Attwater's Prairie-Chicken By Rose Petros

This blog post is dedicated to educate the public about Attwater's Prarie-Chicken by summarizing the Recovery Plan into layman's terms for all to understand while incorporating important details from other reputable sources. 

The original recovery plan can be found in the link below: 

Attwater's Prairie Chicken Fish and Wildlife Service Recovery Plan 

  Photo by Fish and Wildlife Service

This blog posting will be broken up into five sections addressing: 

• 1) Description and Ecology of Attwater's Prairie-Chicken
• 2) Geographic and Population Changes
• 3) Listing Date and Type of Listing
• 4) Cause of listing and Main Threats to Continued Existence
• 5) Description of Recovery Plan 

Description and Ecology of Attwater’s Prairie-Chicken

Description:

Attwater’s Prairie-Chicken Prairie are “the most endangered bird in the United States,” so organizations are trying to reintroduce captive-bred chickens into the wild in hopes to restore the population (Lockwood, 2005). Prairie chickens are the about size of a small, domestic chicken, about 18 inches tall, weighing up to 2 pounds. Prairie chickens have brown and beige striped feathers. The male has a golden-yellow throat sac and special neck feathers called "pinnae" that he uses to attract the females during mating (DCCL, 2015). The male makes a very loud sound that sounds like a boom and for this reason the mating areas are called "booming grounds" (DCCL, 2015). The prairie chicken female lays up to 13 eggs per breeding season, hatching 25 days later. These birds are very social and prefer to stay in groups (DCCL, 2015). Unlike barn chickens, prairie chickens can fly (Lockwood, 2005).

Click here: Video of prairie-chicken breeding display.

Google Images

Scientific Classification:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Aves

Order: Galliformes

Family: Phasianidae

Subfamily: Tetraoninae

Genus: Tympanuchus

Species: T. cupido

Subspecies: T. c. attwateri
(Fish and Wildlife Service, 2015)

Habitat:

Wildlife scientists have been recently studying what type of habitat these birds prefer so this habitat can be mimicked in captive breeding programs. Lockwood’s article "Spring Habitat Requirements of Captive-Reared Attwater's Prairie Chicken" concludes that during nesting season prairie chickens prefer to live in “loamy prairie range sites interspersed with claypan prairie range sites.”  The bare, claypan areas used for mating displays is called a lek. These leks are very important for the mating behaviors of the chicken (FWS). The chickens prefer to feed in areas with low (less than 1.5 dm) obstruction of vision and prefer to nest in areas with 2.1-2.8 dm obstruction of vision (Lockwood, 2005). Lockwood notes that the chickens also liked agricultural areas, such as soybean plots. 

Google Images

Diet:

Prairie chickens have a very similar diet to domestic chickens. Prairie chickens enjoy eating grass, seeds, flowers, insects, and roots (Lockwood, 2005). They have a sharp beak that works well to catch insect inside the ground (Lockwood, 2005). 

Geographic Region and Population Changes

Geographic Region:
Prairie chickens live in "tall-grass and mixed-grass prairies of the Midwest and the northern and central planes" (DCCL, 2015). Habitat destruction and fragmentation caused by agricultural and urban development drastically reduced the prairie chicken's geographic range (TPW, 2015). Figure 1 shows the decline in range for the prairie chickens in Texas in 1937, 1963, and 2009.

Figure 1 by FWS Recovery Plan

Population Changes in the Wild:
In 1993, the Attwater's prairie chicken population was 456. "In 1994, that estimate dropped to 158 birds, and by 1996, only 42 of these rare birds were left" (TPW, 2015). Figure 2 shows the tragic decline in the prairie chicken's population.

Figure 2 by FWS Recovery Plan

Population Changes in Captivity:
Many conservation groups are attempting to captive breed the chickens and release them into the prairie chicken refuge in Texas.  The population is growing very slowly in captivity because there are some problems with chick survival rates. "Approximately 34% of APC chicks die during the first 10 days of life" (FWS, 2015). Figure three shows where the 182 captive Attwater's prairie chickens are being housed.

Figure 3 by FWS Recovery Plan

Listing Date and Type of Listing

Listed 3/11/1967, Endangered (TPW, 2015)

Cause of Listing and Main Threats to Continued Existence

Causes of Listing

• Habitat Degrgation/Population Fragmentation
• 99% of the habitat has been degraded causing only "three extremely small populations remain." Loss of grasslands and the increase in urbanization and agricultural development broke up the small area these birds live.
• Overharvesting
• In the past overharvesting was a huge problem. In 1937, hunting these chickens was outlawed.
• Predators
• Released, captive-raised prairie chickens are getting eaten by hawks, owls, and small carnivorous mamlas such as skunks and coyotes.

(FWS, 2015)

Main Threats to Continued Existence

• Genetics
• Low genetic diversity is causing birth abnormalities in the captive-bred chicks. A lac of genetic diversity puts the prairie chicken at risk for disease and potentially fatal genetic mutations.
• Disease
•  In the wild, prairie chickens commonly contract Dispharynx nasuta, Trichostrongylus, Eimeria dispersa, E. angusta, Leucocytozoon bonasae, and infectious bronchitis.
• In captivity, wildlife managers are noticing the chickens are testing positive for P. multocida, and infestations of T. cramae and D. nasuta. Insects fed to the birds may be causing this disease outbreak among the prairie chickens.
• Low Chick Survival Rates in Captive Breeding
• 75% of the chicks survived 10 days after hatching. Scientists believe this is due to inadequate nutrition for the breeding hens. Also, the chicks require a diet with insects to increase survival rates.
• Common problems in the chicks were digestive tract problems, viral diseases, and birth abnormalities.

(FWS, 2015)

Description of the Recovery Plan

Written by the United States Fish and Wildlife, the recovery plan mainly focuses on "habitat management, captive and wild population management, and public outreach" (FWS, 2015). The goal of the Recovery Plan is to help the Attwater's Prairie Chicken get removed from the endangered list and moved to the threatened list. This process is called "downlisitng." The ultimate goal is to have 3,000 healthy, breeding-age chickens in a wild population that have some genetic diversity. The great thing about prairie chickens is that they are an r-selected species. This means they have the potential to multiply very quickly since they have a lot of offspring every year. The total cost of the 50-year program is $192,531,000. The USFWS hopes to restore the population by 2055 (FWS, 2015).

How are humans helping the Attwater's Prairie-Chickens?

Figure by Friends of the Attwater Prairie Chicken

Conservation Scientists and Refuge Managers

Besides following the recovery plan, conservation scientists should understand the chickens’ preferred habitat to help captive-raised chickens being released into the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge wildlife stay on the refuge (Lockwood, 2005). Without proper refuge management, the vegetation may become too dense for the chickens, causing them to leave the refuge to find an area with lower vegetation density, such as farm land, which would cause conflict with farmers (Lockwood, 2005). Lockwood recommends that Attwater Wildlife Refuges manage their rangeland via grazing to keep the vegetation low, improving the habitat quality and increasing the chances of the chickens remaining on the refuge.

General Public

The Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge are looking for people to:

1. Donate
2. Volunteer
3. Adopt a Prairie Chicken

Friends of the Attwater Prairie Chicken is a non-government organization dedicated to help the chickens maintain a healthy population in the wild. They are partnered with the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Join their membership program to help fund grant writing to finance research on habitat improvement and genetic research. Since the prairie chicken population is critically small, the chickens are at risk for genetic mutations and disease. Scientists would like to find a way to widen the gene pool for these chickens to reduce the side effects of inbreeding.  

Write to Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, to call attention to the critical state of the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken and the prairie chicken reserves’ need for a grant to further research chicken genetics. According to President Obama, “She knows that there's no contradiction between being good stewards of the land and our economic progress; that in fact, those two things need to go hand in hand.”  People concerned about these chickens to write to Secretary Jewell at Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street, N.W.Washington DC 20240.

Literature Cited:

Dane County Conservatory League (DCCL). "Prairie Chicken." Prairie Chicken. Web. 2 Dec. 2015

Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). "Attwater Prairie Chicken - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." Home - Attwater Prairie Chicken - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Web. 29 Nov. 2015. 

Lockwood, Mitchell, Michael Morrow, Nova Silvy, and Fred Smeins. "Spring Habitat Requirements of Captive-Reared Attwater's Prairie Chicken." Rangeland Ecology &

Management, 58.3 (2005): 320-323.


Missouri Department of Conservation. "Prairie Chicken." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.


Texas Parks and Wildife (TPW). "Attwater's Prairie Chicken (Tympanuchus Cupido Attwateri)." RSS. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.