Weather gives endangered prairie chickens a nesting boost

Courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

Dry weather and good nesting and feeding habitat brought surge in brood counts and number of chicks reaching self-reliant size.

By Bill Graham, MDC

KANSAS CITY, Mo -- Missouri’s endangered prairie chickens got a major lift this summer from dry weather in June and continued refinement in how native grasslands are managed.

The Missouri population dipped to a critically low number of about 100 prairie chickens sighted on mating grounds this spring, in a state that once had hundreds of thousands. However, favorable weather helped hens on MDC-managed prairies hatch and rear their young this summer.

“We had an apparent nesting success of almost 80 percent, which is phenomenal,” said Max Alleger, grassland bird coordinator for the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC). “Most studies show that nesting success in stable populations is usually 50 percent.”

Habitat loss since the 1800s reduced the state’s prairie-chicken numbers to dozens in scattered flocks as this century began. Starting in 2007, cool and rainy weather caused severe chick mortality during nesting and brood-rearing seasons, causing problems for a struggling species where adults have an average life span of two to three years due to predators and natural mortality.

In 2008, MDC crews began trapping prairie chickens in Kansas and releasing them at the Wah’Kon-Tah Prairie near El Dorado Springs. A small native flock survived at the Taberville Prairie Conservation Area to the north, but no prairie chickens remained at Wah’Kon-Tah as the translocation project began. The Kansas birds began a new flock, but torrential rains and unseasonably cool temperatures limited nesting success each spring through 2010.

Then relatively dry weather this June coupled with good variety in nesting and feeding habitat brought a welcome surge in brood counts and the number of chicks reaching a self-reliant size by summer’s end.

MDC crews located 29 prairie-chicken nests this summer at Wah’Kon-Tah and Taberville prairies in St. Clair County. Of those, they determined that hens in 23 nests hatched broods. Biologists and students from the University of Missouri-Columbia directly observed 52 chicks during field work.

“It’s encouraging,” Alleger said, “and we’ve seen the same thing with turkeys and quail. I think the dry weather helped all the ground-nesting birds.”

Three broods were raised by hens hatched at Wah’Kon-Tah since 2008. Hens from translocations in earlier years reared eight broods, and 16 hens translocated from Kansas this spring produced young.

Crews are able to monitor prairie chickens because many are outfitted with small radio transmitters. Biologists track them in the fields and chart on maps what habitat they use for feeding, nesting, loafing and roosting.

“The birds have shown a real preference for cattle-grazed areas, both on our native prairies and on neighboring private pastures as well,” Alleger said.

Prairie chickens are fast flyers but they spend most of their time walking, running, feeding and resting on the ground. Grazing opens up paths and open areas that are easy for prairie chickens to move about amid grasses and wildflowers, and they are easier places for small chicks to catch bugs while feeding. But the ground dwellers also need dense cover for nesting or to escape from predators such as hawks. The public prairies are being managed in 40-acre patches so that grazed, burned and undisturbed areas are side by side, offering what biologists call a soft edge.

“The chicks need to be able to get out in the sun in the morning and let the dew dry off,” Alleger said. “But when the hawks fly over, they also need places to hide.”

A five-year prairie-chicken restoration program at Wah’Kon-Tah with translocated Kansas birds, radio telemetry monitoring and habitat studies concludes in 2012.

This summer’s brood success is a hopeful sign that with moderate weather and habitat management such as grazing, the iconic symbol of grassland birds can rebound there and be restored elsewhere.

“If we can get two or three years in a row with drier weather,” he said, “it could make all the difference in the success of the project.”

The Prairie Chicken in Missouri

Missouri Prairie Foundation’s Second Annual BioBlitz June 4 & 5

Image by ImAges ImprObables via Flickr

Nature lovers of all ages are invited to help experts discover and document grassland plants and animals from Golden Prairie, a National Natural Landmark in Barton County.

By Carol Davit, Missouri Prairie Foundation

JEFFERSON CITY Mo -- In spring and summer, Golden Prairie is often carpeted with wildflowers as far as the eye can see. An original prairie remnant owned and managed by the Missouri Prairie Foundation, Golden is a peaceful place and haven for native prairie plants and wildlife.

On Saturday and Sunday, June 4 and 5, however, it will bustle with human activity as nature lovers statewide team up with biologists at the conservation organization’s free, second annual Prairie BioBlitz.

Barbara Van Vleck, a Missouri Master Naturalist from Kansas City, will definitely be there.

“MPF’s Prairie BioBlitz last year at Penn-Sylvania Prairie was the best outdoor event I have attended in 20 years,” said Van Vleck. “Cordial experts in many fields taught us at an appropriate level. A plant survey revealed blooms everywhere, including orchids! From a bat survey, herpetology talk to nighttime moth identification, it was an exciting two days. I wouldn’t miss it this year for anything.”

Across the country, nature lovers and professional biologists team up at “BioBlitzes” to identify as many species as possible (the “bio”) in an area over the course of 24 hours (the “blitz”). The Missouri Prairie Foundation is hosting its own version at Golden Prairie on Saturday, June 4, and Sunday, June 5.

Golden Prairie is in Barton County, about three miles from Golden City. The Missouri Prairie Foundation purchased the 320-acre Golden Prairie in 1970, and since then, 310 additional acres adjoining or near the original tract have been purchased and protected. More than 300 plant species are known from the original 320 acres of the prairie, but for many other groups of species, little information is known from any of Golden’s 630 acres.

“Today, ecologists consider temperate grasslands to be the most endangered, least conserved of any terrestrial habitat on earth, and no temperate grasslands are more threatened than tallgrass prairies,” said Carol Davit, the Foundation’s director of communications and development. “Collectively, our remaining prairies in Missouri support up to 800 plant species, dozens of vertebrates and thousands of invertebrates. We want to see how many of them we can find at Golden Prairie, and BioBlitz participants will help in that effort.”

On the afternoon and evening of June 4 and the morning of June 5, biologists who study ants, bees, birds, beetles, butterflies, true bugs, moths, mammals, aquatic invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, land snails, vascular plants, mosses and liverworts will lead groups across the prairie to survey and inventory as many species as possible.

Several Missouri Conservation Department (MDC) biologists, including Mammalogist Debbie Fantz, Natural History Biologist Mike Arduser, Resource Science Division Field Chief Rochelle Renken, Fisheries Management Biologist Tom Priesendorf and Naturalist Shelly Cox will be group leaders. Other leaders include Shaw Nature Reserve Biologist and Entomologist Dr. James Trager, Botanists Justin Thomas and Nels Holmberg, Malacologist Ron Oesch, Lepidopterist Phillip Koenig and Naturalist Elizabeth Hamilton.

“We are thrilled that so many biologists are giving their time to help uncover the plant and animal treasures of this prairie,” said Davit. “If you love wildlife, this is a great opportunity to learn from experts passionate about their given subjects, and play a role in much-needed data collection as well.”

MDC’s Mike Arduser, who will lead the bee group, added, “The Missouri Prairie Foundation’s Prairie BioBlitz brings two important things together -- scientific data collection and the opportunity of nature enthusiasts at all skill levels to participate in this work, and also interact with each other. At the end of the weekend, BioBlitz participants go away with a greater understanding of prairie then when they arrived.”

Following the afternoon activities on June 4, there will be a potluck picnic supper, stargazing and free tent camping on the prairie. The BioBlitz is free, but participants must RSVP. For a detailed BioBlitz schedule, directions to the prairie, and to RSVP, visit the Upcoming Events page at www.moprairie.org, email info@moprairie.com or call 888-843-6739.

The Missouri Prairie Foundation is a 45-year-old membership organization that protects and restores prairie and other native grasslands through acquisition, management, education and support of prairie research. The organization owns 2,600 acres of prairie across the state and helps manage an additional 1,500 acres owned by conservation partners.

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.”