Optimizing targeting of pinyon-juniper management for sagebrush birds of conservation concern while avoiding imperiled pinyon jay

Contemporary restoration and management of sagebrush-dominated ( Artemisia spp.) ecosystems across the intermountain west of the United States increasingly involves the removal of expanding conifer, particularly juniper ( Juniperus spp.) and pinyon pine ( Pinus edulis, P. monophylla ). The impetus behind much of this management has been the demonstrated population benefits of sagebrush restoration via conifer removal to greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus ), a species of conservation concern. One of the challenges with scaling up from a focal-species approach to a community-level perspective, however, is balancing the habitat requirements of different species, some of which may overlap with sage-grouse and others which may have competing habitat needs. Here, we use a systematic conservation planning approach to compute spatial optimizations which prioritize areas for conifer removal across the sage-grouse range while incorporating woodland and sagebrush songbirds into decision-making. Three of the songbirds considered here, Brewer’s sparrow ( Spizella breweri ), green-tailed towhee ( Pipilo chlorurus ), and sage thrasher ( Poocetes gramineus ), are sagebrush-obligates, while another is a woodland-obligate, the pinyon jay ( Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus ). We find that the inclusion of sagebrush-obligates expands the model-selected area of consideration for conifer management, likely because habitat overlap between sagebrush-obligates is imperfect. The inclusion of pinyon jay, a woodland-obligate, resulted in substantial shifts in the distribution of model-selected priority areas for conifer removal – particularly away from pinyon jay strongholds in Nevada and east-central California. Finally, we compared the conifer optimizations created here with estimates of ongoing conifer removal efforts across the intermountain west and find that a small proportion (13-18%) of management efforts had occurred on areas predicted as being important for pinyon jay, suggesting that much of the ongoing work is already successfully avoiding critical pinyon jay habitat areas. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.