landscape scales, defensible methods for prioritizing habitat, and effective options for increasing habitat as mitigation for energy development. I describe current research efforts in the Parachute-Piceance-Roan population in northwestern Colorado geared toward answering pressing management and conservation questions, including: (1) results of population-level, multi-scale resource selection function analyses to model and map sage-grouse seasonal habitats, (2) application of absolute validation index analyses to identify key areas of concentrated use to help managers prioritize habitat, (3) results suggesting mixed success of efforts to improve grouse habitat through removal of encroaching pinyon-juniper. |