Western Drought Too Much Even For Sagebrush - AP

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PRICE, Utah — "The topsoil is dry dust for the first 3 or 4 inches until finally there's enough moisture to give it some substance.

The surface has the look and feel of sand with scattered vegetation poking through. Small sagebrush shrubs that should be bushy and green are mostly a tangled mess of drab and dead, or dying, branches, only a few clinging to the small leaves that show the plant is still alive.

One of the most durable plants in the West, sagebrush is steadily succumbing across parts of Utah, another consequence of a six-year drought that has no end in sight. Utah alone has an estimated 600,000 acres filled with sagebrush that is either dead or dying, threatening a key piece of the ecosystem that benefits deer, sage grouse and the water table. "I don't think that the average citizen has an idea of what's going on in their environment and how it's going to affect them," said Rory Reynolds of the Utah Division of Wildlife.

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It's not just a lack of water that is hurting the sagebrush. In many areas plants have been able to grow older, thanks in part to advances in wildfire prevention. That means there hasn't been the natural cycle of burn off, and now the plants that are pushing a century aren't strong enough to handle the conditions."

EDIT

http://espn.go.com/outdoors/conservation/news/2004/0603/1815316.html