The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has cleared a Powell game bird farm to try rearing and breeding greater sage grouse in captivity.

Diamond Wing Upland Game Birds, LLC, was the only entity to apply, be certified and receive a permit under a state law passed last year. The legislation allows private game bird farms to attempt the difficult captive sage grouse rearing process, which is untried on a large scale in the U.S.

The certification came after a long process of inspections and an application process. Scott Edberg, deputy chief of the Game and Fish’s Wildlife Division, confirmed Diamond Wing’s permit Tuesday morning.

“We’re very pleased. It’s just one more step in a long process,” said Diemer True, owner of Diamond Wing. “The credit goes to Karl [Bear]. When we met with the house committee last spring, we found ourselves in front of a lot of skeptics. Karl turned everybody’s concerns into a unanimous vote.”

Bear, of Powell, is the manager of Diamond Wing and the certification was granted based on his decades of work raising wild game birds, True said.

“We still have a lot of hoops to jump through,” True added.

There is the construction of a new pen and remodeling of an incubation and rearing facility that must be done before spring. Game and Fish regulations require a 100-foot buffer between the sage grouse facility and other game bird operations. The attempt to raise sage grouse will alter Diamond Wing’s other operations, True said; the farm raised tens of thousands of pheasants and chukar in 2017 and is the state’s largest game bird farm.

“It will be substantial,” True said.

After construction, the learning curve gets steeper. There are many unknowns in the process to gather eggs in the wild — in an amount never attempted before — and transport them back to Powell. Diamond Wing plans to hire consultants with experience capturing sage grouse to assist in the process, Bear said.

“We plan to use radio telemetry to locate nests,” Bear said.

The process requires capturing hens, attaching transmitters and then waiting until the birds have a full clutch before attempting to collect the eggs.

Regulations allow the collection of up to 250 eggs and limits the disturbance of nesting sites to 40 nests. The team has 20 days, in late April and early May, to collect the eggs. The site of the nesting areas has yet to be determined and will be decided under the guidance of the Game and Fish.

The eggs will need to be transported at a set temperature for nerve-racking drives back to Diamond Wing. Once in the facility, Bear and True are confident they can raise healthy chicks.

“We’re very optimistic about raising the chicks, but from there the learning curve will continue to challenge us,” True said.

Diamond Wing has been successful in raising and releasing wild birds in attempts to populate parcels for wild propagation, Bear said. But they have never attempted it with grouse, a species with intricate mating rituals and a dismal record of attempts to augment wild populations.

Bear has traveled to the Sutton Research Center and the Calgary Zoo in preparation. Both facilities have experience in grouse rearing and the zoo recently successfully bred sage grouse in captivity for the first time. Bear is also receiving calls for biologists willing to lend a hand in the effort as news of the granted permit spreads.

“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” True said speaking of Diamond Wing’s leap into the unknown, adding, “The people administering the process are committed to seeing it through.”