Prairie Chickens in Missouri Making Progress

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WAH-KON-TAH PRAIRIE, Mo. -- Greater prairie chickens, missing for some years among the grasses at Wah-Kon-Tah Prairie, strutted and boomed again this spring in an eons-old mating ritual. Biologists, digging deep in grassland ecology to save the species in Missouri, brought them back. Now, they watch to see if this iconic but state-endangered member of the grouse family can be restored long-term to prairies where they once thrived.

“Hopeful is the right word,” said Max Alleger, grassland bird coordinator for the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC). “Perhaps our biggest question is whether intensive management can in the long run balance the fact that our grasslands are limited in size. Do we have enough grasslands to support prairie chickens on the landscape?”

A five-year translocation project by MDC to help answer the question concluded in April. MDC crews trapped Kansas prairie chickens where they are plentiful in the grassy Smoky Hills. Biologists then gave the birds leg bands and tiny radio transmitters before releasing them at Wah-Kon-Tah’s native grasslands north of El Dorado Springs.

Those prairie chickens will help land managers serve the species. Observers track the birds’ movements visually or via radio telemetry. Results tell researchers how habitat management can help the ground-dwelling birds sustain populations.

“In the last five years, I’ve learned a lot about prairie chickens from this study,” said Len Gilmore, an MDC wildlife management biologist based in El Dorado. “They like hanging out in the short grasses and feeding there, and they go to our prairies with taller grasses to roost at night.”

Prairie chickens this spring used three leks – courtship and mating sites – at the 3,000-acre Wah-Kon-Tah Prairie in St. Clair and Cedar counties. Some courting males and females were hatched and reared on the area, an encouraging sign that reproduction is occurring.

“The number of leks indicates the population is increasing,” Gilmore said. “They’re breaking off and forming new booming grounds.”

Prairie chickens once numbered in the hundreds of thousands in Missouri on wide-open grasslands and areas mixed with native trees, wildflowers and grasses. But cities, farming and fire suppression during the past two centuries altered landscapes the birds evolved upon.

Today, less than one half of one percent of Missouri’s original prairie remains, and those remnants are scattered. Prairie chicken flocks endured into the late 1900s on or near native grassland remnants in northern and western Missouri. But in recent years their numbers plunged to critically low levels – dozens rather than hundreds or thousands – and some flocks vanished.

Low reproduction due to poor weather conditions for nesting, habitat decline and predators are suspected contributors to decline, biologists theorize. Prairie chickens have a high natural mortality rate, 50 percent or more annually with birds generally living only a few years. Low numbers in flocks means high risk for the species.

The flocks living in the Wah-Kon-Tah area vanished by 2004. A small flock using MDC’s Taberville Prairie Conservation Area about 10 miles away survived in low numbers.

MDC began releasing Kansas prairie chickens at Wah-Kon-Tah in 2008 to see if prairie chickens could be re-introduced to a landscape where they once thrived. This spring, 19 males and 44 females were released on the native and restored grassland, which is a partnership between MDC and The Nature Conservancy of Missouri.

The tracking study is providing answers about their habits and surprises.

A landscape with diverse heights of grasses and forbs is important, Gilmore said. Prairie chickens like to build nests on the ground in taller cover. But they don’t like to nest too far from shorter grasses where they and chicks can easily move about, feed and rest. But 50 percent or more of an area should have grasses tall enough to provide good nesting cover. A lack of large quantities of high-quality nesting cover may have led to prairie chicken declines.

The study confirms that prairie chickens have a strong affinity for “high-clipped” grasses, places where plants are tall enough for them to duck and hide in, but also short enough for them to raise their heads above and watch for predators. Public land managers now use prescribed fire, cattle grazing, mowing and haying to get the variety in grass heights that prairie chickens prefer. Prairies or pastures left to grow rank without disturbance don’t serve prairie chickens well.

A surprise from the radio telemetry tracking is how far prairie chickens move about on a landscape. They easily move 20 to 30 miles across rivers, roads and wooded fence rows. They won’t feed and roost on the ground near tree lines but they will cross them on long journeys. One bird flew to Kansas and then returned. Another spent the winter in a crop field in northwestern Vernon County and then returned to Wah-Kan-Tah for spring.

There is surprising interaction between the flock at Wah-Kan-Tah and the one at the Taberville prairie. Prairie chickens have also moved to other prairie remnants or traditional lek sites that have not had birds in recent years, Gilmore said. The movement may be a species evolutionary survival skill for mixing genetics. Their ability to navigate back and forth across the countryside and their choices to settle in at places that held prairie chickens years ago is uncanny.

One concern was that with low numbers of prairie chickens, less genetic diversity could cause fewer eggs to be laid by hens. But thus far, clutch sizes are healthy with 11 to 14 eggs in nests.

As the translocation of Kansas birds ends, monitoring results are prompting MDC biologists to provide more variation and diversity in plant species and heights than what occurred in past decades on public grasslands. Partnerships with private landowners are also an important component in prairie chicken recovery.

“It’s very important that all the habitat pieces are lined up right,” Alleger said. “Prairie chickens are a worthwhile species. We’re trying to do our level best to keep them in Missouri.”

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Prairie chickens make new stand at Wah’Kon-Tah

By Bill Graham, Missouri Department of Conservation

Photo Courtesy of the Missouri Department of Conservation

El Dorado Springs, Mo. -- On a recent spring afternoon, Kansas-born prairie chickens stepped cautiously onto Missouri soil bearing radio transmitters and biologists’ hopes for this endangered icon. The first two prairie chickens scanned the open skies above Wah’Kon-Tah Prairie. Suddenly they fluttered skyward, prompting a dozen more of the black and white speckled birds to leave the release box and glide over a knoll, out of sight but not beyond the telemetry equipment that will track them through the seasons.

The birds were captured where greater prairie chickens are plentiful in the Smoky Hills near Salina, Kan. But the species is critically endangered in Missouri.

Their release this spring at Wah’Kon-Tah will help the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) restore prairie chickens to a onetime stronghold and refine management to help all native grassland birds in decline.

“I firmly believe we will succeed,” said Len Gilmore, an MDC wildlife management biologist and prairie expert.

Prairie chickens and many grasslands birds are in peril because only small fragments of Missouri’s once-vast tallgrass prairies remain. The football-sized birds, a member of the grouse family, have dwindled from hundreds of thousands statewide in the early 1800s to less than 100 native birds in scattered flocks today.

But a year-round radio telemetry study at Wah’Kon-Tah is showing MDC biologists what types of ground cover prairie chickens prefer for nesting, raising broods, feeding and evading predators. That’s guiding how the area’s virgin prairie remnants and restored native grasses and wildflowers are managed with prescribed fire, grazing, haying or unaltered growth.

“Our telemetry has shown that we can’t just walk away from a prairie and let it sit,” Gilmore said. “You’ve got to do something every year to create disturbance and habitat diversity. The more diversity we can provide, the more success we’ll have.”

A small flock of prairie chickens lived in the Wah’Kon-Tah area north of El Dorado during the 1950s and 1960s, Gilmore said. But in recent decades they vanished, similar to how other small flocks at other prairie remnants in western and northern Missouri have declined.

Scientific studies at the Wah’Kon-Tah area aim to reverse that trend. That includes re-establishing a flock there as part of a translocation study, with almost 400 prairie chickens trapped in Kansas and released beginning in 2008. They are fitted with leg bands and a small, lightweight radio transmitter before release. That enables trackers using radio receivers to plot the birds’ movements through various habitats, and they can move miles in a day.

The 3,030-acre Wah’Kon-Tah is the largest protected tallgrass prairie complex in the eastern Osage Plains ecosystem. A large portion is owned by The Nature Conservancy, a private, non-profit conservation group. MDC also owns tracts and manages the prairie in cooperation with private partners.

An effort in the 1990s to re-establish prairie chickens at Wah’Kon-Tah with birds captured in Kansas was unsuccessful, Gilmore said.

But this time, changes in habitat management may make this effort successful and a model for long-term prairie chicken restorations statewide.

“We’re seeing evidence of successful reproduction,” Gilmore said.

Prairie chickens in early April use hilltop spots called leks as “booming grounds,” where males make a booming sound and drum their feet on the ground to attract females in a sunrise mating ritual resembling a dance.

Males are booming this spring on the Wah’Kon-Tah’s traditional lek sites and females are checking them out, said Stasia Whitaker, an MDC wildlife management assistant. Whitaker tracked the birds in recent years with radio telemetry. Prairie chickens also used the leks last year, and hens with chicks were spotted afterward. Some birds captured during studies do not have leg bands, which indicating they were hatched and raised at Wah’Kon-Tah.

“We’ve been doing lots of habitat work before releasing birds, and that’s helped them stabilize,” Whitaker said.

Managers used to simply let prairies grow, or they would hay large tracts or conduct large-scale prescribed fires.

But Gilmore and the MDC crew are using management practices on smaller, 40-acre units so prairie chickens have easier access to both open areas for feeding and dense cover for shelter. They need sheltered nesting cover but also open areas that are easier for chicks to travel in and find food.

Using prescribed fires followed by cattle grazing is boosting habitat diversity and the use of Wah’Kon-Tah by various bird species. One strong trend, the study shows prairie chickens like “high-clipped” grass where cover is mowed or grazed about a foot tall.

“Chicks and adults both have a hard time getting through grass when it’s tall and thick,” Whitaker said. “But at 10 to 15 inches, they can conceal themselves and also see out and watch for predators.”

Tree removal at Wah’Kon-Tah and on neighboring private farms also improves open vistas for prairie chickens. But it’s a mosaic of habitats with varying grasses and wildflowers that helps prairie chickens thrive as seasons change. Fire, grazing and haying are all tools to create that diversity.

“The more good habitat we can provide,” Gilmore said, “the more prairie chickens will survive.”