‘Wild Kingdom’ returns to TV with Houston’s prairie chicken
A bird native to the Houston area will be in the spotlight this fall as part of a relaunch of a long running wildlife TV show.
“Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” is returning to TVs on Saturdays, premiering Oct. 7 with hosts Peter Gros and Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. The show, which launched in 1963, focuses on wildlife conservation efforts across the U.S.
Just west of Houston in Colorado County, the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge is featured in an episode that shows efforts to save the endangered bird from extinction.
Gros and wildlife ecologist Wynn-Grant have been in Texas filming in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. Locally, they are taking a look at conservation efforts of the Attwater prairie chicken — a species native to the coastal plains that almost saw extinction until local efforts boosted their numbers.
“This is a story that just had to be told,” Gros said of the Attwater prairie chicken. “The Attwater prairie chicken is such a bit of Texas history that I think it’s important that we be here.”
In the early 1900s, there were about 1 million Attwater prairie chickens in the Gulf Coast prairies of Texas. Now about 150 of the birds exist only in Colorado and Goliad counties, and they are bred at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center. Wynn-Grant pointed out that the Attwater prairie chicken isn’t exactly a chicken. “It’s a really cool bird,” she said.
With round bodies and small heads, the Attwater prairie chicken is less of a chicken in that it can fly. Males have long, dark feathers on their neck called pinnae, along with air sacs and bright yellow-orange combs above their eyes. They have a distinguished courtship that includes males inflating their air sacs, producing a low booming sound heard a halfmile away. Courtship happens from February to May.
Each hen lays roughly a dozen eggs with only a 25% survival rate. The Attwater prairie chicken life span in the wild is about two years.
The Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge has played an instrumental role in the survival of the species since it was established in 1972, its leaders say. The 500,000-acre refuge provides the most optimal environment for the birds with predator control and management of fire ants, burns and brush.
Attwater prairie chickens were first listed as an endangered species in 1967. Their population has seen a major decline since 1993 when there was an estimated 456 chickens. By 1996, there were only 42. In 2018, there were only 26 known Attwater prairie chickens as a result of Hurricane Harvey and the Tax Day flood of 2016. Wynn-Grant said for conversationalists, the animal was known as “functionally extinct,” meaning there would be no way for it to come back in numbers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attributes their decline to habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and over hunting. A smaller population was also less susceptible to surviving disease, parasites and genetic problems.
“Some local heroes in the Houston area worked tirelessly and incredibly hard over several decades to essentially do the impossible and bring back the Attwater prairie chicken, and this kind of story is super important because it’s very symbolic of what’s possible,” Wynn-Grant said.
She said stories like the Attwater prairie chicken are able to inform other conservation projects around the world. She said we can’t give up on animals like elephants, rhinoceros and polar bears.
And that’s the goal of the show, they said, to inspire the next generation to preserve wildlife. The show will also be taking viewers to Austin and outside of San Antonio, where it will take a closer look at bats.
“This generation has heard so many stories of gloom and doom — what’s happening to our planet — that it’s important we touch on the fact that there is hope,” Gros said. “There have been species that were becoming extinct, that we changed the way we behave in many cases.”
“Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” has earned 41 major awards over the past 60 years, including four Emmy’s.
The show is produced by Hearst Media Production Group, which is owned by Hearst Corp., the owner of the Houston Chronicle.