The Gunnison sage grouse depends on sagebrush for food, camouflage, nesting material, and the setting for its unusual mating dance of struts and popping noises, a courtship routine thought to have influenced some Ute and other American Indian dance rituals. When the Utes still reigned here, these birds ranged across all of southwestern Colorado and into Utah and Arizona in very dense flocks. As settlers cleared the land in the late 1800s and residential development expanded in the twentieth century, the species' habitat shrank sharply. At Dove Creek, the population fell from several thousand in the mid-1800s to about 150 by the 1990s. Because the Gunnison sage grouse cannot survive without sagebrush, wildlife managers and landowners have worked together in recent years to preserve and reseed sagebrush habitat, helping Colorado's population stabilize in the small pockets that remain.