These birds are distributed throughout large portions of the north-central and Western United States, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

In the time of Lewis and Clark the word "pheasant" stood for "a genus of gallinaceous birds", according to lexicographer Noah Webster (1806), and the explorers often used it in that sense.

[10] In September 2016, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) stalled in Congress because President Trump indicated he would not let the annual NDAA proceed to a vote in the House of Representatives unless it contained language to bar the sage grouse from the federal endangered species list until at least 2025.

Current US Air Force spending on sage grouse conservation is around US$200,000, with eight known military installations having confirmed grouse populations: Dugway Proving Ground and Tooele Army Depot in Utah; Sheridan Training Area and Camp Guernsey in Wyoming; Hawthorne Army Depot and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada; Yakima Training Center in Washington, and Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho.

Males of C. urophasianus are the largest grouse from temperate North America, attaining a maximum weight of 3.2 kilograms (7 lb).

Males perform on leks for several hours in the early morning and evening during the spring months between February and April.

Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) concluded that greater sage-grouse are warranted for protection as "threatened" under the U.S. federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

[14] In order to preserve the population of sage-grouse, ranchers can monitor the rate at which cattle consume the tussocks in between sagebrush bushes.

GPS trackers show that sage grouse congregate in small areas with certain resources, rather than being widely spread.

[16] On December 6, 2018, according to the New York Times:[17] The Trump administration on Thursday published documents detailing its plan to roll back Obama-era protections for the vast habitat of the greater sage grouse, a chickenlike bird that roams across nearly 11 million acres [4.5 million hectares] in 10 oil-rich Western states.