Recent literature characterizes future wireless sensor networks (WSN) with dynamic spectrum capabilities. When cognitive radio is introduced as a main component of a network, a network management protocol is needed to ensure network connectivity and stability especially in highly dynamic environments. Implementing such protocols in WSN opens more challenges because of the resource constraints in sensor networks. We propose a distributed lightweight solution that fulfills this need for WSN. With this protocol, a node in a multichannel environment is quickly able to establish a control channel with neighboring nodes. Lightweight distributed geographical either increases or reduces the coverage area of the control channel based on perceived interference and adequately takes care of intersecting nodes with minimal overhead. By identifying local minima nodes, it also has the potentiality of reducing route failure by 70% further reducing the time and energy overhead incurred by switching to angle routing or maximum power transmission schemes usually used to solve the local minima issue. The work shows best operating values in terms of duty cycle and signal to noise ratio threshold frequencies and the lightweight nature of lightweight distributed geographical in terms of energy and communication overhead, which suits network management protocols for cognitive radio sensor networks. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.