Prairie chickens now a rare sight
Loss of habitat to blame for decline
B— The outing began in the black of pre-dawn as a yellow moon dropped to the Portage County horizon. Peggy Farrell of University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point led a seven-person group by flashlight as we hiked to blinds at Buena Vista Wildlife Area. Before the sun rose in the opposite sky, we were treated to the sight of orange orbs of the earthly sort.
Thirty yards west of the blinds a pair of birds materialized in the dim light.
Standing about a foot tall, they faced each other and bowed forward. The birds’ throat sacs swelled to the size and color of tangerines. The air was filled with their mournful, humming calls.
Feathers stood erect on the birds’ heads like horns on a bull.
The birds were greater prairie chickens, a native Wisconsin species that relies on grassland habitat. The scene took place in April during the species’ annual breeding period. The males, or cocks, compete on leks, or dancing grounds, for the chance to mate with hens.
“There’s no performance like it,” said Farrell, who coordinates viewing blinds for the university.
It’s a sight that few people are privileged to witness in Wisconsin these days. And one that, in the view of many, may not be available for long.
“We’re facing the prospect of losing them entirely or having just a ‘zoo’ population,” said Greg Septon of Franklin, executive director of the Society of Tympanuchus Cupido Pinnatus, the leading conservation group working to support prairie chickens and other prairie grouse.
It is estimated less than 500 prairie chickens remain in Wisconsin, down from 2,500 in 1950 and 55,000 in 1930 and the lowest in more than three decades. The species is listed as state-threatened.
An annual census of prairie chickens in Wisconsin is conducted by biologists and volunteers by counting male birds on booming grounds. The work provides an index to the statewide population trend; it is assumed the population is half male, half female.
In 2014, 230 male prairie chickens were observed on traditional breeding grounds in central Wisconsin, according to the annual survey compiled by the Department of Natural Resources.
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The 2014 prairie chicken population estimate was 22% lower than the year before and lowest since 1981.
The largest number of the birds (110) was found in the Buena Vista Wildlife Area, while 82 were recorded at Paul J. Olson Wildlife Area, 26 on Leola Wildlife Area and 12 at Mead Wildlife Area.
None were observed at McMillan or Dewey wildlife areas, sites that held chickens in the past.
Results of the 2015 spring cock survey were not available as of last week, according to DNR wildlife officials.
Regardless of its results, the prairie chicken is in dire straits in Wisconsin due to loss of habitat and increasing genetic isolation.
Researcher and professor John Toepfer gave a presentation in January in Stevens Point titled “The Prairie Chicken: The Making Of An Endangered Species.”
Without additional grassland habitat, the prairie chicken population in Wisconsin is in serious trouble and would need regular introductions of birds from outside the state to increase genetic diversity, said Toepfer, who earned a doctorate based on prairie chicken research and has conducted projects for the Society of Tympanuchus Cupido Pinnatus.
A project last decade brought 110 female prairie chickens to Wisconsin from Minnesota; it is thought to have helped address immediate concerns but was not a long-term solution.
Arguably no native Wisconsin wildlife species has been in such a well-understood and well-documented decline for so long.
Just two or three generations ago, the bird was familiar to most Wisconsinites. The prairie chicken was found in every county in the state in the 1940s.
Beginning in the late 1940s, famed conservationists Frederick and Frances Hamerstrom highlighted the need to protect the species’ habitat if the prairie chicken was to survive in Wisconsin.
In 1961, after learning of the decline of the native bird, Milwaukeeans Willis Sullivan and Dory Vallier founded the Society of Tympanuchus Cupido Pinnatus.
“It was like learning a longforgotten friend was in trouble,” Sullivan said more than 50 years ago.
The primary reason for the species’ decline has never been in doubt: loss of habitat.
Changing agricultural practices, including conversion of pasture lands to row crops or cranberry farms, as well as transition of prairie to forest are leading reasons for the reduction in prairie chicken habitat in the birds’ last stronghold in central Wisconsin.
The Society of Tympanuchus Cupido Pinnatus, as well as the Dane County Conservation League and Wisconsin Society of Ornithology, led the way with land purchases in the middle 20th century designed to assist grassland species.
The land, mostly now owned by the DNR, is part of about 26,000 acres actively managed by the agency for prairie chickens.
The DNR’s prairie chicken management plan, which expired in 2014, called for 9,100 to 15,000 acres of new permanent grassland “within strategically targeted areas of the GPC range.” The agency fell short of its goal from 2004’14; it purchased 3,000 acres and obtained easements on 3,000 acres.
The DNR is reviewing its prairie chicken management and may revise its plan over the next year or two. Future efforts likely will include more coordination with private landowners.
“We recognize that, while both acquisition and easements will continue to be a component of our management strategy, we need to better engage private landowners as partners going forward,” said Scott Walter, DNR ecologist. “Improving habitat on private lands surrounding our public properties will foster increased movement and gene flow, and is our best strategy to improving prairie chicken genetic and demographic health.”
In the meantime, experts fear the low population is at risk from acute, severe events.
“The problem with letting our prairie chicken population get below 1,000 is that it increases the chance of random events such as bad weather pushing the population to zero, as happened with the heath hen,” said UW-Milwaukee professor Peter Dunn, referencing the 1930s extinction of a prairie grouse formerly found in the eastern U.S.
The group trip to the Buena Vista blinds in April was graced by seven male and two female prairie chickens.
The cocks danced, jousted and boomed for more than an hour.
Harry Fisher, 74, of Highbridge, N.J., and his son, Jeff, 43, of Port Charlotte, Fla., were in one of the blinds with their friend, Kelly Rueckheim, 38, of Hillsboro. It was the first time the Fishers had seen a prairie chicken.
“I came to Wisconsin just to see this, knowing they may not be around much longer,” Harry Fisher said. “It was amazing. A bird this regal deserves a real commitment to make sure it survives in the wild.”
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