Important Bird Areas: Great Basin

The sites listed here come from The American Bird Conservancy Guide to the 500 Most Important Bird Areas in the United States (2003). The Great Basin region extends from the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains in eastern Washington and Oregon and northeastern California through most of Nevada to southern Idaho and western Utah. Sagebrush and grassland dominate the lowlands, with pinyon-juniper woodlands and ponderosa pine forests higher up. Several large wetland areas host nesting and migrating waterbirds, including Eared Grebes, Snowy Plovers, American Avocets, Wilson's Phalaropes, and the bulk of the continent's White-faced Ibises and California Gulls. The sagebrush desert itself is the home of Greater Sage-Grouse and Sagebrush and Brewer's Sparrows.