CARBON COUNTY -- For decades, a population of grouse in south-central Wyoming and northwest Colorado has been identified as Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, the same subspecies that can be found in far western Wyoming near Jackson along with Idaho, northern Utah and parts of the Pacific Northwest.

But new research led by University of Wyoming scientists has found that the 8,000-10,000 sharp-tailed grouse found in the shrublands and high deserts of southern Carbon County and northwest Colorado are not Columbian sharp-tailed grouse. Nor are they more closely related to plains sharp-tailed grouse -- a subspecies found in portions of the northern Great Plains in the United States and Canada, including eastern Wyoming -- as was suggested by other researchers in 2006.

Rather, the birds potential

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