Keys to management include maintaining extensive areas of suitable habitat (sagebrushdominated shrublands with average shrub cover of 10-30%, average shrub height of 0.4-1.5 m, and an understory of native grasses and forbs [percent understory cover depends on region]), preventing the invasion of conifers and non-native plants, especially cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), minimizing disturbance to soil, and restricting the use of pesticides and herbicides during the breeding season (April-August).

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... eeding range: Two subspecies of Brewer's Sparrows breed in North America: the "sagebrush" Brewer's Sparrow (S. b. breweri) and the "timberline" Brewer's Sparrow (S. b. taverneri). This account deals only with the sagebrush subspecies, which breeds in the western Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Intermountain West, Columbia and Snake River Basins, and Great Basin, and not with the timberline subspecies, which breeds from northwestern Montana north through the Canadian Rockies to eastcentral Alaska (Doyle 1997 , Griffin et al. 2003 . The two subspecies differ in habitat use, vocalizations, morphology, plumage characteristics, and genetics. These differences may warrant a future decision to split the Brewer's Sparrow into two distinct species (Klicka et al. 1999 (Klicka et al. , 2001 but see Mayr and Johnson 2001).