THIS PAST APRIL, I trekked through the rolling plains of northwestern Colorado, several miles outside the town of Craig, to watch a bird called the greater sage-grouse copulate in the halflight of dawn. My guide, a 44-year-old conservationist named Mark Salvo who works for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife in Washington, D.C., told me to be silent, dim my flashlight, and refrain from sudden movements. Sage-grouse, he said, are sensitive creatures, and their flamboyant courtship rituals are easily disturbed.
The birds, which look a little like overgrown chickens, had gathered in a flat open space in the sagebrush that ornithologists call a “lek,” ancestral ground to which the sage-grouse, if conditions are right, return each spring to dance, sing, and find mates. The males— we counted 148—puff ed out their…
